Nvidia RTX Spark

118 points by shenli3514 12 hours ago on hackernews | 94 comments

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?

try-working | 11 hours ago

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.

jfim | 11 hours ago

That's what they're working on, in theory, with Windows K2.

fhn | 11 hours ago

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.

: twilo | 10 hours ago
I trust them on a daily basis. No issues thus far..

Gigachad | 10 hours ago

Microsoft sees windows purely as a platform to sell AI products these days.

__atx__ | 11 hours ago

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...

SilverElfin | 10 hours ago

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?

: andsoitis | 10 hours ago
> 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.

satvikpendem | 10 hours ago

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.

bentcorner | 10 hours ago

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.

satvikpendem | 10 hours ago

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.

TreeInBuxton | an hour ago

A lot of the app compatibility issues on current machines are down to Qualcomm's poor drivers - the actual core bits are mostly okay.

jqbd | 11 hours ago

They made their own x86 CPU? Or was that part outsourced? Ok ARM MediaTek.

try-working | 11 hours ago

ARM cpu made by MediaTek.

zamadatix | 11 hours ago

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.

: TiredOfLife | an hour ago
This has off-the-shelf Arm cores.

Bulat_Ziganshin | 5 hours ago

I think that Nvidia made GPU and CPU, and Mediatek made other parts of SoC necessary for a notebook. Grace is Nvidia's own CPU ARM core

: SomeHacker44 | 5 hours ago
I believe Grace is an ARM designed core. Vera is the nVidia designed core.

boredatoms | 11 hours ago

Is this just dgx spark, but a laptop?

pella | 11 hours ago

yes, same chip

+ Windows

+ Screen

- ConnectX-7 Smart NIC

zer0zzz | 10 hours ago

What about the desktop version? It seemed like it is not a dgx since it has the CPUs cores done by mediatek

pipyakas | 10 hours ago

desktop is GB300, not GB10 like Spark

: KeplerBoy | 9 hours ago
they also announced a GB10/N1X windows desktop mini PC.

Bulat_Ziganshin | 5 hours ago

They didn't say that Mediatek made the cpu sores. Grace is NVidia's own cpu arm cores. I bet that Mediatek made other parts of SoC necessary for a notebook

cpgxiii | 3 hours ago

The DGX Spark/GB10 has CPU cores from Mediatek (in a pretty odd cluster configuration, too).

pedrocr | 5 hours ago

+ battery too. I've wondered if a mini pc with battery would make for a good form factor. I often move between places where I have a desk with a screen but still use a laptop because I want to just suspend and resume. If a mini pc had a small battery just to hold its RAM while suspended I could move between places and just plug in a single USB-C cable and have my full workstation up and running. The thermals could be better than in a laptop and having a built-in UPS better than with a desktop. But last time I checked no one packaged things like that.

: pbadams | 8 minutes ago
There's the Khadas Mind series of mini pcs. They have a proprietary docking interface though. Agree that it would be great if this form-factor was more common.

cyanydeez | 11 hours ago

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.

xyzzy123 | 11 hours ago

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...

moondev | 11 hours ago

  Spark:
  OS: Windows/Ubuntu
  Mbw: 300GB/s
  Cuda cores: 6000
  GPU accelerated containers: yes


  M5 max:
  OS: macOS
  Mbw: 600GB/s
  Cuda cores: 0
  GPU accelerated containers: no

: xyzzy123 | 10 hours ago
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.

SilverElfin | 11 hours ago

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?

: ptole_my | 57 minutes ago
yes.
no.

porphyra | 11 hours ago

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.

zer0zzz | 10 hours ago

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?

renoir | 11 hours ago

So basically Cerebras style?

: trvz | 10 hours ago
No.
: KeplerBoy | 10 hours ago
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.

zmk5 | 11 hours ago

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…

trvz | 10 hours ago

They didn’t though. Rosetta 2.

: ptole_my | 53 minutes ago
rosetta is a relatively short term solution. will be supported up to macOS 28

supersing | 10 hours ago

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.

aa-jv | 10 hours ago

Microsoft can do the same for windows - they need to address the fat bundle solution that Apple came up with, but for Windows, though ..

SilverElfin | 11 hours ago

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

: EugeneOZ | 10 hours ago
2 comments in total there

mastermage | 11 hours ago

Is this finally Macbook Chip Efficiency coming to Windows or will it just be shittier compatibility for slightly better battery life?

: zer0zzz | 10 hours ago
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.

timpera | 11 hours ago

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.

throwa356262 | 10 hours ago

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.

: jauntywundrkind | 9 hours ago
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...
: fmajid | 9 hours ago
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.

ma2kx | 10 hours ago

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.

Skinney | 10 hours ago

"Unified" means that it's shared between CPU and GPU, I believe.

But yes, it tends to be soldered on.

