What do we know about the new supercomputer chip from Nvidia?

SadaNews - It was only a matter of time before Nvidia launched a powerful integrated system on a chip (SoC) to compete with AMD's Ryzen AI Max processors and Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X2 processors.

Nvidia will officially become a manufacturer of personal computer chips this fall, akin to Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm, as it places an integrated processing chip – rather than just a graphics processor – at the heart of laptops and small computers.

After long months of leaks, the company finally announced "RTX Spark" on Monday, which is the first chip in a new family of processors that the company claims will rival or surpass the strongest available ultra-thin Windows devices, according to a report from The Verge, a technology news site, which was reviewed by Al Arabiya Business.

Mark Everman, Nvidia's senior director of product management, stated: "These are the most efficient personal computer chips ever made," but he did not provide any numbers or graphs to support this claim.

What is the new chip?

The "RTX Spark" is actually the same GB10 chip found in DGX Spark, a "super-intelligent AI personal computer" that Nvidia launched last year, but it is now a family of chips rather than a single chip.

The flagship version appears to be identical in specifications, featuring 20 CPU cores, 6144 GPU cores, and 128GB of LPDDR5X memory.

However, Nvidia says it will release lower-spec versions later targeting lower price segments, with RAM starting from just 16GB.

Like Apple's and Qualcomm's chips, Nvidia's new chip is based on Arm architecture, meaning that older Windows programs designed for Intel and AMD’s x86 processors will need to run through a simulation layer, which could lead to performance degradation.

Nonetheless, Microsoft has spent years developing Windows and the "Prism" emulator to make them ready for Qualcomm chips and now for Nvidia chips as well, while Nvidia emphasizes that its expertise in graphics and artificial intelligence will elevate this idea to unprecedented levels.

What will the chip offer users?

Nvidia states that with the capabilities of "RTX Spark", users will be able to process a 90GB 3D scene, edit a 12K video, or run the graphically demanding game "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" at a smooth frame rate of 100 frames per second at a resolution of 1440 pixels, all on a laptop that is only 14mm thick and without the need to connect it to a power source while running.

With up to 128GB of unified memory, equivalent to what AMD's Strix Halo processors offered in the previous generation, laptops or desktops equipped with the RTX Spark chip can host AI agents with up to 120 billion parameters, something that Microsoft seems excited about in Windows.

During the "Build" conference that Microsoft will hold this week, the company will showcase "new security and isolation mechanisms in Windows," which, in conjunction with Nvidia's OpenShell operating environment, will enable "the secure operation of personal agents under complete user control".

Nvidia states that this paves the way for "a new model of personal computing where the user interface is the AI itself," so that "users will no longer need to master complex application interfaces" because they will simply be able to speak to the computer instead of relying on a keyboard and mouse.

Nvidia provided several examples of this; for instance, an esports content creator could automatically ask their computer to turn off the lights, mute the microphone, and change the streaming mode when they wish to step away for dinner.

A designer can use Adobe applications to automatically transform a sketch into a complete image, then create a 3D model of it, and then produce an AI-generated video, all by giving voice commands.

Meanwhile, a software developer can automatically monitor their project on GitHub and independently handle quality assurance issues, with an AI agent taking control of the keyboard and mouse pointer to execute "repetitive and mundane" tasks.

Nvidia confirmed that the local AI capabilities within the "RTX Spark" mean that a user's data will remain private, and they will not have to consume credits from cloud AI services to complete these tasks.

Devices equipped with "RTX Spark"

Nvidia seems to have rallied a large number of partners behind its vision for the "RTX Spark" chip.

Almost all major laptop manufacturers are involved in the project, with confirmation of the launch of eight specific laptops during the upcoming fall.

Among these devices is a computer from Microsoft itself, as the company will use the "RTX Spark" chip in a new laptop which Andrew Hill, the head of Surface devices, described as "the most powerful device we have ever made".

This Microsoft device will be called "Surface Laptop Ultra".

But these devices are just the beginning, according to Mark Everman, who explained that Nvidia's partners are already working on more than 30 laptops and over 10 desktops.

Among the companies participating in developing the desktops are Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Lenovo.

Everman stated: "The RTX Spark will become a comprehensive family of products targeting very diverse price segments," adding that "the market opportunity we see is enormous".

Application Developers

Thanks to the joint efforts between Microsoft and Nvidia, it appears that a large number of Windows application developers have also begun to support Arm architecture.

The company notes that applications like Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Cinema 4D, Redshift, Topaz Photo AI, CapCut, Cubase, Bitwig Studio, and Affinity from Canva, among others, already run natively on Arm architecture, as well as the audio and visual peripherals and MIDI devices that rely on that.

Arm architecture is a type of processor design developed by Arm company, characterized by much lower energy consumption compared to the x86 architecture used in Intel and AMD processors.

Adobe supports this technology, with specific enhancements for Premiere and Photoshop that take advantage of Nvidia's new chip.

Even games that had anti-cheat systems refusing to support Linux and Steam Deck now support Windows on Arm processors as well.

Microsoft states that Riot Games is working to bring the games League of Legends and Valorant to Windows on Arm processors, while Krafton is working on providing PUBG: Battlegrounds.

Nvidia also confirmed that it is collaborating with more developers who use the Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo anti-cheat systems. Fortnite has already arrived on Windows on Arm back in November after being announced in March.

Everman stated that all major games will run on RTX Spark and provide an excellent experience.

Few Details

There are still many unanswered questions, of course. Neither Nvidia nor Microsoft provided a clear picture of the prices of these computers, except to indicate that the first batch to be launched this fall "will target the higher price segments in the market".

Regarding battery life that lasts all day, Mark Everman merely stated that one should expect performance "much better than anything we've seen previously in laptops with RTX technologies", adding that users "will not need a charger" unless they are running heavy workloads.

He explained that the energy consumption of the chip can drop to "just a few watts" at a minimum, while it reaches 80 watts at a maximum. This theoretically means that devices might drain the batteries of large laptops in about one hour when operating at full power.

As for performance, Nvidia did not present any numbers or graphs to support its claims, and Everman declined to answer questions regarding how the RTX Spark family compares to Intel's, AMD's, Apple's, and Qualcomm's chips, noting that the company would reveal more details as the launch date approaches.

Nevertheless, he clarified that the chip offers, depending on the type of application used, graphical power comparable to that provided by the RTX 5070 dedicated to laptops, and that one should expect a CPU performance "capable of competing with anything else available in the Windows market".

Nvidia also refused to disclose whether these chips, manufactured using TSMC N3 technology and in cooperation with MediaTek, are produced inside the United States or abroad, and remained silent on the matter.

The company did not reveal whether it plans to provide drivers and official support for Linux for the RTX Spark chip, stating that its current focus is on Windows.

It also refrained from commenting on the possibility of using the chip in portable gaming devices, as AMD did with its powerful Strix Halo chip.

However, it addressed another question, confirming that "RTX Spark" will not be used alongside separate graphics cards, which might limit its potential in large desktop computers, just as happened with Apple's Mac Pro when its Arm-based chips lost compatibility with separate graphics cards.

Ultimately, the lack of supporting evidence for Nvidia's claims may not be significant. In 2020, Apple also did not provide any evidence or numbers when it unveiled its Apple Silicon chip project. But when the M1 chip reached the markets, it instantly changed the prevailing concept of laptop performance.