Qualcomm has attempted to break into PC hardware for years, but it may finally seal the deal with the new Snapdragon X Elite. It might not have the Arm-based PC market all to itself, though. A new report out of Taiwan claims that Nvidia has joined forces with MediaTek to create a competing Arm chip, which could be unveiled late this year.
Based on the translated report from Economic News Daily, this chip will target laptop form factors to compete with the Snapdragon X Elite. It will be larger and more expensive than mobile-optimized Arm chips, with an expected price tag around $300.
Nvidia has been trying to elbow its way into the burgeoning AI PC market, positioning its RTX video cards as the "premium" option. While a powerful GPU is vastly more capable than the NPUs in Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm processors, comparatively few people buy gaming PCs. Most AI PCs will be laptops.
Nvidia has been clear about its focus on artificial intelligence hardware—CEO Jensen Huang said when unveiling Blackwell that traditional computing had "run out of steam." The rumored processor would be Nvidia's first step into consumer Arm chips in several years, but there will be a heavy focus on AI workloads.
Nvidia has been working with Arm architecture consistently over the years, although the decade-old Tegra X1 that powers devices like the Nintendo Switch and Shield Android TV is its most recent consumer design. Most of Nvidia's work with Arm has been for automotive and data center applications, like the 72-core Grace CPU in the Blackwell Superchip platform.
MediaTek, meanwhile, has mostly developed mobile systems-on-a-chip with AI Processing Units (APUs) in recent years. Its Kompanio laptop chips have appeared in some Chromebooks, but they aren't on the same level as the Snapdragon X Elite. The company has also collaborated with Nvidia on automotive tech.
If you combine the strengths of Nvidia and MediaTek Arm designs, you might have something that can rival the Snapdragon X Elite. This is Qualcomm's first chip with high-performance Arm cores derived from its acquisition of Nuvia in 2021. It's based on TSMC's 4nm process, so the Nvidia x MediaTek chip could have a built-in advantage when it debuts. However, Qualcomm has time to prepare for a direct confrontation.
Nvidia and MediaTek reportedly hope to finalize the design in the third quarter of 2024. The chips should be prepared for manufacturing (tape-out) in the fourth quarter, with production beginning in the first half of 2025.
