Rumors that NVIDIA and AMD are developing ARM based CPU chips for PC devices have led to a drop of over 3% in Intel's stock price, which currently dominates PC chips. NVIDIA and AMD stock prices rose nearly 4% and 5% respectively.
The news also stated that NVIDIA and AMD are expected to release PC chips in 2025. Nvidia and Arm did not comment on this to First Financial reporters.
Intel currently dominates PC chips based on the x86 instruction set, and using chips based on the Arm instruction set means lower power consumption, which is crucial for PC devices.
Intel currently holds the majority of the PC chip market outside of Apple, with PC chip sales accounting for over half of Intel's revenue in the second quarter of this year. AMD ranks second in terms of share, and the company's previous CPUs were also based on x86 architecture.
Nvidia's GPU has become an important support for computing power in the era of large models. Although the company also has ARM based CPUs for data centers, Nvidia has not truly entered the PC CPU market before.
Apple has recently shifted its PC chips for laptops from Intel to its self-developed Arm chip processor, and Apple's custom chips provide longer battery life and faster performance for Mac computers. The PC chips currently developed by NVIDIA and AMD are expected to be used in the future to support the operation of Microsoft Windows PC devices.
In the PC market, Apple's self-developed ARM chip has achieved success, which may be the driving factor for Nvidia and AMD to enter the market, as it means huge market space. Currently, Intel's x86 occupies the majority of the market, "Gartner analyst Sheng Linghai told First Financial reporters.
Another chip industry insider agrees with this and told a reporter from First Financial, "The architecture of ARM has vitality. The success of Apple's laptops using ARM's self-developed chips indicates that switching from Intel to ARM chips is not a problem for these large manufacturers
It is also worth noting that Arm went public in the United States last month, and NVIDIA and AMD are both cornerstone investors of Arm. During the IPO, Arm emphasized that it has signed long-term contracts with top chip manufacturers and will use Arm's technology in these chips.
Microsoft's Windows system is working hard to confront Apple's challenges. According to preliminary data from research firm IDC in the third quarter, Apple's market share has almost doubled in the past three years since Apple released its own ARM chip for Mac computers.
Due to the industry's observation that Apple has higher efficiency based on ARM chips and better performance in handling AI tasks, Microsoft also hopes to obtain similar capabilities. Microsoft has encouraged chip companies to build ARM based chips for Windows systems in the past few years. Since 2016, Qualcomm has been producing ARM based chips for Microsoft's laptops.
According to industry insiders, the exclusive agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm to develop Windows compatible chips will continue until 2024, after which other chip companies are expected to enter.
Artificial intelligence has also been Microsoft's most important strategic deployment in recent years. Microsoft recently released an artificial intelligence enhancement software suite, including Copilot, which has become an important component of the Windows system.
At the same time, Intel has also been integrating artificial intelligence features into CPUs in recent years. Recently, the company showcased a laptop that can run features similar to ChatGPT directly on PC devices.