Nvidia's suspected 2025 processor is now rumoured to be built by Intel using off-the-peg Arm cores. Yes, an Nvidia chip built by Intel

Rumoured specs for Nvidia's expected first PC CPU have started floating around the leaky corners of X, with the latest claims suggesting the green team will be plucking off-the-shelf ARM Cortex X5 cores for the processing part of its 2025 chip, all packed in along shiny new Blackwell GPU cores. The weirder rumour, however, is that Nvidia would be using Intel's own fabs to create yet another silicon nail in the x86 coffin.

Intel 3nmMay 23, 2024

Nvidia creating an ARM-based processor after all the AI PC noise of this year makes absolute sense, especially with the historical rumours of the green team's partnership with MediaTek in making laptop reference designs. For the company to be able to create laptops entirely built around its own processors and GPUs would be a win, more so if it can also make inroads into the lower-end market that doesn't traditionally jam its discrete GPUs into thin-and-light lappies.

So, Nvidia builds a system on chip (SoC) that uses Arm's processing cores and incorporates its own graphics silicon as an integrated GPU for a low-power/high-performance chip that it can then sell out to other notebook manufacturers. That feels like a no-brainer. 

The specs rumour comes from @XpeaGPU on X, which claims that it will be a Cortex X5 CPU cluster, with a Blackwell iGPU, and sport LPDDR6 memory on the package. It also states it will be built using TSMC's N3P node, a claim which was quickly disputed by another fellow X rumour-monger, @Kepler_L2. They claim Nvidia will in fact be using an Intel 3nm production process.

They could simply mean Intel 3, because Intel doesn't specifically have a 3nm node per se. But it could also mean the Intel 3-T update which includes Foveros Direct 3D (PDF warning) stacking capabilities to bring chips or wafers from different foundries together. That would mean Nvidia could still stick with TSMC N3P for the building of its Blackwell GPU cores, and use Intel to create the ARM Cortex X5 cores and the base tile on which they