NVIDIA moves into PC CPUs with AI-heavy RTX Spark Arm chip
NVIDIA introduced the RTX Spark, a new mobile Arm chip designed for Windows on Arm devices, combining Grace and Blackwell architectures. This processor radically expands the computational capabilities for AI, local agents, and graphically complex games on consumer PCs. Devices from major manufacturers like Acer, ASUS, and Dell are expected to feature RTX Spark chips by the end of the year.
Key Takeaways
- Specifications include 20 Grace CPU cores and a Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores, mirroring mobile RTX 5070 performance.
- The chip supports up to 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory, enabling local execution of large language models with up to 120 billion parameters.
- Eight major PC manufacturers—including Microsoft, Lenovo, and MSI—are confirmed to launch 30 laptop and 10 desktop models this fall.
- Integrated NVLink-C2C interconnect provides 600 GB/s of bandwidth between the CPU and GPU, roughly 7x faster than standard PCIe connections.
Why It Matters
The RTX Spark represents NVIDIA’s direct entry into the PC processor market, challenging the long-standing x86 dominance of Intel and AMD while undercutting Qualcomm’s recent Windows on Arm push. By integrating high-end Blackwell graphics with server-grade Grace CPU cores on one silicon die, NVIDIA is shifting the focus of consumer computing from general-purpose productivity to heavy local AI agent and creator workloads. This move bypasses cloud dependency for complex tasks, offering privacy and performance levels previously restricted to data centers. Watch for initial benchmarks of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra this fall to see if NVIDIA’s software translation layer, Prism, can successfully navigate the legacy x86 compatibility hurdles that hindered earlier Arm-based Windows devices.
Additional Context
The launch of RTX Spark has immediate financial and competitive repercussions across the semiconductor industry. Per TradingKey (June 2026), Qualcomm shares fell 10% following the announcement, as NVIDIA’s claimed 100+ TOPS of NPU performance significantly exceeds the 45-80 TOPS found in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series. This shift coincides with Microsoft reportedly easing its hardware exclusivity for Copilot+ PCs, allowing NVIDIA to move into a premium tier of AI-native hardware that TrendForce (June 2026) predicts will help Arm-based Windows notebook penetration rise from 1.2% in 2025 to 11.5% by 2029.
Technical analysis from PCMag and ExtremeTech (June 2026) notes that the RTX Spark, codenamed N1X, is essentially a consumer-packaged version of the GB10 Superchip previously used in NVIDIA's DGX Spark developer workstations. To ensure software readiness, NVIDIA has partnered with Adobe and BlackMagic Design to rearchitect applications like Photoshop and Premiere Pro for native Arm performance, targeting up to a 2x speed increase. Furthermore, Microsoft announced the 'Surface RTX Spark Dev Box' on June 1, 2026, as a dedicated compact desktop intended for local AI prototyping and the development of native Windows agents using NVIDIA's and Microsoft’s new OpenShell security framework.
Read full article at hi-tech.ua
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