Nvidia unveils new chip to bring AI directly to personal computers

Nvidia is set to bring artificial intelligence to laptop and desktop computers with brands like Microsoft and Dell later this year as the US tech giant broadens its AI presence.

The AI chipmaker unveiled on Monday at its annual Nvidia GTC event in Taipei new powerful chips that would bring advanced AI functions to laptops and desktop computers.

The changes come amid three years of collaboration between Microsoft and Nvidia and pit the latter against companies like chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices and personal computer brands Intel and Apple.

“This is going to be the new PC,” Huang said as he unveiled Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchip — which combines CPU, or central processing unit, and GPU, or graphics processing unit, capabilities — that would power new Windows laptop and desktop computer models in what the company called “AI personal computers”, expected to debut in the fall of this year. The chip, developed with Taiwan’s MediaTek, will be in compact desktops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with models from Acer and GIGABYTE to follow.

Nvidia, which is already the world’s most valuable company, said the reinvention will be for creating and gaming. “When it has an autonomous [AI] agent, an agent that’s helping you, that understands you, you could talk to it. It could look at you. You could ask it to read files, go help you do some research. It could do a lot more,” Huang said.

Microsoft’s involvement has raised concerns about privacy and consumer demand. Microsoft first introduced a digital assistant called Cortana in 2014, but it failed to gain traction and was riddled with privacy concerns.