After first dominating the market for graphics cards for video games and then that of processors for artificial intelligence, now Nvidia – the most valuable company in the world, with a capitalization of over 5000 billion dollars – wants to become the main reference also for the personal computer sector. Starting next fall, in fact, its new Rtx Spark Superchip will be available inside laptops and desktops made by Dell, Asus, Hp, or Lenovo.
The Rtx Spark Superchip is a sort of combination between a microprocessor and a graphics chip, based on the Arm architecture and optimized for Microsoft’s Windows operating system. It was designed in collaboration with MediaTek and will be built by Tsmc, both Taiwanese companies.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, called it “the most efficient PC chip ever made.”
THE ATTACK ON INTEL (AND NOT ONLY)
The announcement of the Rtx Spark Superchip caused Nvidia’s shares to rise by 2.3 percent in premarket and plummet, conversely, the stocks of Qualcomm and Intel, which lost 9.8 and 6 percent respectively.
Excluding Apple’s Macs, the most widespread processors in computers are those of Intel and Amd, while Qualcomm entered this market more recently, in 2023, with the Snapdragon X Elite. All three of these companies will now have to face a formidable competitor: just consider that, only in the last quarter, Nvidia’s sales were roughly equivalent to those recorded by Intel and Amd over an entire year.
NVIDIA SEEKING NEW MARKETS
Nvidia is interested in spreading the use of artificial intelligence in various sectors of the “real” economy to secure new sources of revenue and reassure investors: it is focusing on telecommunication networks but especially on the automotive industry, in particular on autonomous driving systems. And now also on personal computers.
– For further reading: Nvidia continues to grow, but the market is unconvinced
Regarding the Rtx Spark Superchip, the company explained that PCs equipped with this component will be able to manage artificial intelligence features integrated into everyday software more effectively (such as image or video generation, or error correction in website code). Moreover, they will be able to run large language models directly, eliminating the need to send data to external servers, and will offer superior performance in video games.
According to Huang, Nvidia aims to “completely reinvent the way the PC works.”
WHAT THE RTX SUPERCHIP IS MADE OF
For now, Nvidia has not provided details on the performance of the Rtx Spark Superchip. However, we know that it will integrate a central processor (CPU) with up to 20 compute cores and a graphics processor (GPU) based on the Blackwell architecture equipped with 6144 cores. These two parts will share the same memory and communicate via NvLink technology.
