Nvidia doesn't have a fantastic record for long term support on their SoCs. It usually ends up stranded on some outdated out-of-tree kernel. If they've shared the support task with Microsoft (and if MS remains institutionally capable of support at this point...), that's a reason for cautious optimism.
I don't think this is likely to truly pan out though. I can't imagine Nvidia making the kind of afffordances that would allow it to develop into a successful market segment. They're inevitably going to gatekeep documentation and aggressively encroach on their partners' margin like they always do.
Windows has a stable hardware abstraction layer for kernel drivers. Unlike on Linux, once Nvidia writes the drivers, the same code can just keep working without requiring constant updates to deal with breaking changes. I don’t have experience with it myself, and I’m sure some ongoing maintenance will be required to deal with bugs, but probably a fraction of what is needed on Linux.
Meanwhile, if Nvidia is writing its own drivers then documentation isn’t an issue.
The flipside is that stable APIs make it harder for Microsoft to improve the kernel. And once Nvidia decides to stop maintaining its drivers, without public source code or documentation, nobody else can maintain them in its place. Still, there’s something to be said for Microsoft’s approach.
Going to be interesting to see if these machines will be capable of running anything else than Windows. Or if they are either so incompatible (no UEFI, etc.) or so locked down they can't run anything else.
Even if that is the case, as per my comments, Windows is my main OS driver despite its flaws, and I have not found any ARM laptop that I would bother buying.
On the GNU/Linux side, the only thing has been Chromebooks, which aren't worth their money for the usual 4/8 GB, 126 GB, average SOC, most devices have.
I have seen few cases where UEFI was not actually usable on non-OEM configurations.
In fact, my current ASUS laptop did not allow me to install Windows until I have performed a sophisticated dance to update/flash some sort of low-level disk-related Intel bloatware. The laptop was sold without OS and was accompanied by a small paper referencing a website with instruction how to flash the firmware to actually make the laptop usable.
I would prefer a GenBook RK3588 instead. At least I know RK3588 support is now in mainline uboot, kernel and mesa. Too bad it was abandoned. I guess too few people were interested.
The real question to me is whether they're going to challenge Strix Halo with a high bandwidth GPU.
N1/N1X gpu is rumored to get near 5070-ish speeds! That would be a remarkable feat if true!! 5070 has 670 GB/s (via 192-bit, 1.75GHz GDDR7) memory to do what it does. That's more than twice the bandwidth Strix Halo and DGX Spark offer! That would be very interesting to see in a mobile chip.
Next gen Medusa Halo from AMD is going from quad to hex-channel DDR5: that'll be a bump. But still way short of a 5070's bandwidth, and still likely far more than a year out.
In all likelihood these rumors are probably ridiculously wrong. Nvidia is charging $4000 for DGX spark systems. It's unlikely that this is going to be a vastly more expensive system. It also seems improbable that it's going to be cheaper and vastly more performant. But for a little while longer, i can dream.
Don't know if you've tried an Apple laptop, but if Nvidia manage to ship the same kind of performance ( speed and battery life ), but running Windows - then if I were Intel I'd be extremely worried.
Obviously Nvidia can't control the Windows part, but if they are targeting gaming as the primary market, not sure how much Windows api's are involved in that.
Apple does a decent job off challenging Intel with just a few laptops. I suppose it depends on your definition of laptop vs specs. Kinda hard to find out what they mean in TFA with the paywall.
That's a bit of a stretch. They don't seem to publish much info, but they do publish quarterly shipments. According to macrumors it's more in the range of single digit millions a quarter for their all computers, 4-7 usually.
Maybe, just maybe, they are reaching that billion this decade or so, but looking at those numbers it's rather in the range of 10% of that.
Still a huge number, but that's a fraction of PC market.
Nvidia doesn't have a fantastic record for long term support on their SoCs. It usually ends up stranded on some outdated out-of-tree kernel. If they've shared the support task with Microsoft (and if MS remains institutionally capable of support at this point...), that's a reason for cautious optimism.
I don't think this is likely to truly pan out though. I can't imagine Nvidia making the kind of afffordances that would allow it to develop into a successful market segment. They're inevitably going to gatekeep documentation and aggressively encroach on their partners' margin like they always do.
