GoKawiilIt's been a busy week, with Computex and Microsoft Build just two of the raft of big events going on right now. The biggest news story from both was probably NVIDIA's glossy announcement of its RTX Spark system on a chip... sorry, I mean "superchip." It's an integrated CPU/GPU/RAM unit, like AMD's Ryzen AI Max, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite and Apple Silicon. NVIDIA says it will offer unprecedented levels of AI computing power in a low-power mobile device.
RTX Spark is the portable sibling of NVIDIA's existing DGX Spark AI mini-desktop, but tailored for Windows notebooks and desktops. It combines a MediaTek-made ARM CPU with 20 cores with an NVIDIA integrated GPU with power similar to that of the RTX 5070. Users can order the system with between 16GB and 128GB of unified memory, and there's plenty of bandwidth to join the whole chorus together.
NVIDIA says plenty of PC makers are clamoring to get the RTX Spark into their gear, with Microsoft at the head of the line. It announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, a 15-inch notebook which Engadget's Devindra Hardawar described as a "MacBook Pro clone." I'm sure he'll get the Ultra in for testing at some point soon, when we'll be able to discern if it's worth any of the hype it's been getting.
— Dan Cooper