If you’ve been following the chip market, you probably know that Nvidia has been working on Arm-based CPUs for a while, and it’s just about ready to hit the market. According to a new report, Nvidia-designed and MediaTek-fabricated chips will land in laptops from both Dell and Lenovo sometime in the first half of this year.
So sayeth the Wall Street Journal, citing industry sources. While PCWorld can’t currently confirm that news, it lines up with Nvidia’s move into Arm-based chips for its self-branded DGX Spark industrial mini PCs and derivatives, plus leaks from Lenovo earlier this year that indicated Nvidia-powered variants for some of its Legion gaming laptops. We hadn’t heard that Nvidia was partnering with MediaTek for the fabrication of consumer-grade chips, but that also makes sense.
Arm-based Windows laptops with their integrated graphics aren’t known for gaming prowess—in fact, it’s the Achilles heel of that particular market segment, with gaming support being a particular low point in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon laptop chips. But between Nvidia’s place in the gaming market (or at least the place it had before it became an all-AI, all-the-time company) and the Legion branding on those Lenovo leaks, it seems likely that gaming will at least be a component of the new marketing push. Microsoft has also been making some moves to get gaming on Arm-based hardware in a more comfortable position.
The WSJ report indicates that these laptops will be launching very soon, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that “first half of the year” date slips a bit. Securing affordable RAM and storage isn’t easy for anyone right now, even Dell and Lenovo, so it’s a bad time for a big consumer hardware push. (Just ask Valve, who’s also working on Arm-based gaming hardware in the Steam Frame.) If I can put on my analyst hat, I’d say a big glitzy reveal should come around Computex in early June.
