Nvidia's long-fabled Arm chip is one of those rare PC hardware prospects that comes along every now and then and really tickles the excitement bone, primarily because it feels very new—like when Intel started its discrete Arc graphics cards. So naturally, I'm sad to hear that the project might be delayed until next year.
That's according to Charlie Demerjian of SemiAccurate, who cites "multiple sources" confirming that Nvidia's latest "whoopsie", in combination with a previous one, has set the project back to 2026.
Previously, it looked like we might see it later this year, and there were even (incorrect, it turned out) rumours that we'd see it announced at Computex back in May. We also recently saw Geekbench entries for an Nvidia N1X processor with an Arm CPU.
The as-yet unofficial but might-as-well-call-it-official project is expected to have Nvidia pumping out custom Arm-based silicon for laptops based on a scaled-back version of DGX Spark, the home-user supercomputer Nvidia announced at the start of the year. Ie, presumably a scaled-back version of the 20-Arm core GB10 chip that sits at the heart of DGX Spark.
If it is based on this, however, it would mean the new chips would use Arm-designed cores rather than ones Nvidia has designed (but still using Arm architecture).
Previously, however, there were rumours that we'd be looking at entirely in-house designs, plus Nvidia recently unveiled a new CPU with custom cores, lending even more credence to the custom design idea. Now, arguably, this delay lends further credence to that, because it seems less likely that there would be issues with a chip based on cores already in play in DGX Spark than with an entirely new custom chip.
Whenever the chip ends up arriving and whoever ends up designing it, seeing an Arm chip in what will presumably be gaming or at least gaming-capable laptops is a very exciting prospect. That's not only because current rumours have it pinned for Alienware laptops with RTX 4070-level performance, but also because it could shimmy Windows on Arm forward a little.
I spoke with Arm last month, and while I was told that Windows software compatibility is "largely a solved problem", I'm not 100% convinced. Our Ian Evenden gave it a good go earlier in the year and found the experience… problematic, to say the least. Windows on Arm just doesn't seem ready for gaming yet, despite improvements to Microsoft's Prism emulation layer.
We'll just have to wait and see what Nvidia has in store for us, but anything that knocks on the door of not just processor but also operating system competition is something to look forward to in my book. It's just a shame we might have to wait a while longer than expected to see it.
