GoKawiilNVIDIA’s new RTX Spark “superchip” makes some bold claims, melding powerhouse on-device AI processing with AAA-tier graphics for gamers, powered by the Windows on Arm PC platform.
The chip is set to debut in a wave of premium Windows laptops later this year, with early designs announced from Microsoft Surface, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and MSI. RTX Spark systems will span thin-and-light 14-inch creator laptops, to larger 16-inch workstations, and mini-desktop PCs, all built around the same unified-memory architecture and Blackwell GPU technology.
As someone who’s used a Snapdragon X-powered Windows PC for a while now, the everyday performance and battery life have been exceptional, but promises of revolutionary on-device AI haven’t materialized. Running any advanced model is essentially impossible with just 16GB of RAM and no viable accelerator.
The RTX Spark aims to be quite different, packing a colossal 128GB of unified system memory alongside a Blackwell GPU and Arm-based Grace CPU designed specifically for AI workloads. The price will undoubtedly be exorbitant in the current RAM-restricted market, but if your interest is piqued, here’s a lower-level look at what NVIDIA has packed into the RTX Spark.
Mobile-class CPU, only better
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Peeking inside the CPU department reveals a lot about where the superchip has come from, making it a good place to start. The RTX Spark is powered by NVIDIA’s N1X, aka the GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip. The GB10 already powers the $4,700 DGX Spark, which runs NVIDIA’s DGX Linux OS instead of Windows.
The GB10 uses a modern Armv9 CPU design, the same architecture found in high-end phone chipsets, that should deliver strong everyday performance. The chip is built from 10 Arm Cortex-X925 and 10 A725 cores, for a total of 20 CPU cores. The X925 launched in 2024 and was found in last year’s MediaTek Dimensity 9400 for smartphones, albeit in a single-big-core configuration. Interestingly, MediaTek helped NVIDIA design the CPU inside the RTX Spark, which helps explain some of the similarities.
At its core, RTX Spark is powered by the same Arm CPU technology as flagship smartphones.
Not only does the RTX Spark have ten powerhouse cores and ten performance cores (far more than your phone), but it also runs its X925 at 4.0GHz and A725 at 2.85GHz, providing a step up in per-core performance over last-generation smartphone implementations as well. The GB10 has a similar cache setup to the Dimensity, up to 2MB L2 for the X925 and 512KB L2 for the A725, paired with 16MB L3 and 16MB system cache.
... continue reading