The big news in chips today is that Intel and Nvidia are joining forces in a new partnership to build hardware together as Nvidia invests $5 billion in Intel, taking a nearly 5% stake in the company.
We're still unpacking what this Nvidia/Intel deal means for the future, and we got some clues this morning when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan conducted a webcast press conference to announce the deal and answer questions.
I sat in on that chat, and while much of the conversation was about AI and data centers there was some intriguing talk about how the two titans will collaborate on new chips that integrate Nvidia RTX graphics tech directly with Intel's CPUs.
That means we can expect a future in which thin-and-light gaming laptops and handheld gaming PCs are running on a new breed of Intel SoCs (System-on-Chip) with an Nvidia RTX graphics chip built right in.
A much-needed shot in the arm for Intel
I'm no business expert, but it's clear that Intel's fortunes have been falling for some time as layoffs rake the company while AMD, Apple, Qualcomm and even Nvidia offer serious competition in multiple markets. The U.S. government invested nearly $9 billion in Intel just last month to take a nearly 10% stake in the company, and now Nvidia has thrown in another $5 billion.
This could be a huge deal because there's still a lot of room to improve the experience of gaming on thin-and-light Windows laptops and handhelds.
This generally seems like good news for Intel, and indeed the company's stock price climbed siginificantly in the wake of the announcement. However, it remains to be seen if this will ultimately be more to Intel or Nvidia's advantange.
For the rest of us, this could be a huge deal because there's still a lot of room to improve the experience of gaming on thin-and-light Windows laptops and handhelds. It's startling how quickly AMD and Qualcomm have made strides in building smaller, more capable SoCs, but in my experience you still can't expect the same level of performance as you can from a premium CPU paired with a powerful discrete laptop GPU.
And while Intel's consumer-grade CPUs power many of the best gaming laptops, in those cases they're partnered with discrete AMD or Nvidia laptop graphics cards that contribute to those laptops being heavy, power-hungry beasts. If you actually want a Windows laptop that plays games well yet is light enough to comfortably carry all day and capable of lasting longer than 4-5 hours on a full battery, you're going to have a rough time of it.
As much as I prefer Windows over macOS when it comes to gaming, a laptop like the MacBook Pro M4 is actually better for someone who wants a portable PC that can play games well and last through a full day of work or school. Sure, macOS doesn't support as many games as effectively as Windows, but you can play Diablo IV unplugged on your MacBook for a few hours and still count on it getting you through a day of classes. I can't say the same about almost any Windows laptop I've ever tested.
Part of the reason is that Apple silicon is remarkably efficient, which might have something to do with the physical design of its M-series chips. See, Apple employs a unified memory architecture that basically lets both the CPU and GPU on an M-series chip pull from the same unified pool of RAM, in a way that's slightly faster and more efficient than if the RAM was separate.
So when I read Tom's Hardware reporting that the forthcoming Intel x86 RTX SOCs will have a similar design, I got really excited. See, the folks at our sister publication were reportedly told that future consumer-grade Nvidia/Intel SoCs will have uniform memory access (UMA) so that both the CPU and GPU components of the chip will be able to draw from the same shared memory pool.
That could be a revolutionary step forward for Intel that helps secure its shaky place in the market, as well as afford Nvidia a stronger foothold in segments of the PC gaming market that can't afford its high-priced graphics cards. When I reached out to tech analyst and Techsponential founder Avi Greengart for his thoughts, he said something similar.
"The Intel / NVIDIA deal should mean more powerful and efficient silicon, especially for gaming and AI on laptops," said Greengart. "You can already put an Intel CPU and an NVIDIA GPU on the same motherboard, but there should be significant gains by moving to a chiplet architecture within an SoC. Intel insists that this doesn't change anything for its Arc GPU business, but given Intel's cash crunch as it builds out its Foundry business, it's hard to believe that Arc won't be impacted, at least for the discrete cards and higher-end laptop processors where NVIDIA now slots in. "
That makes a lot of sense, and it highlights that this deal isn't going to singlehandedly save Intel—the company still appears to be behind the ball relative to the competition.
But for folks like you and me, it could mean that the state of ultra-light gaming laptops and handhelds is about to get significantly more exciting.
Bottom line
Intel and Nvidia's announcement is still fresh and it's way too early to say definitively what impact their partnership will have on the PC market. However, I can say for sure it will definitely shake things up.
Frankly, that seems like exactly what Intel needs right now. The company has appeared to be in danger of crumpling for about a year now, but recent investments from Softbank, the U.S. government and now Nvidia have helped it survive long enough to lay off lots of people and try some fresh approaches. Hopefully this one pays off.
But really it seems like Nvidia comes out on top here, because it gets to take a stake in Intel, get some new x86 CPU hardware for data centers and new x86 SoCs with Nvidia RTX GPU tech built in. Plus, it comes out looking like a stand-up partner that's supporting a struggling U.S. chipmaker right as the U.S. government is making a lot of noise about buying and building local.
What remains to be seen is how impactful the resulting Intel x86 RTX SoCs will be when they eventually arrive on the scene. I doubt we'll see them anytime before 2026 at the absolute earliest, but I'm going to be counting the days because I want to see what Intel's SoCs can do after they get an injection of Nvidia's RTX graphics tech.
Maybe I'm reading too much into the Tom's Hardware claim that these upcoming chips will have uniform memory access, but I want to believe that Intel and Nvidia can do for portable PC gaming what Apple and Qualcomm have done for productivity laptops: upend expectations and fundamentally raise the bar for what we expect from our tech.
More from Tom's Guide
- Nvidia N1X CPU appears in new benchmark — but it doesn't show its true potential
- I played games for 100 hours on Intel Arc B580 — it proved to me that GPUs are Intel's way back from the brink
- Intel’s in trouble — AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme pulls ahead where it counts for handheld gaming
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