Report: NVIDIA and AMD to Compete with Qualcomm in Market for Arm-Based PCs

Terry Myerson told me that the plan was always for there to be multiple chipset makers for Windows on Arm-based PCs. And that vision may finally be coming to fruition after years of Qualcomm exclusivity: Reuters reports that both NVIDIA and AMD could enter this market as soon as 2025.

NVIDIA has allegedly been working on these chipsets for years, Reuters’s sources say, and while Windows on Arm (WOA) has been a notable failure for everyone involved so far, Qualcomm will announce its newest-generation Snapdragon chipsets for PCs tomorrow. And they will allegedly offer “next-level performance,” addressing the most obvious remaining issue with this platform. According to Reuters, tomorrow’s Qualcomm event will be attended by Microsoft executives, including vice president of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri.

If any of these companies could make a compelling Arm chipset for PCs, it could seriously disrupt the market, which has to date been dominated by Intel. But the microprocessor giant ignored Microsoft’s calls for more power-efficient PC chipsets for years—if not decades—which led to it turning to Qualcomm for WOA in the first place. But Qualcomm’s efforts thus far have been lackluster, though each generation in turn has seen steady performance improvements.

Reuters also confirmed a long-standing rumor: Yes, Microsoft gave Qualcomm the exclusive rights to WOA chipsets, but that deal ends in 2024, opening the door for NVIDIA, AMD, and others. And “Microsoft has encouraged others to enter the market once that exclusivity deal expires, the two sources told Reuters.”