Nvidia is hedging its big AI bet with a new mass-market chip

Whether its new ‘superchip’ will impress laptop users is uncertain

- PARMY OLSON

Gamers who coveted Nvidia's graphics cards long ago because they rendered computer games beautifully may soon be eyeing Windows computers that plug that technology right into the laptop’s brain.

Gamers who coveted Nvidia's graphics cards long ago because they rendered computer games beautifully may soon be eyeing Windows computers that plug that technology right into the laptop’s brain. Nvidia's latest effort to diversify from the monumentally successful business of selling chips for artificial-intelligence (AI) servers is to offer consumers and businesses an alternative to notebooks with ‘Intel inside.’ It is a smart hedge for Nvidia. Whether these computers will be a smart buy for consumers is far less certain.

Nvidia plans to offer machines built by the likes of Lenovo, HP and Dell that are better adapted to running AI-powered software and agents. Nvidia calls its new RTX Spark a ‘superchip’ because it fuses two things into one package: a CPU, the brain that runs a personal computer, and a GPU, the graphics engine Nvidia originally built for video games that turned out to be so good at AI that it now powers datacentres.

Shares of Intel declined by as much as 7.3% in early Monday trading after the announcement by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the Computex technology show in Taiwan.