After nvidia's many years of neglecting Linux, paired with direct Microsoft's involvement? Are we going to trust them, to allow installing Linux in these easily?
For anyone curious to know how this will fare against Macbooks, at least in CPU perf: DGX Spark has the exact same GPU and CPU as the top RTX Spark laptops will, so you can just directly compare from that.
Of course, DGX Spark is a miniPC, so laptops will likely be slower due to power limits/throttling.
It won't, the top tier RTX Spark has the same exact CPU and GPU as DGX Spark, so you can check DGX Spark CPU benchmarks to see how it fares. Spoiler: it's about M3 Max level. And they're only coming this fall.
But probably worth clarifying it's not a typical "MediaTek CPU" some might assume by that. It has Nvidia's customized ARM CPU implementation + their GPU.
Looks like the MSI one might be a 2-in-1, if it has good stylus support I might have a good candidate for an upgrade, thought my ~3-4 year old Galaxy Book is holding up alright for now.
I have no idea how powerful or power efficient these guys are, but this seems to be the first step in a bigger push towards Windows on ARM (without loosing gaming).
I think more announcements will follow soon from other companies.
It's worth noting that Nvidia power management on Linux has been absymal. There also aren't any of the usual power management options to see how much power things are using, which is quite atypical for a modern system.
Nvidia really threw stuff over the wall with the DGX Spark release. They don't seem to really care. I sort of think they'll spend a little more time on Windows, where there's no pesky upstreaming to do and they can just do whatever, but man, it's such typical hubris from Nvidia to build such an expensive box with good chips but make it basically unsupportable and roasty hot all the time.
You also generally have to run an ever more stale two year old Ubuntu derived DGX OS to get anywhere, with bespoke kernel and drivers all. None of it is well supported, none of it just works like a comparable PC or even well behaved arm system would.
As for other ARM, there were rumors AMD Sound Wave is/was going to be a ~10W arm APU, but there hasn't been much said about it lately. Honestly given the ram crunch, it's maybe just not worth trying to build a system with a cheap core, if the rest of your costs are going to stay so stratospheric.
https://www.techpowerup.com/341848/amd-sound-wave-arm-powere...
We'll need to wait for the benchmarks, but this looks great! Windows 11 ARM64 is already amazing, and if these really are an upgrade from the Qualcomm chips we're going to have even better laptops on the market.
This may finally be the chip family ARM on Windows has always needed. Qualcomm's chips have always been dogs with slow off-the-shelf ARM CPU cores that have pathetic single-threaded performance compared to x86 AMD/Intel or ARM Apple Silicon designs.
It all sounds good on paper. But I have trouble believing Windows can be a good platform for this. Microsoft has lost all trust after inserting ads into windows, slowly removing power user features, and exploiting every dark pattern they can. And for years, the ARM based Windows laptops have been useless due to app compatibility issues. Why would this change now? Is it priced to be a lot cheaper than Apple’s laptops? Or is this a niche product for AI developers basically?
Anecdotally Windows ARM works fine for me, although to be honest most of my work is command line + browser anyway. WSL works like a treat. Steam installs and most lower end games also play fine on my ARM laptop too. Games that require kernel anticheat don't work.
I think they make a great "second device" where you have something meatier to fall back to if something doesn't quite work right. I'm not sure if it's ready to take on the "main device" role just yet. But it's a far far better experience than the Surface RT days.
The "gaming" take is a strange one indeed for an ARM platform. Hopefully they (Microsoft or Nvidia?) put some real effort into the translation layer. They claim modern AAA games, but it is possible they strongarmed the developers to make them an ARM build for a few select titles...
It's clear gaming was not a major concern, it's just "good enough" for someone running AI models and occasionally wants to play some games, not made to primarily play games.
Yep. I noticed the press releases talk about all the partners they have. It seems like a desperate attempt to manufacture a consensus to invest in this new hardware instead of leaving it sort of abandoned like the other Windows ARM stuff. But the problem is that these attempts end up having a few very visible apps working on the architecture and others not actually doing anything substantial.
Sure the graphics capabilities are probably very good. But if you’re a game developer who has traditionally built on Windows on x86 chips, would you want to invest in this new chip or invest in making games for the Apple ecosystem? Aren’t there more new customers to reach in the Apple world than this new Nvidia world?
> But if you’re a game developer who has traditionally built on Windows on x86 chips, would you want to invest in this new chip or invest in making games for the Apple ecosystem?
