Tuesday, May 6th 2025
NVIDIA & MediaTek Reportedly Readying "N1" Arm-based SoC for Introduction at Computex
Around late April, MediaTek confirmed that their CEO—Dr. Rick Tsai—will be delivering a big keynote speech—on May 20—at this month's Computex 2025 trade show. The company's preamble focuses on their "driving of AI innovation—from edge to cloud," but industry moles propose a surprise new product introduction during proceedings. MediaTek and NVIDIA have collaborated on a number of projects; the most visible being automative solutions. Late last year, intriguing Arm-based rumors emerged online—with Team Green allegedly working on a first time attempt at breaking into the high-end CPU consumer market segment; perhaps with the leveraging of "Blackwell" GPU architecture. MediaTek was reportedly placed in the equation, due to expertise accumulated from their devising of modern Dimensity "big core" mobile processor designs. At the start of 2025, data miners presented evidence of Lenovo seeking new engineering talent. Their job description mentioned a mysterious NVIDIA "N1x" SoC.
Further conjecture painted a fanciful picture of forthcoming "high-end N1x and mid-tier N1 (non-X)" models—with potential flagship devices launching later on this year. According to ComputerBase.de, an unannounced "GB10" PC chip could be the result of NVIDIA and MediaTek's rumored "AI PC" joint venture. Yesterday's news article divulged: "currently (this) product (can be) found in NVIDIA DGX Spark (platforms), and similarly equipped partner solutions. The systems, available starting at $3000, are aimed at AI developers who can test LLMs locally before moving them to the data center. The chip combines a 'Blackwell' GPU with a 'Grace' Arm CPU (in order) to create an SoC with 128 GB LPDDR5X, and a 1 TB or 4 TB SSD. The 'GB10' offers a GPU with one petaflop of FP4 performance (with sparsity)." ComputerBase reckons that the integrated graphics solution makes use of familiar properties—namely "5th-generation Tensor Cores and 4th-generation RT Cores"—from GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards. When discussing the design's "Grace CPU" setup, the publication's report outlined a total provision of: "20 Arm cores, including 10 Cortex-X925 and 10 Cortex-A725. The whole thing sits on a board measuring around 150 × 150 mm—for comparison: the classic NUC board format is 104 × 101 mm."
ComputerBase predicts a cut-down translation of "GB10"—tailored for eventual deployment in premium laptops/notebooks, instead of small footprint AI supercomputing applications. Their inside source-laced news piece explained as follows: "a modification of this solution is also conceivable for PCs aimed at end users. Instead of 20 CPU cores, perhaps only eight to twelve, and the RAM likely to be a quarter of that or even less, i.e. 32 or 16 GB—depending on which market segment is ultimately targeted. The same applies to the GPU unit and its possible expansion levels. Instead of the $3000 entry-level price (DGX Spark) in the professional world, this should also be significantly cheaper." Citing Asian media reports, ComputerBase delved into whispers of production activities: "MediaTek has already booked additional capacity with ASE. ASE provides OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) capacity. Moreover, a mainstream PC chip doesn't require extravagant packaging; it's a classic chip on a substrate in an FCBGA package—there's more than enough capacity for that, even from many suppliers. MediaTek is said to have awarded contracts with ASE for about a year within a few weeks, it's reported. Things seem to be getting serious."
Sources:
ComputerBase.de, Tom's Hardware, Pokde.net
Further conjecture painted a fanciful picture of forthcoming "high-end N1x and mid-tier N1 (non-X)" models—with potential flagship devices launching later on this year. According to ComputerBase.de, an unannounced "GB10" PC chip could be the result of NVIDIA and MediaTek's rumored "AI PC" joint venture. Yesterday's news article divulged: "currently (this) product (can be) found in NVIDIA DGX Spark (platforms), and similarly equipped partner solutions. The systems, available starting at $3000, are aimed at AI developers who can test LLMs locally before moving them to the data center. The chip combines a 'Blackwell' GPU with a 'Grace' Arm CPU (in order) to create an SoC with 128 GB LPDDR5X, and a 1 TB or 4 TB SSD. The 'GB10' offers a GPU with one petaflop of FP4 performance (with sparsity)." ComputerBase reckons that the integrated graphics solution makes use of familiar properties—namely "5th-generation Tensor Cores and 4th-generation RT Cores"—from GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards. When discussing the design's "Grace CPU" setup, the publication's report outlined a total provision of: "20 Arm cores, including 10 Cortex-X925 and 10 Cortex-A725. The whole thing sits on a board measuring around 150 × 150 mm—for comparison: the classic NUC board format is 104 × 101 mm."
