NVIDIA N1x SoC Uncovered by Data Miners - Rumored High-end Laptop Chip

[T0@st]

Whispers of a brand new high-end Arm-based mobile processor—rumored to be in the works at NVIDIA HQ—emerged late last year. Data miners have since actively searched for any emerging details—initial bits of evidence have seemingly arrived earlier today, courtesy of Hoang Anh Phu (@AnhPhuH) and WalkingCat (@_h0x0d_). An intriguing Lenovo job listing was uncovered—this entry mentions that the candidate will be tasked with "new SoC NV N1x in-house HW design and development." WalkingCat believes that an upcoming Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 16-inch (2025) model could emerge with an NVIDIA chipset onboard—they deciphered this through Lenovo's "platform code" naming system (see screenshot below).

Further speculation points to a possible N-series reveal around Computex 2025—Qualcomm rolled out similar announcement timing last summer with its Snapdragon X processor series. NVIDIA is reportedly collaborating with MediaTek on this new endeavor—high-end N1x and mid-tier N1 (non-X) chipsets are reported to be built on Team Green's recently unveiled Blackwell architecture. Tech watchdogs believe that a TSMC 3 nm node process is on the cards. Anh Phu proposes that the new SoCs are performant enough to hit a performance range of 180-200 AI TOPS. Additional industry rumors point to a potential launch window around the fourth quarter of this year, with roughly three million units ready at the starting line.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Sound_Card]

DOA. Nobody wants to game on ARM. The snapdragon windows computers are utter garbage. The whole selling point behind ARM is battery life. But it's only marginally better than AMD's Phoenix and Hawk point. But absolutely trash at everything else. I get 17 hours of browsing life from my Zen 3/RDNA2 Asus Zenbook.

The HALO cpus from AMD are a threat to their bottom end (4050, 4060 class mobile GPUs). But maybe Nvidia will release some sort of software that is exclusive to their CPU's. Otherwise, only the hardcore Nvidia fanboys are going to reason themselves to buy this.

 

[Kapone33]

DOA. Nobody wants to game on ARM. The snapdragon windows computers are utter garbage. The whole selling point behind ARM is battery life. But it's only marginally better than AMD's Phoenix and Hawk point. But absolutely trash at everything else. I get 17 hours of browsing life from my Zen 3/RDNA2 Asus Zenbook.

The HALO cpus from AMD are a threat to their bottom end (4050, 4060 class mobile GPUs). But maybe Nvidia will release some sort of software that is exclusive to their CPU's. Otherwise, only the hardcore Nvidia fanboys are going to reason themselves to buy this.

They are allowing Geforce Now to be on Steam Decks.

 

[Sound_Card]

They are allowing Geforce Now to be on Steam Decks.

That's a streaming service. Does that require geforce silicon to run?

 

[Kapone33]

That's a streaming service. Does that require geforce silicon to run?

Today yes, but of course that was just Software. They will just delete the lines that tell the service to not start if AMD is recognized.

 

[Sound_Card]

Today yes, but of course that was just Software. They will just delete the lines that tell the service to not start if AMD is recognized.

lol wow, I had no idea. That's freaking insane. I'm not sure what that has to do with Steam Deck, though; however, if they made Geforce now exclusive to their CPUs, I guess that would be a gimmicky way to get the fan base to buy your new ARM SoC, at least initially.

 

[R00kie]

Today yes, but of course that was just Software. They will just delete the lines that tell the service to not start if AMD is recognized.

Excuse me, what? I run Geforce Now on my MacBook Air without any restrictions

 

[Kapone33]

Excuse me, what? I run Geforce Now on my MacBook Air without any restrictions

Does your Macbook Air use AMD parts?

lol wow, I had no idea. That's freaking insane. I'm not sure what that has to do with Steam Deck, though; however, if they made Geforce now exclusive to their CPUs, I guess that would be a gimmicky way to get the fan base to buy your new ARM SoC, at least initially.

Don't quote me there is a TPU article about it.

 

[Sound_Card]

Does your Macbook Air use AMD parts?


Don't quote me there is a TPU article about it.

I see no evidence that Geforce Now is locked from AMD.

 

[igormp]

Today yes, but of course that was just Software. They will just delete the lines that tell the service to not start if AMD is recognized.

BS, Geforce now can run in almost any potato that can decode h264, there's no other real requirement (apart from a proper internet connection, ofc).

 

[R00kie]

Does your Macbook Air use AMD parts?

no, but neither is it running anything nvidia related. So can you actually prove that it doesn't run on AMD instead of spreading FUD?

 

[Prima.Vera]

DOA. Nobody wants to game on ARM.

Psssst. Don't say it loud so the Apple cultist hear you about bashing the Apple's M SOCs and their inability using those for any decent gaming.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

They will just delete the lines that tell the service to not start if AMD is recognized.

