A potentially seismic shift in the PC market could be on the horizon if the latest rumours hold true. As you might have heard already, Nvidia and MediaTek are developing ARM-based CPUs, and according to recent reports, they'll be unveiled at Computex 2025. Both company CEOs, Jensen Huang and Rick Tsai, are already slated for back-to-back presentations at the trade show in Taipei on May 19th and 20th, setting the stage for such an announcement.

According to Tom's Hardware, the upcoming chips, which will be named N1X and N1, are reportedly geared towards Windows-on-ARM systems, including desktops and laptops. Instead of a single CPU, the two companies have apparently developed a new chip family combining MediaTek's expertise in Arm CPUs with Nvidia's Blackwell GPU technology.

This joint venture appears aimed squarely at addressing markets currently served by AMD's APUs (with Radeon graphics) and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X CPUs (with Adreno graphics). Nvidia's perceived advantage here would leverage their discrete Blackwell GPUs, which promise to be significantly faster and more compatible with games than current integrated solutions, potentially catching gamers' attention.

Early reports on the N1X and N1 processors suggest configurations with up to 10 high-performance Cortex-X925 cores and up to 10 Cortex-A725 cores, though less powerful options are likely to address different market tiers. Adding weight to the PC focus, reports late last year stated that MediaTek secured a substantial amount of PC-oriented packaging capacity for flip chip ball grid array (FCBGA) chips, implying use in desktops rather than just mobile devices.

Despite the excitement around a Computex announcement, multiple sources caution that the retail launch date remains uncertain. Last month, a SemiAccurate report suggested that retail availability could be postponed until 2026 due to unresolved technical issues, though no official confirmation exists for such extensive delays.

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KitGuru says: What are your expectations for the highly anticipated ARM-based SoC from Nvidia and Mediatek?

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