NVIDIA is going all in on ARM for the PC market and aims to dethrone Apple’s (ARM-based) chip leadership. Since Apple’s M-1 debut, both Intel and AMD have been dethroned for performance-per-watt leadership in the PC market. And while Qualcomm has also entered the PC market with its critically praised Snapdragon X Elite chip, Apple has again quickly taken back the performance crown with its just-released M4 chip.
Now, Nvidia is aiming to enter the ARM for the personal computer market, and the AI chip leader is highly competitive and offers interesting advantages.
NVIDIA vs Apple vs Qualcomm
When it comes to performance per watt, Apple has ruled the world since the 2020 introduction of Apple Silicon (with its M1 SoC). But it hasn’t just been performance per watt; Apple has also captured absolute performance. Data released on the Internet show that the new Apple M4 chip line-up outperforms all other rivals in sheer computational performance.
Take a look at this data table with Geekbench 6 scores.
| Single Core GB6 | Multi-Core GB6 | |
| Apple M4 Pro | 3,925 (link) | 22,669 |
| Apple M4 Max | 4,060 (link) | 26,675 |
| Intel i9-13900KS | 3,136 (link) | 21,732 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | 2,986 (link) | 20,550 |
| SnapDragon X Elite | 2,427 (link) | 14,254 |
| Intel Ultra 9 285K | 3,450 (link) | 23,024 |
Note how the M4 even beats out AMD and Intel’s top-of-the-line brand-new desktop-class PC chips. And the M4 Max is the first chip in the world to break through the 4,000 barrier for Geekbench 6.
NVIDIA’s Grace CPU is a custom ARM-based chip. In the image below we see the ARM-based Grace CPU on the left and the Hopper GPU on the right, in a complete package.
Just when Qualcomm delivered some exciting ARM for Windows news with its Snapdragon X Elite and suggested it could take on Apple’s M-series as well as AMD and Intel, all three competitors stepped up with their latest and greatest and delivered greater performance.
So what will Nvidia do in this race?
Heated Competition
It was only a few years ago when the PC market had but just two players (on Windows) and one player (on Mac) and it was just Intel versus AMD. Now the veteran leaders in the CPU market are not just locked into a very heated battle for supremacy but have been smoked by Apple’s ARM-based M-series chips. With Qualcomm committed to this competition we now are about to add both Nvidia and MediaTek. That makes for six SoC semi providers for the PC market. What a remarkable turn of events.
Nvidia Offering
First of all, Nvidia is not new to ARM. The company’s Grace-Hopper CPU is a custom ARM processor. And years ago Nvidia developed the Tegra SoC with an ARM Cortex core for the Nintendo Switch. And remember that Nvidia wanted to buy ARM but was stopped by anti-trust regulators.
Now NVDIA has teamed up with MediaTek (a Taiwan-based ARM chip maker) to deliver a new generation of ARM-powered NVIDIA chips.
The new NVIDIA ARM chip is likely to be produced en masse in Q1-2025. Here is what we know about it.
- Nvidia’s ARM SoC will be a “high-end” chip (aiming to take away Apple’s leadership)
- Will go into production in 2025
- Targeted at high-performance Windows on ARM laptops and gaming handhelds
- 8-16 cores (likely mixed between efficiency and performance cores
- Manufactured on 3nm TSMC process node (expect the same node as Apple’s M4)
- LPDDR6 Memory
- RTX GPU
- Nvidia AI engine onboard
According to reports from DigiTimes and Tom’s Hardware, Nvidia’s plans involve both a co-engineered chip with MediaTek and a fully custom in-house design. The latter clearly coming later than the former.
Architosh Analysis and Commentary
At the moment Qualcomm is the exclusive chip maker for Windows 11 on ARM and certified Microsoft Co-Pilot AI PCs. But that deal ends in 2024, whereupon other chip makers could deliver ARM-based ships for Microsoft Co-Pilot AI PCs. Our estimate is Nvidia will enter that same space to compete head-on with Qualcomm in the ARM Windows world and deliver game-changing AI processing capabilities to rival Apple’s Macs with Apple Intelligence and best both AMD and Intel with their on-chip AI capabilities.
At the same time, if there is one chip company that can deliver a SoC that can best Apple’s leadership, especially when it comes to graphics, it is definitely going to be Nvidia. Meanwhile, AMD is also rumored to be designing an ARM-based PC chip.
The performance crown has been on Apple’s head for four years since the M1. Apple’s M4 just thrashed AMD and Intel’s best. The diminutive Mac mini with M4 Max likely delivers the great compute performance per dollar of any computer in the world. (note: we will formally investigate that hunch in a separate article). While Qualcomm ended up with Nuvia’s ARM chip expertise (led by former Apple chip engineers), a competition with Nvidia will surely light a competitive fire under Apple. With such heated competition, computer users are the big winners here. 2025 is shaping up to be truly exciting!
