Nvidia RTX Spark packs 6,144 cores as Intel and AMD shares fall

Nvidia's entry into the PC processor market with a 1-petaflop Arm-based superchip threatens to upend a decades-old Intel-AMD duopoly.

Nvidia Corp. unveiled its first PC processor, the RTX Spark superchip, sending Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares lower as the $3.2 trillion chipmaker brings its AI dominance to the personal computer market.

"The PC is being reinvented," Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia, said at the Computex trade show in Taipei. "For 40 years, you launched apps. Click. Type. With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask — and the PC does the work."

The superchip combines a 20-core Arm-based Grace central processor with a Blackwell graphics processor featuring 6,144 CUDA cores, built on TSMC's 3-nanometer process. It delivers up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory and 1 petaflop of AI performance — enough to run 120-billion-parameter large language models locally. Nvidia developed the chip with MediaTek Inc. and optimized it for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows on Arm operating system.

The move directly challenges Intel and AMD, which together control virtually all of the PC processor market outside of Apple Inc.'s Mac lineup. Nvidia's data center chip revenue in its most recent quarter alone roughly equaled Intel and AMD's combined annual sales last year, giving it resources that no would-be rival can match.

Laptops and compact desktops powered by RTX Spark will arrive this fall from major manufacturers including ASUS, Dell Technologies Inc., HP Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., MSI and Microsoft itself. The initial wave will target the premium segment, with more than 30 laptop designs and 10 desktop configurations planned.

The chip's unified memory architecture — shared between CPU and GPU via Nvidia's NVLink interface — marks a departure from traditional PC design, where processors and graphics cards maintain separate memory pools. This allows AI models to operate at scales that would overwhelm conventional systems, Nvidia said.

Gaming and Creative Workloads

Nvidia said the RTX Spark can run the latest AAA games at 1,440p resolution above 100 frames per second with ray tracing and DLSS 4.5 neural rendering enabled. For creative professionals, the chip supports editing 12K video, rendering 90-gigabyte 3D scenes with OptiX, and running Adobe Inc.'s Photoshop and Premiere Pro with GPU-accelerated AI features. Adobe has rearchitected several key tools to run natively on the platform, using unified memory and TensorRT to accelerate Firefly-powered generative fill and extend features by as much as 2 times, according to Nvidia.

Intel and AMD Face a New Rival

Intel and AMD face an adversary unlike any they have encountered in the PC market. Nvidia's market capitalization of roughly $3.2 trillion dwarfs Intel's $85 billion and AMD's $210 billion. The company's data center business alone generated $35.6 billion in its most recent fiscal quarter, exceeding Intel's total 2025 revenue of $53.1 billion and AMD's $25.8 billion.

Qualcomm Inc., which has promoted its Snapdragon X chips for Windows on Arm laptops for more than a year, also faces new competition. Nvidia said it has worked with Microsoft for years to optimize Windows for its Arm-based silicon, and that more than 100 software providers — including Adobe, Blender, Riot Games and Epic Games — have committed to native Arm support.

For Nvidia investors, the PC push adds a new growth vector to a company already growing faster than any other major chipmaker. Nvidia shares have lagged the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index this year despite posting triple-digit revenue growth, suggesting the market has not fully priced in the PC opportunity. Intel and AMD shareholders, by contrast, now face a well-capitalized competitor with a proven track record of disrupting established markets.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.