Nvidia's high-end Arm-based PC chip will reportedly be in production by 2025

It is not news that Nvidia plans to release an Arm-based PC chip. DigiTimes' (paywall) latest report claiming that this chip is aimed at the "high-end" and will be in production within a year, makes it feel real and imminent.

According to Digitimes, (via Tom's Hardware), Nvidia's plan includes both chips designed in partnership with Mediatek as well as fully custom in-house designs. The version for consumer PCs is expected to be pure Nvidia. Mediatek and Nvidia will then partner up to create an Arm-based SoC designed for enterprise customers.

It may be necessary to support full 5G cellular networks, but this is not critical for consumer PCs. If true, the new Nvidia PC chip would be a great addition to a very exciting line up for 2025. Along with the new Nvidia chips, we expect Intel's next generation Panther Lake architecture and Qualcomm's SnapdragonX2, although that's somewhat in doubt due to the ongoing dispute between Qualcomm & Arm.

Apple's M5 SoCs should be available in 2025. These chips will not be used in PCs that run Windows, but they will contribute to a more competitive market for high-end computer chips.

It's not clear how Nvidia plans to market its own Arm-based laptop chip. You'd expect it to heavily rely on Nvidia graphics technology. You'd expect the best graphics performance available.

If Nvidia's graphic architectures are well-known, then any new CPU core would be very innovative. Nvidia has made many chips with Arm cores, including Tegra chips. But they've used Arm-licensed CPU designs.

This new PC chip could be the first to feature a new Nvidia-designed CPU core. It would be much more interesting if that were the case. This would also allow Nvidia to provide something much more powerful than Arm's CPU core designs.

The Arm instruction set is a very powerful CPU core. Apple's M4 CPU cores have a 60% higher IPC (or performance/clock cycle) than Intel or AMD.

Software support is the biggest challenge for any Arm-based chips when it comes PC gaming. It's one matter to emulate x86 applications on an Arm chip. It's another to do the exact same thing with games.

Nvidia's GPU architecture will be optimized for gaming, which is something Qualcomm's Snapdragon-X cannot claim.

It's also easy to predict when Nvidia will make this move. It's hard to imagine, given the size and power of the company today, that it would be content with being a GPU vendor on PCs. Nvidia must want to be able sell PC platforms that are exclusively Nvidia.

Some commentators believe that Nvidia is actually targeting Apple with this new Arm chip. Nvidia is jealous of the control and prestige Apple has gained with its MacBook computers, now that they all run Apple's own silicon. Nvidia wants a piece of the action.

It looks like we will get our first taste next year of a PC chip that is 100% Nvidia. Nvidia Arm chips could be the key to the best handheld gaming PCs ever made. Nvidia is the only company that can solve the Arm gaming conundrum.