Windows has a stable hardware abstraction layer for kernel drivers. Unlike on Linux, once Nvidia writes the drivers, the same code can just keep working without requiring constant updates to deal with breaking changes. I don’t have experience with it myself, and I’m sure some ongoing maintenance will be required to deal with bugs, but probably a fraction of what is needed on Linux.
Meanwhile, if Nvidia is writing its own drivers then documentation isn’t an issue.
The flipside is that stable APIs make it harder for Microsoft to improve the kernel. And once Nvidia decides to stop maintaining its drivers, without public source code or documentation, nobody else can maintain them in its place. Still, there’s something to be said for Microsoft’s approach.
> The flipside is that stable APIs make it harder for Microsoft to improve the kernel.
Great! Maybe they'll finally find the time to fix User Space.
But who would buy a beta-quality ARM laptop to run Windows?
These guys aren’t going to use L4T. ACPI compliant, standard GPU drivers. They’ve also upstreamed a lot of the L4T patches.
See DGX Spark.
Going to be interesting to see if these machines will be capable of running anything else than Windows. Or if they are either so incompatible (no UEFI, etc.) or so locked down they can't run anything else.
Even if that is the case, as per my comments, Windows is my main OS driver despite its flaws, and I have not found any ARM laptop that I would bother buying.
On the GNU/Linux side, the only thing has been Chromebooks, which aren't worth their money for the usual 4/8 GB, 126 GB, average SOC, most devices have.
It was my impression that Windows had a requirement on UEFI to boot on ARM? Or is that not true?
I have seen few cases where UEFI was not actually usable on non-OEM configurations.
In fact, my current ASUS laptop did not allow me to install Windows until I have performed a sophisticated dance to update/flash some sort of low-level disk-related Intel bloatware. The laptop was sold without OS and was accompanied by a small paper referencing a website with instruction how to flash the firmware to actually make the laptop usable.
I would prefer a GenBook RK3588 instead. At least I know RK3588 support is now in mainline uboot, kernel and mesa. Too bad it was abandoned. I guess too few people were interested.
Remains to be seen, as proven by similar attempts since Windows 8.
Being NVidia, it better deliver an experience that makes gaming worthwhile in performance of AAA titles.
The real question to me is whether they're going to challenge Strix Halo with a high bandwidth GPU.
N1/N1X gpu is rumored to get near 5070-ish speeds! That would be a remarkable feat if true!! 5070 has 670 GB/s (via 192-bit, 1.75GHz GDDR7) memory to do what it does. That's more than twice the bandwidth Strix Halo and DGX Spark offer! That would be very interesting to see in a mobile chip.
Next gen Medusa Halo from AMD is going from quad to hex-channel DDR5: that'll be a bump. But still way short of a 5070's bandwidth, and still likely far more than a year out.
In all likelihood these rumors are probably ridiculously wrong. Nvidia is charging $4000 for DGX spark systems. It's unlikely that this is going to be a vastly more expensive system. It also seems improbable that it's going to be cheaper and vastly more performant. But for a little while longer, i can dream.
Let’s hope it’s Linux friendly.
they're going to have a hard time challenging Intel with only 8 laptops...
Don't know if you've tried an Apple laptop, but if Nvidia manage to ship the same kind of performance ( speed and battery life ), but running Windows - then if I were Intel I'd be extremely worried.
Obviously Nvidia can't control the Windows part, but if they are targeting gaming as the primary market, not sure how much Windows api's are involved in that.
Apple does a decent job off challenging Intel with just a few laptops. I suppose it depends on your definition of laptop vs specs. Kinda hard to find out what they mean in TFA with the paywall.
Apple has billions of laptops though.
That's a bit of a stretch. They don't seem to publish much info, but they do publish quarterly shipments. According to macrumors it's more in the range of single digit millions a quarter for their all computers, 4-7 usually.
Maybe, just maybe, they are reaching that billion this decade or so, but looking at those numbers it's rather in the range of 10% of that.
Still a huge number, but that's a fraction of PC market.