Windows and the new chip. Higher developer productivity and higher chances of a substantial audience.
Who cares about Windows, the goal is to run local AI models similar to AMD Strix Halo and Apple Silicon machines. The OS is honestly a distant last concern as long as the models work well, as you could put Linux on these too, but not sure how well wake lock works.
I would never trust Microsoft. Their next drama is revoking Office 2019 perpetual licenses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRnno9VIZx0. It never ends with them because they know they have you by the balls.
Strix halo's 8060S gpu is very weak, and is roughly equivalent to a 4060 laptop GPU, whereas GB10's gpu is equivalent to a desktop 5070. For LLM throughput, tok/s is similar due to bottleneck by memory bandwidth, but the GB10 has 3x faster prefill. People have also been able to squeeze out much better performance on GB10 using NVFP4 and other improvements in the months after the DGX Spark launch, so don't be misled by early lackluster benchmarks. For the RTX Spark, which also targets gaming and creative applications, the 3x faster GPU is quite nice.
I feel like the shape of the market right now for "home lab" inference is:
The sparks are good if your ultimate plan is to spend even more on NVidia hardware in future to run your dev setups at usable speeds. Or, you're developing for a work cluster.
If you mainly want to run local models at acceptable speeds portably, buy a mac with lots of RAM. If you’re happy with non-portable / racked, buy 3090s (dense) or mac studios (MoEs). Buy newer cards if you are restricted on power or slots. If you are rich, buy a6000 blackwells.
Is CUDA really a lead for long? Aren’t all the latest competitive approaches avoiding all the standard software stacks and writing deeply customized software that is very directly tied to whatever hardware they use?
And is it really a way to lock in people? With AI coding tools, isn’t it trivial to write software on top of CUDA and rewrite it to target some other hardware?
The only Question is is it worth suffering hip and x86? I suspect a lot of folks might like a machine that mimics their GB300 But costs less than a dgx.
Also I heard the tensor core instructions on the dgx are gimped and you’re better off with a rtx pro x000. Is that the same with these machines?
I really like this, but I think the reason Apple Silicon took off was that Apple sort of forced devs to support ARM. Not sure if Microsoft can do the same for Windows…
Developers weren’t really “forced” to support ARM. They simply recognized that all future Macs would be ARM, whereas most new PCs would continue to run on x86. So the incentive to adopt ARM was much weaker on the PC side.
Unified RAM means its soldered to the mainboard, right?
I'm not sure if I like this. Sure for a laptop this might be not a big problem but if this ARM ecosystem is a success it will spread to desktop computers and I fear we could lose the existing modularity.
Will NVIDIA get a monopoly on providing laptops and desktops with a lot of RAM going forward?
After nvidia's many years of neglecting Linux, paired with direct Microsoft's involvement? Are we going to trust them, to allow installing Linux in these easily?
I don't think so.
This most likely be a winmodem situation, again
For anyone curious to know how this will fare against Macbooks, at least in CPU perf: DGX Spark has the exact same GPU and CPU as the top RTX Spark laptops will, so you can just directly compare from that.
Of course, DGX Spark is a miniPC, so laptops will likely be slower due to power limits/throttling.
Awesome, won't be buying it all at current prices but once they calm down, I will very much like to get one.
Around 2-3K USD something with a good GPU + CPU + 128GB of integrated RAM is just going to be an awesome experience.
Considering Mac options are north of 5K+ even on a regular day.
DGX Spark is $4700, so I kind of doubt that RTX Spark's top configs will be cheaper than that.
isn't dgx ai first and rtx prosumer first. I think it will be cheaper longer term not atm with component inflation
The DGX also contains the 200 GbE networking and linux support.
The ConnectX 7 2x200 Gbps networking card in the DGX Spark alone is worth $700
Laptops will also have to contain a much tighter configuration, display, keyboard, camera, etc ;)
there is desktop variant as well
It was wintel (windows + intel) before. This will be what? Windia? Wintek?
This will crush the M5 Max going by the numbers. I'm curious to see how much they end up costing
It won't, the top tier RTX Spark has the same exact CPU and GPU as DGX Spark, so you can check DGX Spark CPU benchmarks to see how it fares. Spoiler: it's about M3 Max level. And they're only coming this fall.
Nah, still ~300GB/s memory bandwidth. That will be slower than the M5 max, by a wide margin for LLM inference.
M5 max is 3x stronger and 50% more power efficient. nice try though.
