Nvidia opened Taipei’s enormous Computex trade show on Sunday with a spark, literally. The chipmaker unveiled a new PC CPU called the RTX Spark, which it dubbed a “superchip,” and named a who’s who list of PC makers that will soon deliver AI PCs powered by it.
Still, PC manufacturers have not released a lot of specifics about each of their offerings, including pricing. These systems appear to be full-fledged Windows versions of the DGX Spark mini-computer that Nvidia already sells to developers for about $4,800.
I’m expecting this to fall flat on its face the same way Windows RT did.
It’s an ARM based processor, which would be fine for Linux, but they keep mentioning Microsoft and Windows. Microsoft already tried an ARM approach but it failed because it had a very limited software set.
Unlike Linux, almost all binaries are compiled for x86, not ARM. So companies would either have to supply their source code to compile on install, or compile ARM binaries in advance, which I don’t see a lot doing.
Edit: they could also try x86 emulation, which would be even worse and would have its own compatibility and performance issues.
You’d think so, but Windows runs better on snapdragon today than Linux. I was very interested in buying one, but in the current state it’s a toy for enthusiasts.
Windows on ARM with Snapdragon processors is a regular thing right now. I don’t know how well they are selling or how well they perform, but it is definitely past Windows RT 2.0 already. I am pretty sure they are doing x86 comparability.