TAIPEI (TVBS News) — Nvidia announced Monday (June 1) its first major push into the Windows PC processor market. The company unveiled the N1X chip, developed with MediaTek (聯發科) and Microsoft. The move marks a direct challenge to Intel and AMD's decades-long dominance of PC computing.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) made the announcement during his keynote at Nvidia GTC Taipei 2026. He called it a "reinvention of the PC" that would transform personal computers into AI-powered platforms capable of running intelligent agents locally. "Microsoft and NVIDIA are going to reinvent the PC," Huang told the audience. "This is 40 years later, the first time a completely redesigned, completely rebuilt PC product line."
The N1X processor combines Nvidia's Blackwell graphics architecture with a custom central processing unit designed by MediaTek (聯發科) using Arm architecture, a chip design known for energy efficiency that powers most smartphones. The chip will be manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (台積電)'s advanced 3-nanometer process and supports up to 128GB of unified memory, according to MediaTek.
Nvidia plans to launch more than 30 laptop models and 10 desktop computers featuring the new RTX Spark platform this fall. Microsoft, Dell, HP, Asus (華碩), Lenovo, and MSI (微星) will manufacture the first wave of devices, the company said.
"We meticulously optimized everything so that this computer runs everything the world has ever created, plus it now runs agents," Huang said, describing the N1X as fully compatible with Windows, CUDA, and Android applications.
Huang predicted the CPU market would grow substantially as AI agents proliferate. "This market will surely be larger than the last because there'll be a lot more agents than there are people," he said. He estimated the market could reach US$200 billion (approximately NT$6.27 trillion).
Vince Hu, MediaTek's senior vice president and general manager of the data center and computing business group, praised the partnership. RTX Spark gives consumer PCs "unprecedented on-device AI supercomputing capabilities," Hu said in a press release.
The partnership represents a major milestone for MediaTek, Taiwan's largest chip designer by revenue, which has historically focused on smartphone processors. Huang emphasized the N1X's compatibility with Nvidia's software ecosystem. "100% of NVIDIA software stack runs on N1X," he said.
Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said in MediaTek's press release that the partnership gives high-end Windows 11 PC consumers more choices. The collaboration represents MediaTek's push beyond Chromebooks into higher-margin markets, Bajarin said.
The new PCs will run AI models locally, including Nvidia's Nemotron series, or connect to cloud-based models. Nvidia said the RTX Spark platform delivers performance roughly equivalent to its RTX 5070 laptop graphics processor.
The first RTX Spark laptops will measure as thin as 14 millimeters (0.55 inches) and target content creators, AI developers, and gamers. "This reinvention of the computer is as big of a deal as the reinvention of the phone into the smartphone," Huang said.
Nvidia did not disclose pricing for the RTX Spark devices. The company also did not provide detailed specifications beyond the performance comparison and memory capacity. The platform is expected to ship this fall. ◼ (At time of reporting, US$1 equals approximately NT$31.34)
