Nvidia's Arm-based Windows PC chip, built with MediaTek, pairing CPU cores with CUDA GPU cores and up to 128GB of memory for running large AI models locally.
Over 100 people lined up at a San Francisco Best Buy for Nvidia's RTX Spark launch, but PCMag says it looked like only a handful bought one. Many came for free swag or out of curiosity, so the line says little about demand at $2,599.
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Nvidia launched RTX Spark laptops on Friday with up to 128GB of shared memory and a 74-billion-parameter model it says fits in 24GB. A local agent pilot is now possible on Windows, though every figure so far comes from Nvidia.
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Windows Central and Tom's Guide each tested Nvidia's RTX Spark for a week in one laptop model, the Surface Laptop Ultra. Six partners start shipping this week, Windows Central says, so a pilot on any other chassis goes beyond what either review covered.
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NVIDIA's RTX Spark laptops went on sale from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI with up to 128GB of unified memory and 1 petaflop of FP4 compute. Both are peak ratings from NVIDIA's own release, so a team still has to benchmark its own models.
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Nvidia is pitching RTX Spark laptops, due from several makers this Friday, as able to run 120-billion-parameter AI models, Gizmodo reports. Whether one hosts such a model on-device or offloads to the cloud may depend on which version a buyer picks.
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Tom's Hardware tested Nvidia's RTX Spark in a 128GB Surface Laptop Ultra against an M5 Max MacBook Pro on agent task time. Its headline calls local AI a strength and gaming a weak spot, but the text reviewed here ends before the AI timings.
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NVIDIA says RTX Spark laptops go on sale Oct. 16 with up to 128GB of unified memory and 1 petaflop of AI compute. Its own list dates the agent, model and creative updates from Oct. 15 to November, so launch day starts a rollout.
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Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops ship October 16 from $2,599, while 128GB configurations from HP and Asus list at $5,109 to $6,999.99, Tom's Hardware reported. Teams buying for local models will have to order that capacity from maker web stores and check every listing for core counts.
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Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra, its first RTX Spark laptop, runs on the Nvidia-MediaTek N1X ARM chip and starts at $2,600, Gizmodo reported. Its showcase game ran under emulation and its battery claim is untested, so for now it is a laptop to pilot before ordering in volume.
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Microsoft ships its Nvidia Arm-based Surface Laptop Ultra on October 16 from $2,599, with a $5,999 developer box in November. The base laptop has 24GB of the chip's possible 128GB, and launch coverage prices only one 128GB machine: the box.
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AMD published Gorgon Halo AI benchmarks days before Nvidia's expected RTX Spark launch, claiming a 1.1x to 32.2x lead over Intel's Core Ultra X9 388H. Until RTX Spark is measured, buyers weighing Gorgon Halo machines that cost upwards of $7,099 can compare the two only on memory.
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NVIDIA is licensing the Fusion chiplet, its C2C CPU attach and NVHBM to MediaTek and buying $3.5 billion of its convertible bonds, so the quickest route to a custom accelerator now ends inside an NVIDIA rack.
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Nvidia's argument is that a slice of inference moves from the server farm to the desk. The case rests on one publisher's account of a Computex launch, and the memory spec that would settle it is not in there.
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