Monday, January 13th 2025
NVIDIA N1x SoC Uncovered by Data Miners - Rumored High-end Laptop Chip
Whispers of a brand new high-end Arm-based mobile processor—rumored to be in the works at NVIDIA HQ—emerged late last year. Data miners have since actively searched for any emerging details—initial bits of evidence have seemingly arrived earlier today, courtesy of Hoang Anh Phu (@AnhPhuH) and WalkingCat (@_h0x0d_). An intriguing Lenovo job listing was uncovered—this entry mentions that the candidate will be tasked with "new SoC NV N1x in-house HW design and development." WalkingCat believes that an upcoming Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 16-inch (2025) model could emerge with an NVIDIA chipset onboard—they deciphered this through Lenovo's "platform code" naming system (see screenshot below).
Further speculation points to a possible N-series reveal around Computex 2025—Qualcomm rolled out similar announcement timing last summer with its Snapdragon X processor series. NVIDIA is reportedly collaborating with MediaTek on this new endeavor—high-end N1x and mid-tier N1 (non-X) chipsets are reported to be built on Team Green's recently unveiled Blackwell architecture. Tech watchdogs believe that a TSMC 3 nm node process is on the cards. Anh Phu proposes that the new SoCs are performant enough to hit a performance range of 180-200 AI TOPS. Additional industry rumors point to a potential launch window around the fourth quarter of this year, with roughly three million units ready at the starting line.
Sources:
VideoCardz, Wccftech, AnhPhuH & h0x0d Tweets
Further speculation points to a possible N-series reveal around Computex 2025—Qualcomm rolled out similar announcement timing last summer with its Snapdragon X processor series. NVIDIA is reportedly collaborating with MediaTek on this new endeavor—high-end N1x and mid-tier N1 (non-X) chipsets are reported to be built on Team Green's recently unveiled Blackwell architecture. Tech watchdogs believe that a TSMC 3 nm node process is on the cards. Anh Phu proposes that the new SoCs are performant enough to hit a performance range of 180-200 AI TOPS. Additional industry rumors point to a potential launch window around the fourth quarter of this year, with roughly three million units ready at the starting line.
32 Comments on NVIDIA N1x SoC Uncovered by Data Miners - Rumored High-end Laptop Chip
The HALO cpus from AMD are a threat to their bottom end (4050, 4060 class mobile GPUs). But maybe Nvidia will release some sort of software that is exclusive to their CPU's. Otherwise, only the hardcore Nvidia fanboys are going to reason themselves to buy this.
They have done this before and ironically, became a trillion dollars company thanks to that approach.
They love to find ways to lock you to their hardware and yet people continue wanting them to expand even more.After Apple moved to ARM, they stopped using AMD gpus.
I think they had an AMD accelerator for the AS based MacPro, but not entirely sure.
Anyway.... I think something like could be used for an upgraded Shield TV type device. I still have my Shield Pro from 2019, and it is getting long in tooth.
www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-14-UM3402Y-laptop-review-New-Ryzen-7-7730U-name-old-Zen-3-performance.724864.0.html
Which, in fact, hit over 18 hours. at idle. With wifi websurfing, it only hit 12 hours.
Meanwhile, a similarly sized laptop running the snapdragon elite:
www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-Gen-6-laptop-review-Snapdragon-X-Elite-enables-epic-battery-life.868214.0.html
Hit 22 hours of web surfing, or 12 hours at maximum brightness. This is on a 58wh battery, whereas that zenbook had a 75wh battery.
Oh.....oh dear. Hmmmmm........Just LOL. Do I even need to say anything here?
The 5700u/5800u which came out at the same time as the M1 offered better multi threaded performance, and graphics with 15w power efficiency.
Even though I get more than 12 hours browsing, that's still really impressive. I plug it in for 30 min and it already has 40% of it's battery back. When you do heavy task such as gaming, the battery efficiency really start to even out with x86. Why would anyone in the windows environment sacrifice all the performance and compatibility for more time to browse youtube? We are seeing it firsthand right now the Snapdragon, nobody wants it. I do think that Nvidia have a small religious following that also desire the full Nvidia branding. But outside of that ...
But let's not kid ourselves here. Nvidia is not getting in the game to compete with other ARM SoC's like Apple for coffee sipping trendies at Starbucks doing some light video editing while listening to Spotify. They are getting into the game to compete with AMD (and to a much lesser degree Intel). AMD's x86 SoC poses the biggest threat to their mobile market share dominance. Hard to convince both customers and vendors to pay more money for discrete graphics chips like the soon to be 5050 and 5060 for marginally better or worse performance.
They could get away with this for a while since their 50 and 60 class mobile chips had enough performance gap to justify a premium cost to laptops, but HALO closes this gap entirely. It's a much tougher sale now.
For Apple, no one truly cares what architecture it runs--does it run well (yes), is it efficient (yes), and can it run my software (yes). Apple's execution of Arm is a success.
Now about Qualcomm--does it run well (mostly), is it efficient (mostly), and can it run my software (mostly). There's really not much special about Snapdragon X PCs. They require active cooling and have some challenges with software and hardware support. Whatever you gain with SDX, you could lose somewhere else. They could be a good solution for a particular customer, but certainly not all segments.
Now, NVIDIA is a whole different animal. While we don't know how good their supposed hardware is, we know they should be highly capable of producing a good solution, with a GPU good enough for gaming AND the necessary driver support to make for a good experience. Can they deliver? That remains to be seen, but I won't dismiss their capability here. They have the money to actually deliver, and they partner with developers all the time. Heck, they might even power a SteamDeck someday if they are really serious.
I'll entertain you - what is the consumer going to do with their all Nvidia Yoga laptop? Microsoft can't even convince people that copilot does anything useful.