Nvidia and MediaTek may finally unveil their AI PC this month

Something to look forward to: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once hinted that onlookers should wait a year for updates on the company's AI PC ambitions. Almost exactly one year later, new reports suggest the company is poised to unveil its long-rumored Arm consumer CPU later this month at Computex 2025.

Nvidia and MediaTek are expected to introduce more affordable variants of the AI PC they showcased at CES last January, according to reports from both ComputerBase and Heise. These announcements could mark the long-awaited expansion of Microsoft's Arm ambitions beyond Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.

In a recent conference call, MediaTek confirmed it will deliver a Computex 2025 keynote on May 20 at 11pm ET, exactly 24 hours after Nvidia's keynote at the same event. Media reports from Asia indicate that MediaTek has recently secured substantial FCBGA packaging capacity, suggesting the two companies are preparing to unveil PCs with soldered processors.

Two devices, reportedly called the N1 and N1X, are planned. Featuring Arm-based MediaTek CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, these models will likely be more affordable, scaled-down Windows-based versions of the GB10 Linux workstation announced in January.

This would advance Microsoft's efforts to offer Windows devices running Arm chips, which began last year with a lineup of laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X SoCs. Arm has previously confirmed that other vendors would eventually introduce competing Arm chips for Windows PCs.

On Macs and other devices, the Arm instruction set has demonstrated greater energy efficiency than x86. However, following decades as the PC standard, x86 has built up a vast software library that Arm developers must either port or support through compatibility layers.

Rumors about Nvidia's Arm AI PC ambitions began circulating in late 2023. The following year, the heads of Nvidia and Dell advised the public to stay tuned for more information. Later reports suggested that Nvidia plans to release a consumer-facing product in late 2025, followed by an enterprise version in March 2026.

At this year's CES, Nvidia and MediaTek unveiled Project Digits, a $3,000 mini PC designed for testing AI workloads without relying on cloud servers. The mini PC is powered by a MediaTek 20-core GB10 CPU, 128GB of RAM, a 1 PetaFLOP Nvidia Blackwell GPU, and a 4TB SSD into a compact 1.1-liter (150 x 150 x 50.5mm) enclosure.

Consumer variants of this would likely feature 8 to 16 cores with 16 to 32GB of RAM, though pricing remains to be seen. Nvidia, MediaTek, and other companies joining the Arm Windows movement may aim to deliver a Windows equivalent to Apple's well-regarded M4 Mac Mini.