29 Comments on NVIDIA & MediaTek Reportedly Readying "N1" Arm-based SoC for Introduction at Computex
How's Windows on Snapdragon these days - I've not looked at in almost the year since it's been available, but presumably performance, emulation, compatibility are still improving....?
www.phoronix.com/review/aws-graviton4-benchmarks/7
At the moment, most PC software developers are making x86-64 native code, and possibly then porting it to ARM or at least compiling for ARM afterwards. I don't know how long that will be the default software-dev behaviour though, especially with Snapdragon laptops gaining marketshare alongside iPads in a segment that used to be x86-exclusive.
The last bastion of x86-64 might be high-end PC gaming, and by extension also console gaming. Am I right in thinking that the Nintendo Switch is the only significant gaming system that doesn't use x86?
There's no "reason" why CISC is best at anything nowadays other than if you're dealing with really space-constrained MCUs.The RISC x CISC idea is pretty outdated and irrelevant, and so is the idea of ISAs being that relevant for performance. Your underlying µarch implementation is way more relevant than the ISA itself, and that example you posted showcases that with x86 offerings being both better and worse than an ARM one.Given how Nvidia's Grace offerings already run on linux (and solely on linux), which includes their spark and GB300 workstations, I believe this one should have good linux support as well, way better than Windows at least.
Seems like you're just trying to mean x86 when speaking about CISC, but trying to make it sound fancier for some reason, given that there isn't any other CISC "contender" for that space.
So, the real question. Which is better?Any CPU architecture will persist so long as it's used at scale. The only real advantage x86 has is that it's been around longer than just about everything else so a very large ecosystem has been built around it. However if somebody came to me and said switching from x86 to ARM is going to save me money on my AWS bill at work with those fancy new Graviton4 EC2 instances, I'd switch tomorrow because the JVM runs everywhere and everybody likes to save money.
So yeah, I don't think this brings any perf benefit, nor any downside per se, just different ways to do things where you hand-off part of the work to some other place.
I think this only matters for compiler folks or CPU front-end designers, those likely would have a say in what they prefer to work with hahaAs I had said before, there's nothing meaningful to performance that's inherent to an ISA, so it's most about comparing actual different CPUs and µarches.
The place I currently work at is mostly a python shop, and most of our stuff was easy to do multi-plat builds for and have deployed in both Graviton and other x86 instances within our node pools.
Even adding support for G5g coming from g4dn instances was okayish, once we figured out a proper way to get pytorch ARM wheels with CUDA included, although that was done more due to availability reasons rather than cost savings.
So, as I said, the ARM one takes a little extra i$ space, but past the encoder there's not much difference.
RISC is here to stay and that's a good thing because it's good for a lot of things.
CISC is here to stay and that's ALSO a good thing because it's good for a lot of things.
Neither should be completely dominant, such an idea is both senseless and would be harmful to computing as a whole.Well then, keep digging Watson.
They are following the intel curve (typical greed curve), and look where it is now, discounting 100$ their products and with no real direction albeit all those xEOs.The market has moved to ARM instead of x86 because of the licensing. That is the only thing we trully know. If anyone, from nokia, mediatek, ST, via*, samsung, apple, facebook, you name it, had been able to buy (as in ARM) certain pieces of license to build their own x86 cpus in the past 20 or 25 years do you really think the market would look like this?
For a simple comparison, look at AMD mobile apus vs intel mobile apus in the past 10 years. Imagine 10 or more companies competing.
Same happens with FPGA market: death by corpo-engulfment.
Hey US citizens! where are the true liberals breaking all those companies appart like the good liberals did with oil, cinema and many other sectors?
from wikipedia.
So excuse me if I don't take your word for it, since I don't to be jailed, and submit to the official orthodoxy instead.
I'll therefore proclaim that x86 replacement is a conspiracist theory, given that ARM processors only form a tiny minority of the personal computer population.
If you have a smart watch, fitness tracker, tablet, phone, Nintendo switch - these are all ARM. It's not that ARM is replacing Intel and AMD in the high-end desktop space, it's that the definition of "personal computer" is evolving to include more ARM devices. That evolution includes laptops, workstations, servers, it includes consumer and enterprise, and it includes professional and recreational.
Laptops now outsell desktops, smartphones and tablets now outsell laptops, and there's a push for ARM laptops that seems to be gaining significant marketshare on both Windows and MacOS. You can see where this is going, right?
I'm fully invested in x86-64 both at home and at work, yet I am wearing an ARM device, I carry around a second ARM device, and I do many things on these devices today that I used to need a desktop or laptop for in the past. The traditional x86-64 processor is getting squeezed and eroded from all sides and that's an undeniable fact backed up by a trillion-dollar industry.
I said before and I'll say it again, CISC & RISC are both here to stay and they will continue to co-exist.
I have not and would never say such a stupid thing.
Its monopoly is shrinking, it's losing marketingshare. Neither of those things are the death of CISC/x86.