NVIDIA N1/N1X Chips to Launch in Early 2026

According to The Wall Street Journal, sources familiar with NVIDIA's supply chain revealed that the company's Arm-based PC processors, N1 and N1X, developed in collaboration with MediaTek, are set to launch in the first half of 2026, with major PC makers including Lenovo and Dell expected to adopt them. Earlier reports from DigiTimes suggested that laptops powered by the N1X chip could appear as early as Q1 2026. A leaked shipping list from November 2025 also hinted at a "Dell 16 Premium" laptop featuring the N1X processor.

The N1X is an upgraded version of NVIDIA and MediaTek's previous personal AI supercomputer chip, the GB10 Grace Blackwell, used in the Project DIGITS (DGX Spark) system. The original N1 chip, built on TSMC's N3B process, features a 20-core CPU (10 Cortex-X925 + 10 Cortex-A725 cores) combined with an integrated Blackwell GPU. The N1X builds on this foundation, offering improved performance.

Latest Geekbench data for the N1X shows a 20-core CPU organized into two 10-core clusters with a maximum clock speed of 4.0 GHz. Its Blackwell GPU includes 48 streaming multiprocessors (SMs), each containing 64 CUDA cores, totaling 6,144 CUDA cores running at 1,048 MHz. Benchmark results indicate impressive single-core and multi-core scores of 3,096 and 18,837, respectively, outperforming Intel Arrow Lake-HX, AMD Ryzen AI MAX (Strix Halo), and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors.

Overall, the N1X demonstrates strong CPU and GPU capabilities, with rumored AI performance around 180–200 TOPs, suggesting it could significantly surpass current Windows on Arm PC processors and set a new standard for high-performance AI laptops.

In addition to the N1/N1X line, NVIDIA is also working with Intel on a hybrid SoC that integrates Intel x86 CPU cores with NVIDIA RTX GPU cores in a single package. While the architecture differs from Arm, this upcoming chip promises even greater performance, though it may take several years before it reaches the market.