That right there is why I’m concerned about them becoming dominant on the cpu market.
They have done this before and ironically, became a trillion dollars company thanks to that approach.
They love to find ways to lock you to their hardware and yet people continue wanting them to expand even more.

Does your Macbook Air use AMD parts?

After Apple moved to ARM, they stopped using AMD gpus.

I think they had an AMD accelerator for the AS based MacPro, but not entirely sure.

 

[OolongGoat]

Sooooo an Nvidia article somehow morphs into an AMD thing.... you all are wild.

Anyway.... I think something like could be used for an upgraded Shield TV type device. I still have my Shield Pro from 2019, and it is getting long in tooth.

 

[Visible Noise]

Does your Macbook Air use AMD parts?


Don't quote me there is a TPU article about it.

More of your bullshit.

 

[chstamos]

Does your Macbook Air use AMD parts?


Don't quote me there is a TPU article about it.

I've used Geforcenow on an RX580 equipped PC, what are you talking about?

 

[bug]

That's a streaming service. Does that require geforce silicon to run?

If only there was a place that would tell us those things... https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/system-reqs/#windows-pc

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

DOA. Nobody wants to game on ARM. The snapdragon windows computers are utter garbage.

This is a very strong opinion you have. There's absolutely interest in ARM, see macbook sales. Snapdragon's issues dont mean there is no ARM interest, just that the snapdragons have not fared well. If there's anyone who is gonna get the performance and drivers right, its going to be nvidia. Qualcomm has a long history of botched drivers hampering windows performance.

The whole selling point behind ARM is battery life. But it's only marginally better than AMD's Phoenix and Hawk point. But absolutely trash at everything else. I get 17 hours of browsing life from my Zen 3/RDNA2 Asus Zenbook.

You know, the funny thing about misinformation is the number of forms it takes. For instance, your claim about 17 hours. No model, outsid eof it being a zenbook. Well, I foudn this one:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-14-UM3402Y-laptop-review-New-Ryzen-7-7730U-name-old-Zen-3-performance.724864.0.html

Which, in fact, hit over 18 hours. at idle. With wifi websurfing, it only hit 12 hours.

Meanwhile, a similarly sized laptop running the snapdragon elite:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-Gen-6-laptop-review-Snapdragon-X-Elite-enables-epic-battery-life.868214.0.html

Hit 22 hours of web surfing, or 12 hours at maximum brightness. This is on a 58wh battery, whereas that zenbook had a 75wh battery.

Oh.....oh dear. Hmmmmm........

The HALO cpus from AMD are a threat to their bottom end (4050, 4060 class mobile GPUs). But maybe Nvidia will release some sort of software that is exclusive to their CPU's. Otherwise, only the hardcore Nvidia fanboys are going to reason themselves to buy this.

Just LOL. Do I even need to say anything here?

 

[kondamin]

Someone remind me why I should care about TOPS on a laptop as there is nothing interesting that runs on it

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Psssst. Don't say it loud so the Apple cultist hear you about bashing the Apple's M SOCs and their inability using those for any decent gaming.

I mean really, would it hurt them that much to support vulkan, or work with valve to make a metal equivalent for steam? Cmon!

 

[Kapone33]

I've used Geforcenow on an RX580 equipped PC, what are you talking about?

I was basing it on the Article I was reading. Apparently Nvidia need to do something to make it work with the Steam Deck. I assumed that it had something to do with Nvidia drivers. That is all. I have never even looked at Geforce Now.

 

[Sound_Card]

This is a very strong opinion you have. There's absolutely interest in ARM, see macbook sales. Snapdragon's issues dont mean there is no ARM interest, just that the snapdragons have not fared well. If there's anyone who is gonna get the performance and drivers right, its going to be nvidia. Qualcomm has a long history of botched drivers hampering windows performance.

You know, the funny thing about misinformation is the number of forms it takes. For instance, your claim about 17 hours. No model, outsid eof it being a zenbook. Well, I foudn this one:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-14-UM3402Y-laptop-review-New-Ryzen-7-7730U-name-old-Zen-3-performance.724864.0.html

Which, in fact, hit over 18 hours. at idle. With wifi websurfing, it only hit 12 hours.

Meanwhile, a similarly sized laptop running the snapdragon elite:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-Gen-6-laptop-review-Snapdragon-X-Elite-enables-epic-battery-life.868214.0.html

Hit 22 hours of web surfing, or 12 hours at maximum brightness. This is on a 58wh battery, whereas that zenbook had a 75wh battery.

Oh.....oh dear. Hmmmmm........

Just LOL. Do I even need to say anything here?

Apple would sale MacBooks regardless of what chip is in them. What makes it particularly successful is the Apple ecosystem and their clientele. The advantages the M1 gave Apple are exactly what their customers wanted - battery life and the full Apple branding.
The 5700u/5800u which came out at the same time as the M1 offered better multi threaded performance, and graphics with 15w power efficiency.