They made their own x86 CPU? Or was that part outsourced? Ok ARM MediaTek.
ARM cpu made by MediaTek.
But probably worth clarifying it's not a typical "MediaTek CPU" some might assume by that. It has Nvidia's customized ARM CPU implementation + their GPU.
Looks like the MSI one might be a 2-in-1, if it has good stylus support I might have a good candidate for an upgrade, thought my ~3-4 year old Galaxy Book is holding up alright for now.
I have no idea how powerful or power efficient these guys are, but this seems to be the first step in a bigger push towards Windows on ARM (without loosing gaming).
I think more announcements will follow soon from other companies.
My DGX Sparks are the first and only devices I have with 200W USB-C PD. Low power by AI workstation standards, but intolerable in a laptop.
It's worth noting that Nvidia power management on Linux has been absymal. There also aren't any of the usual power management options to see how much power things are using, which is quite atypical for a modern system.
Nvidia really threw stuff over the wall with the DGX Spark release. They don't seem to really care. I sort of think they'll spend a little more time on Windows, where there's no pesky upstreaming to do and they can just do whatever, but man, it's such typical hubris from Nvidia to build such an expensive box with good chips but make it basically unsupportable and roasty hot all the time.
You also generally have to run an ever more stale two year old Ubuntu derived DGX OS to get anywhere, with bespoke kernel and drivers all. None of it is well supported, none of it just works like a comparable PC or even well behaved arm system would.
As for other ARM, there were rumors AMD Sound Wave is/was going to be a ~10W arm APU, but there hasn't been much said about it lately. Honestly given the ram crunch, it's maybe just not worth trying to build a system with a cheap core, if the rest of your costs are going to stay so stratospheric. https://www.techpowerup.com/341848/amd-sound-wave-arm-powere...
We'll need to wait for the benchmarks, but this looks great! Windows 11 ARM64 is already amazing, and if these really are an upgrade from the Qualcomm chips we're going to have even better laptops on the market.
hope nvidia support driver better than qualcomm. also hope they support linux soon.
This may finally be the chip family ARM on Windows has always needed. Qualcomm's chips have always been dogs with slow off-the-shelf ARM CPU cores that have pathetic single-threaded performance compared to x86 AMD/Intel or ARM Apple Silicon designs.
Is this just dgx spark, but a laptop?
yes, same chip
+ Windows
+ Screen
- ConnectX-7 Smart NIC
What about the desktop version? It seemed like it is not a dgx since it has the CPUs cores done by mediatek
desktop is GB300, not GB10 like Spark
they also announced a GB10/N1X windows desktop mini PC.
It all sounds good on paper. But I have trouble believing Windows can be a good platform for this. Microsoft has lost all trust after inserting ads into windows, slowly removing power user features, and exploiting every dark pattern they can. And for years, the ARM based Windows laptops have been useless due to app compatibility issues. Why would this change now? Is it priced to be a lot cheaper than Apple’s laptops? Or is this a niche product for AI developers basically?
Anecdotally Windows ARM works fine for me, although to be honest most of my work is command line + browser anyway. WSL works like a treat. Steam installs and most lower end games also play fine on my ARM laptop too. Games that require kernel anticheat don't work.
I think they make a great "second device" where you have something meatier to fall back to if something doesn't quite work right. I'm not sure if it's ready to take on the "main device" role just yet. But it's a far far better experience than the Surface RT days.
The "gaming" take is a strange one indeed for an ARM platform. Hopefully they (Microsoft or Nvidia?) put some real effort into the translation layer. They claim modern AAA games, but it is possible they strongarmed the developers to make them an ARM build for a few select titles...
It's clear gaming was not a major concern, it's just "good enough" for someone running AI models and occasionally wants to play some games, not made to primarily play games.
Yep. I noticed the press releases talk about all the partners they have. It seems like a desperate attempt to manufacture a consensus to invest in this new hardware instead of leaving it sort of abandoned like the other Windows ARM stuff. But the problem is that these attempts end up having a few very visible apps working on the architecture and others not actually doing anything substantial.
Sure the graphics capabilities are probably very good. But if you’re a game developer who has traditionally built on Windows on x86 chips, would you want to invest in this new chip or invest in making games for the Apple ecosystem? Aren’t there more new customers to reach in the Apple world than this new Nvidia world?
> But if you’re a game developer who has traditionally built on Windows on x86 chips, would you want to invest in this new chip or invest in making games for the Apple ecosystem?
