Nvidia partnering with MediaTek on Arm CPUs mated to RTX graphics for Chromebooks, PCs

Gaming on Chromebooks and other Arm-based PCs and laptops has been given a major “shot in the arm”, so to speak. RTX graphics card maker Nvidia has jointly announced a partnership with leading Arm-based CPU maker MediaTek that will bring compatibility between consumer-based Arm devices and Nvidia’s ray-tracing capable GPUs for the first time. The announcement comes on the back of Nvidia’s separate announcement of its own high-power Arm-based server CPU dubbed “Grace” that will also marry Arm-based CPUs with its GPU technology.

MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai had this to say:

MediaTek is the world’s largest supplier of Arm chips, used to power everything from smartphones, Chromebooks and smart TVs. We look forward to using our technology and working with NVIDIA to bring the power of GPUs to the Arm PC platform for gaming, content creation and much more. GPU acceleration will be a huge boost for the entire Arm ecosystem.

At this stage, there is no clear timeframe as to when we can expect the first examples of the new MediaTek-Nvidia partnership to materialize in shipping products. While it is an undoubtedly exciting development, the success of this partnership will also be dependent on software developers optimizing their apps to take advantage of Nvidia’s GPUs. Despite this, it is yet another development that will give Intel (and AMD) headaches as until now, Nvidia GPUs have been exclusively paired with x86 CPUs.

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