The much awaited transition to personal computing is now here next week. Artificial intelligence chip maker Nvidia will partner with Microsoft to launch the first Windows-powered personal computer with Nvidia‘s own chips as the brain of the machine, Axios reports. The new devices will likely be seen at the Computex trade show in Taiwan and Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco. The news is significant not only for both firms but also the PC industry, which had been closely following the report in Reuters last year that Nvidia intended to create central processing units for Microsoft’s Windows operating system with Arm’s technology.
I’ve watched the PC industry slowly evolve from pure chipmakers to more specialized architectures for years now, and I think that’s the time it’s going to start picking up some momentum. The Nvidia powered computers will be produced by Microsoft’s own Surface line, and other big brands like Dell. That list of partners implies a lot more than just a “niche experiment”, it’s a real attempt to make Nvidia part of the mainstream of desktop and laptop PCs. The official X posts of Windows, Nvidia and Arm, the chip design company, all hinted at the news on Friday, revealing the words “A new era of PC,” and seemingly coordinates in the Taiwan capital Taipei. That kind of coordinated hype is unheard of and is an indicator of how much is at stake with this launch.
From the industry perspective, what’s important about this development is that Microsoft has been working for years to shift Windows away from chips that are less efficient and have poor battery life. The company’s biggest competitor, Apple, which develops its own custom chips, already announced this month its new MacBooks powered by the latest M5 series chips. The high performing, high efficiency bar is set by those Apple machines. Today, however, Microsoft and Nvidia are taking the opposite tack, with a heavy emphasis on Nvidia’s experience in parallel computing and AI workloads. Nvidia’s entry into the mainstream of Windows laptop processor manufacturers is having a dramatic impact on the math. Nvidia is making Arm-based CPUs for Windows, while Intel continues to be a major player.
Here it is important to note that Microsoft’s previous attempt to move towards more battery-friendly chips has not resulted in a sales spurt yet. That’s a fair assessment from years of market data that despite its theoretical benefits, Arm-based Windows machines have not proved to be an overnight success with consumers and businesses. But does the uplift of Nvidia’s brand and graphics know-how make the difference? There is hope, as Nvidia has not only a brand, but a history of high performance computing, and its chips already are the benchmark for AI acceleration. This may be particularly appealing for developers, content creators or users of any machine learning applications.