Even though I get more than 12 hours browsing, that's still really impressive. I plug it in for 30 min and it already has 40% of it's battery back. When you do heavy task such as gaming, the battery efficiency really start to even out with x86. Why would anyone in the windows environment sacrifice all the performance and compatibility for more time to browse youtube? We are seeing it firsthand right now the Snapdragon, nobody wants it. I do think that Nvidia have a small religious following that also desire the full Nvidia branding. But outside of that ...

But let's not kid ourselves here. Nvidia is not getting in the game to compete with other ARM SoC's like Apple for coffee sipping trendies at Starbucks doing some light video editing while listening to Spotify. They are getting into the game to compete with AMD (and to a much lesser degree Intel). AMD's x86 SoC poses the biggest threat to their mobile market share dominance. Hard to convince both customers and vendors to pay more money for discrete graphics chips like the soon to be 5050 and 5060 for marginally better or worse performance.

They could get away with this for a while since their 50 and 60 class mobile chips had enough performance gap to justify a premium cost to laptops, but HALO closes this gap entirely. It's a much tougher sale now.

 

[Gooigi's Ex]

DOA. Nobody wants to game on ARM. The snapdragon windows computers are utter garbage. The whole selling point behind ARM is battery life. But it's only marginally better than AMD's Phoenix and Hawk point. But absolutely trash at everything else. I get 17 hours of browsing life from my Zen 3/RDNA2 Asus Zenbook.

The HALO cpus from AMD are a threat to their bottom end (4050, 4060 class mobile GPUs). But maybe Nvidia will release some sort of software that is exclusive to their CPU's. Otherwise, only the hardcore Nvidia fanboys are going to reason themselves to buy this.

Yo do realize that Nintendo Switch is using an ARM SoC and is considered one of the best selling consoles of all time? And game developers are making games for Switch thus converting it into ARM? Plus, game developers are porting their games to Apple such as Capcom, Square Enix, CDPR and more.

 

[Xpea69]

Apple would sale MacBooks regardless of what chip is in them. What makes it particularly successful is the Apple ecosystem and their clientele. The advantages the M1 gave Apple are exactly what their customers wanted - battery life and the full Apple branding.
The 5700u/5800u which came out at the same time as the M1 offered better multi threaded performance, and graphics with 15w power efficiency.

blablablabla non sense

They could get away with this for a while since their 50 and 60 class mobile chips had enough performance gap to justify a premium cost to laptops, but HALO closes this gap entirely. It's a much tougher sale now.

You are totally out of touch. Nvidia is the AI leader, generating billions of sales in AI (more than 90% market share in data center). In consequence, their new WoA SoC will obviously focus on AI where they are years ahead of intel/AMD/Apple/QC. Like it or not, today that's where the money is and where the focus is (not gaming). Company fleet and developers will buy this new laptops by millions for the AI assisted area. not difficult to understand

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

DOA. Nobody wants to game on ARM. The snapdragon windows computers are utter garbage. The whole selling point behind ARM is battery life. But it's only marginally better than AMD's Phoenix and Hawk point. But absolutely trash at everything else. I get 17 hours of browsing life from my Zen 3/RDNA2 Asus Zenbook.

The HALO cpus from AMD are a threat to their bottom end (4050, 4060 class mobile GPUs). But maybe Nvidia will release some sort of software that is exclusive to their CPU's. Otherwise, only the hardcore Nvidia fanboys are going to reason themselves to buy this.

This is a very strong opinion you have. There's absolutely interest in ARM, see macbook sales. Snapdragon's issues dont mean there is no ARM interest, just that the snapdragons have not fared well. If there's anyone who is gonna get the performance and drivers right, its going to be nvidia. Qualcomm has a long history of botched drivers hampering windows performance.

Yo do realize that Nintendo Switch is using an ARM SoC and is considered one of the best selling consoles of all time? And game developers are making games for Switch thus converting it into ARM? Plus, game developers are porting their games to Apple such as Capcom, Square Enix, CDPR and more.

I have the same response to all 3 comments: the customer shouldn't really have to care what architecture their CPU is, so long as the experience meets expectations .

For Apple, no one truly cares what architecture it runs--does it run well (yes), is it efficient (yes), and can it run my software (yes). Apple's execution of Arm is a success.

Now about Qualcomm--does it run well (mostly), is it efficient (mostly), and can it run my software (mostly). There's really not much special about Snapdragon X PCs. They require active cooling and have some challenges with software and hardware support. Whatever you gain with SDX, you could lose somewhere else. They could be a good solution for a particular customer, but certainly not all segments.

Now, NVIDIA is a whole different animal. While we don't know how good their supposed hardware is, we know they should be highly capable of producing a good solution, with a GPU good enough for gaming AND the necessary driver support to make for a good experience. Can they deliver? That remains to be seen, but I won't dismiss their capability here. They have the money to actually deliver, and they partner with developers all the time. Heck, they might even power a SteamDeck someday if they are really serious.