This is a story that has been brewing for some time, and we were expecting Nvidia to develop an Arm APU for Pcs. However, with claims that the chip is being created in collaboration with MediaTek and could be ready for shipment in 2025, the event is moving in an interesting direction.

This is according to a report by the Taiwanese newspaper United Daily News (UDN), which states that the overall design has already been finalized and that full completion is achieved by the end of 2024. MediaTek and Nvidia have previously worked on automotive chips and have developed a preliminary reference laptop specification in 2021.

Nvidia has a long history with Arm and has a range of Tegra SoCs (system-on-chip) that combine Arm Cortex cores with various GPU architectures. Nintendo has chosen the 2015Tegra X1 to power its switch console and is expected to do the same for its handheld successor, using one of the latest Tegra models or a custom variant 1.

But why would Nvidia and MediaTek choose to enter the PC market now rather than stick to other markets?First of all, if you believe AMD, Intel and Microsoft, 2024 has (informally) become the year of AI PCs.We are participating in AI in the form of either NPU (neural processing units) or generative AI software tools. Nvidia is an artificial intelligence company that earns billions of dollars every quarter from sales of its h100 megachips so many these days. So, of course, it will want a healthy slice of the new AI PC market.

2024 is also (informally) the year of Arm chips for PCs. As for the Cpu for Windows on Arm Pcs, there has long been an exclusive agreement between Qualcomm and Microsoft, which is rumored to expire in 2024. With it gone, it should lead to a host of potential entrants to the PC market, now that x86 is not the only CPU game in town for Microsoft OS.

Qualcomm is a direct rival to MediaTek, already throwing away the AI PC gauntlet itself in the form of an Arm-powered Snapdragon X Elite processor. Both companies are famous for their smartphone chipsets, but the market has not shown any signs of significant growth, but it is not exactly stagnant. PC sales have been fairly slow, but the situation is expected to improve over the next 12 months.

It is unclear at this stage what can be expected of MediaTek and Nvidia, but udn reports that the chip will be manufactured by TSMC and will use N3 process nodes, with a unit price of as much asド300. I think these will only be sold directly to OEMs and system builders, for laptops and NUC PCs.

Compared to AMD or Qualcomm's Apus, what you get with the money is anyone's guess, but I think it's safe to assume that it has low power consumption (probably less than 60W in the biggest variation, about 30W in the mainstream model), 8-16 Arm CPU cores, and enough GPUs to accommodate 1080p games.

There is 1 thing for sure. If Intel wanted a simple time to maintain its dominance in the PC market, AMD, Qualcomm, and MediaTek- something special to fight against what Nvidia is bringing to the table, more competition would be good news for us not only that we get more options but also that should result in a tastier price. Well, at least, one can hope.