Windows and the new chip. Higher developer productivity and higher chances of a substantial audience.
Who cares about Windows, the goal is to run local AI models similar to AMD Strix Halo and Apple Silicon machines. The OS is honestly a distant last concern as long as the models work well, as you could put Linux on these too, but not sure how well wake lock works.
Hopefully MSFT would look at this as a do or die system, and go all in on improving the user and ownership experience. Will they? Not so sure.
Microsoft sees windows purely as a platform to sell AI products these days.
That's what they're working on, in theory, with Windows K2.
I would never trust Microsoft. Their next drama is revoking Office 2019 perpetual licenses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRnno9VIZx0. It never ends with them because they know they have you by the balls.
I trust them on a daily basis. No issues thus far..
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Is this finally Macbook Chip Efficiency coming to Windows or will it just be shittier compatibility for slightly better battery life?
I heard leaked geekbench putting it behind the m3, which is couple years old now.
All I care about is if I can get one of these for significantly less than a dgx and get Linux on it for some cuda Blackwell kerneling.
competitor is already on the market and is x86: AMD AI 395+
bechmarks with DGX arnt spectacular for NVIDIAs software and CUDA lead.
wouldnt count on this being a price/compute challenger. especially with overpriced VRAM.
Strix halo's 8060S gpu is very weak, and is roughly equivalent to a 4060 laptop GPU, whereas GB10's gpu is equivalent to a desktop 5070. For LLM throughput, tok/s is similar due to bottleneck by memory bandwidth, but the GB10 has 3x faster prefill. People have also been able to squeeze out much better performance on GB10 using NVFP4 and other improvements in the months after the DGX Spark launch, so don't be misled by early lackluster benchmarks. For the RTX Spark, which also targets gaming and creative applications, the 3x faster GPU is quite nice.
Or like a m4 max? This thing has <300GB/s vs the max with 550GB/s
All those CUDA cores in the sparks but they're starved for memory bandwidth.
I am still waiting for NVidia to release a system that legit beats 3090 maxxing for the home gamer...
I feel like the shape of the market right now for "home lab" inference is:
The sparks are good if your ultimate plan is to spend even more on NVidia hardware in future to run your dev setups at usable speeds. Or, you're developing for a work cluster.
If you mainly want to run local models at acceptable speeds portably, buy a mac with lots of RAM. If you’re happy with non-portable / racked, buy 3090s (dense) or mac studios (MoEs). Buy newer cards if you are restricted on power or slots. If you are rich, buy a6000 blackwells.
Is CUDA really a lead for long? Aren’t all the latest competitive approaches avoiding all the standard software stacks and writing deeply customized software that is very directly tied to whatever hardware they use?
And is it really a way to lock in people? With AI coding tools, isn’t it trivial to write software on top of CUDA and rewrite it to target some other hardware?
The only Question is is it worth suffering hip and x86? I suspect a lot of folks might like a machine that mimics their GB300 But costs less than a dgx.
Also I heard the tensor core instructions on the dgx are gimped and you’re better off with a rtx pro x000. Is that the same with these machines?
Some other relevant discussions and sources …
NVIDIA and Microsoft Reinvent Windows PCs for the Age of Personal AI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352705
NVIDIA DGX Station for Windows Puts a Trillion-Parameter AI Supercomputer on Every Enterprise Desk
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352691
Introducing Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for world makers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352627
Introducing a powerful new chapter for Windows PCs, accelerated by NVIDIA RTX Spark
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352693
2 comments in total there
So basically Cerebras style?
Not at all. This is a more like what Apple has been doing the past few years. A bunch of decent arm cores paired with a beefy integrated GPU.
No.
I really like this, but I think the reason Apple Silicon took off was that Apple sort of forced devs to support ARM. Not sure if Microsoft can do the same for Windows…
Developers weren’t really “forced” to support ARM. They simply recognized that all future Macs would be ARM, whereas most new PCs would continue to run on x86. So the incentive to adopt ARM was much weaker on the PC side.
Microsoft can do the same for windows - they need to address the fat bundle solution that Apple came up with, but for Windows, though ..
They didn’t though. Rosetta 2.
Unified RAM means its soldered to the mainboard, right?
I'm not sure if I like this. Sure for a laptop this might be not a big problem but if this ARM ecosystem is a success it will spread to desktop computers and I fear we could lose the existing modularity.
"Unified" means that it's shared between CPU and GPU, I believe.
But yes, it tends to be soldered on.
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