After taking the stage in Taipei, Taiwan, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang finally revealed the company’s long-awaited laptop-level CPUs. As we can imagine based on nearly a year of rumors and leaks, they’re promising and just as confusing.
Huang claimed that Nvidia has effectively reinvented computing with its new RTX Spark platform. He went so far as to state that the RTX Spark will run “every application Windows has ever run.”
Huang walked onto the stage holding a PC in both hands, one running away 007 First Light and another Forza Horizon 6. He claimed that both titles worked “well”. How much better, we have to find out for ourselves.
First in this stack is the N1X. The N1X is interesting because it represents the company’s GPU architecture. The chip has the Blackwell series GPU, tthe same architecture used in the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series discrete graphics cards you’ll find in many professional or gaming laptops. It uses a 20-core GPU developed in part by MediaTek. The chip supports up to 128GB of integrated storage, but beyond those numbers, Huang didn’t detail what people can expect.
But of course the purpose of these chips is to run AI, or at least run some AI on the device, and then use the cloud for everything. Nvidia has promised that we’ll see laptops from almost every major PC manufacturer, including Microsoft, Lenovo, Acer, Dell, Gigabyte and MSI.
The N1X will be an ARM-based chip, meaning they use a RISC-based microarchitecture similar to Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X series. Qualcomm has been struggling since it launched its first PC SoC (system on a chip) to gain greater compatibility with legacy x86 applications and drivers.
Nvidia may be reaping some of the rewards of Qualcomm’s hard work, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for Team Green. Compatibility issues inherent to ARM-based chips still exist, especially when working with older drivers.
Asus has confirmed that the ProArt P14 and ProArt P16 will be among the first models to include the N1X. These devices are designed for professional video and graphics work, with options for up to 128GB of RAM (on the larger model) and 14- or 16-inch 120Hz OLED displays with 3K and 4K resolutions, respectively.
One of these Blackwell GPUs in a single SoC could be attractive for the creative space. It remains to be seen whether the same chip will be equally impressive for gamers on the go. Likewise, Nvidia is creating an entire ecosystem of Spark-style PCs, including more mini PC-like devices built to run agent software like Nvidia’s own NemoClaw. Huang also showed off a desktop built with a custom SoC that he promised would run Windows. The so-called DGX Station supports up to 748 GB of storage and should be able to run a 1 trillion parameter model on the device.
It’s certainly interesting to see the world’s richest company try its hand at a full laptop processor after putting all its eggs in the AI basket. Moreover, it seems to be a step towards better graphics and higher efficiency in computers. That is, if all Nvidia’s claims come true in practice.