Bulat_Ziganshin | 5 hours ago

No, but LPDDR means soldered, there are no LPDDR dimms

: debugnik | 3 hours ago
There's LPCAMM2, but it's very recent. The Framework Pro laptop supports it, for example, although only on the Intel variant.

hgoel | 10 hours ago

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.

donkeylazy456 | 10 hours ago

hope nvidia support driver better than qualcomm. also hope they support linux soon.

officerk | 10 hours ago

This will crush the M5 Max going by the numbers. I'm curious to see how much they end up costing

Rekindle8090 | 10 hours ago

M5 max is 3x stronger and 50% more power efficient. nice try though.

: spwa4 | 7 hours ago
... but you'll be rewriting inference for any model that isn't a well-known LLM. Yourself.

Tiberium | 10 hours ago

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.

aenis | 10 hours ago

Nah, still ~300GB/s memory bandwidth. That will be slower than the M5 max, by a wide margin for LLM inference.

pseudosavant | 10 hours ago

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.

: TiredOfLife | 3 hours ago
Qualcomm Snapdragon x1 and upcoming x2 use their Oryon core and have much faster single-thread performance than Intel/Amd and this nvidia soc that uses off-the-shelf arm cores

Tiberium | 10 hours ago

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.

minraws | 10 hours ago

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.

Tiberium | 10 hours ago

DGX Spark is $4700, so I kind of doubt that RTX Spark's top configs will be cheaper than that.

KeplerBoy | 9 hours ago

The DGX also contains the 200 GbE networking and linux support.

Tiberium | 9 hours ago

Laptops will also have to contain a much tighter configuration, display, keyboard, camera, etc ;)

: minraws | 9 hours ago
there is desktop variant as well

fmajid | 9 hours ago

The ConnectX 7 2x200 Gbps networking card in the DGX Spark alone is worth $700

KeplerBoy | 7 hours ago

To be fair the connectx-7 in the spark can't even push 2x200 Gbps since it is connected via 4 pcie lanes.

Ballas | 5 hours ago

Technically it's connected via 8 PCIe gen 5 lanes (two 4x connections), allowing ~100Gbps per port.

: KeplerBoy | 4 hours ago
Thanks for the correction. I should have looked it up; I only remembered it being somewhat odd.

minraws | 9 hours ago

isn't dgx ai first and rtx prosumer first. I think it will be cheaper longer term not atm with component inflation

t_mahmood | 10 hours ago

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

: TiredOfLife | 3 hours ago
DGX Spark has the same soc and ships with Ubuntu

rsolva | 9 hours ago

Will NVIDIA get a monopoly on providing laptops and desktops with a lot of RAM going forward?

nycdatasci | 5 hours ago

No. You can get a PowerBook today with 128 GB ram.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1957120-REG/apple_mbp...

edtechdev | 5 hours ago

Or get an AMD 395 laptop or mini PC for half the price of an equivalent mac device

: berbec | 3 hours ago
https://onexplayerstore.com/products/onexplayer-super-x?vari...
$3649 with 128GB of ram
: igravious | 2 hours ago
https://www.bosgamepc.com/products/bosgame-m5-ai-mini-deskto...
Bosgame M5 AI Mini Desktop Ryzen AI Max+ 395 96GB variant €1.800,95 (sold out)
128GB+2TB variant €2.401,95 (in stock)
I have the latter, it's fantastic

phh | 5 minutes ago

I'm sorry to announce this to you, but the last PowerBook was released 21 years ago

nokeya | 9 hours ago

It was wintel (windows + intel) before. This will be what? Windia? Wintek?

: grassfedgeek | 5 hours ago
Nvindows
: igravious | 2 hours ago
Nvidiows

PeterStuer | 9 hours ago

It's been almost 30 years, and a single letter changed. When will we get the Sparkstation, the UltraSpark and the SuperSpark?

a1o | 5 hours ago

SuperSpark and then UltraSpark. And then we can get SparkCube, Sparkii, and SparkiiU.

: pantulis | 4 hours ago
I'm personally waiting for the OpenSpark.

hs86 | 8 hours ago

I am wary of those ARM-based Windows machines because I am unsure how good the ongoing driver support for those SoCs will be. Will they even outlive the Windows version they currently ship with?

Looking at devices like the NVIDIA Shield gives me some hope that NVIDIA will be better than Qualcomm here. I just hope this is not a case where the OEM has to purchase X years of driver support from the chip vendor beforehand, and that NVIDIA will provide support directly itself.

ChrisArchitect | 4 hours ago

A powerful new chapter for Windows PCs, accelerated by Nvidia RTX Spark

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352693

Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for World Makers

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352627

tonoto | 3 hours ago

What is this product anyway? Is it a general purpose CPU or is it specifically designed for MS Windows? Nvidia stepping back from the open source?

"Introducing the NVIDIA RTX Spark™ Superchip. The fusion of NVIDIA AI and RTX graphics in a single chip redefines Windows PCs and delivers amazing creating, AI development, and gaming—on the slimmest, most beautiful RTX laptops ever and small, ultra-efficient desktops."

: mingus88 | 2 hours ago
It’s nivdia attempting to compete with Apple’s M-series