Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tells us about RTX Spark — why this is more 'R2-D2' than a laptop CPU

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The vision for RTX Spark
N2X and N3X!?
RTX Spark vs Apple Silicon
RTX Spark handheld?
Why now?

So in case you’ve been living under a rock, Nvidia just changed the face of consumer computing with RTX Spark — a new all-in-one chip that Team Green aims to “reinvent the PC” with. It’s a bold mission and I wanted to know more, so I talked to CEO Jensen Huang about it in a Q&A at Computex 2026.

What does reinventing the PC actually look like? What does the future of this silicon look like? How does Huang fancy his chances against Apple silicon? And could we see Nvidia take this, pair it with its gaming handheld expertise with Nintendo Switch chipsets, and make a PC handheld? It was a long conversation, so grab a cuppa and find out what he had to say!

Jensen wants to turn your PC into R2-D2

I think the most fascinating part of this talk came down to the grand vision of where Huang and Nvidia see the world of computing going. You’ve already heard about the want to reinvent the PC with agents, but he goes into more detail here.

The roadmap has already been set

Nvidia RTX Spark — (Image credit: Future)

To clear up any confusion, Huang was quick to confirm that N1X is RTX Spark, saying, “N1X was the project code name.”

But he went a little further into the family plans for the architecture, and its future too! “N2X and N3X are already planned, and N1X is called N1X because it has a smaller version called N1. We’re going to expand our family. We’re going to extend this architecture for a very long time.

And pointing back to Nvidia’s historical track record of taking care of its software over a long term, users can expect to keep their RTX Spark systems in their homes for 5-10 years. “Just like my home theater system,” Huang compared in probably one of the more humorous comparisons to home computing I’ve heard.

But this puts it right in line with what kind of longevity you can expect from Apple Silicon products. Speaking of…

RTX Spark vs Apple Silicon

In group Q&As like this, it’s best to make friends with the person next to you to double up on what you want to know. Shout-out to Arsh Garwal for stating the fact that RTX Spark is “basically entering Apple Silicon’s home turf,” and asking Huang what winning looks like for Nvidia in comparison.

“Apple’s ecosystem is excellent as you know, and they have a world-class silicon roadmap. But that’s not our focus,” Huang responded. “Our focus is to reinvent the PC. Windows is of course improving, but the basic architecture of a PC has largely been the same now for about 40 years, and we want to reinvent it.”

Of course, this is a subtle dodge of the question here, as Huang talks about how Apple has the ecosystem advantage (which it really does). But it goes to show the focused mission going on here.

Can Nvidia have its own Nintendo Switch now?

A Nintendo Switch 2 photographed under RGB lighting — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

I got the chance to ask Huang a question about gaming — specifically handheld gaming. Besides the goal to “reinvent the PC” with Microsoft, this is an Arm chip that has the same graphical capabilities of an RTX 5070 notebook card, while being much more power-efficient.

Nvidia claims you can get 100 fps in Indiana Jones at 1440p, and with it being the full Team Green silicon, you’ve got access to all that DLSS 4.5 goodness with dynamic multi-frame generation. On top of that, Nvidia’s silicon is inside arguably the best-selling gaming handheld in the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.

And with Intel Arc G3 taking PC handhelds to the next generation of performance with its beasty integrated GPU and XeSS 3 AI trickery, it got me thinking. So I asked him whether he envisions a future where some form of this RTX Spark silicon comes to a gaming handheld.

Paul Antill holding the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ up for the camera at Computex 2026 — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

“If somebody wants to do it, we'll work with them on it,” Huang responded. “But right now, we're really focused on doing something that is just such a big deal — reinventing the PC after 40 years.” Understandable given the lofty goals, but he goes on. I’ll just put the transcript here and analyze afterwards, as he touches on a lot of details.

“This is such a gigantic project. We worked with hundreds of people that worked inside the company for years now. Remember all of these applications in the Windows world and x86 world, we have to prove that they work fantastically. And all the games, they have to have anti-cheat turned on. All of that stuff is really really hard. There's a reason why today's PCs are so fragmented — that things that are great for Adobe aren't great for gaming, or things that are great for gaming aren't great for AI. The world has a very hard time uniting that into one platform, and we felt that we had the ability to do that from a technology perspective, from a software architecture perspective, and an ecosystem reach. And over the course of the last couple years between us and MediaTek, all the PC OEMs and Microsoft, you're going to hear more about it later today [at Computex]. I mean, just the mountain of people just so that we could reshape this computer to get it ready for Agentic AI.”

Acer Predator Atlas 8 — (Image credit: Future)

Now, there’s a whole lot of talk about the bigger mission here, and it’s clear that while Nvidia is willing to work on handheld gaming, that’s not the key focus here. But he does hint at some clear hurdles here, such as making sure this is an all-in-one platform that works great across everything.

Specifically calling out anti-cheat compatibility is an interesting side point. When speaking with Team Green separate of this Q&A, the team did say that native Arm anti-cheat is “one of the biggest challenges,” and that they are “working with developers to bring support for major anti-cheats like Easy Anti‑Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo among others.”

Jason and Jensen happy birthday — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

And since it’s my birthday today, he decided to do something nice for me, as you can see!

Why now?

It’s a fair question. We heard about Nvidia entering the laptop silicon space for years and with the can getting kicked down the road every time, I honestly thought it would just subside. Plus, if we’re being real, the vast majority of Nvidia’s money comes from its data center business. So why now?

“We don’t really have to choose. The real question is can we make a contribution? If it’s only marginal, we won’t do it,” Huang responded. “If you get the chance to reinvent the single most important tool for humanity, and reinvent it in the age of AI, we’re not going to sit around and not get it done”

With physical AI only being “only a couple of years away,” he believes having a laptop primed for this will be critical to the future of computing as a whole. It’s a big bet, and the next few years will show whether it pays off.

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Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.