Nvidia Spark has what AMD Strix Halo was missing all along: Enthusiasm
It was a busy period in tech this past week. Not only was there TechCrunch Disrupt for startups and investors, but Google and Nvidia launched their families of GoogleBooks and Spark laptops as well, respectively. In spite of the deluge of announcements, the latter arguably stole most of the headlines due in no small part to the green chipmaker's greater marketing push.
It all started on October 7th when Microsoft held a closed Surface event in the Dogpatch district in San Francisco. Upon attending the function, however, the event focused on the Spark platform just as much as it did on the Surface Laptop Ultra announcement itself. At least a half dozen other Spark models were on show with Jensen Huang occupying the stage for a good portion of the morning talk. Spark demonstrations surrounded the floor teasing ARM-ready games to Github Copilot features and more. The Surface Laptop Ultra would become available for pre-order shortly after starting at $2600.
The very next day on October 8th, Nvidia held a separate Spark event in the same venue. Announcements and demonstrations were largely the same with similar video demonstrations including the one from Microsoft Senior Designer Danilo Makio Saito to show off what a Spark system can actually do. Additional partners were present as well including MSI and select media were offered free flights by the chipmaker just to cover the demos. The Nvidia-run event could have arguably been combined with the Microsoft-run event the day prior due to their overlapping announcements and topics.
With both event days in the bag, major manufacturers would then begin shipping Spark laptops to media reviewers over the following weekend for their final impressions before becoming publicly available. These would include models like the Pro 9n 15, OmniBook Ultra 16, ProArt P16, and Prestige N16 Flip from Lenovo, HP, Asus, and MSI, respectively. These makers were some of the first to jump in on the Spark bandwagon.
Spark laptops would officially land on store shelves beginning October 16. It certainly wasn't a quiet launch, however, as Nvidia would throw launch parties around the world at select retailers and locations ranging from San Francisco all the way to Seoul and Berlin. Jensen was live at the Berlin location, but each location would nevertheless hand out freebies and prizes to encourage lines and crowds. An Asus Spark laptop by by Jensen himself was part of the prize pool.
The constant barrage of announcements, events, and reviews for Spark leading up to its launch directly contrasts the quieter launch of AMD Strix Halo last year. Like the Nvidia platform, Strix Halo was also optimized primarily for local AI with up to 128 GB of unified memory and gaming as a secondary function. However, manufacturer support was limited out of the gate with only a couple of models widely available at first. Options would slowly expand over time whereas Nvidia wants a running start with many more at launch. AMD will soon make available the successor to Strix Halo called Gordon Halo with up to 50 percent more memory capacity than either Strix Halo or Spark, but most publications and eyes are of course covering everything green instead.
We haven't seen this level of excitement from press and general users for what is arguably a niche laptop series running Windows ARM. It's hard to say if the Spark series will entice content creators and MacBook Pro owners en masse, but Nvidia is definitely trying its darnedest to get the word out.
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