NVIDIA’s Arm acquisition is sure to cause many of the latter’s clients to look for alternative open-source options such as RISC-V, but it’ll also net the company new ones. In a new partnership with MediaTek, NVIDIA has announced that the smartphone (SoC) maker will be using its graphics IP in future Chromebooks. NVIDIA’s GPU architecture will be licensed for use in MediaTek’s MT819x SoCs.
NVIDIA’s architectures have been highly scalable for years now, stretching from the mobile-range Tegra lineup to high-end data center GPUs such as the Tesla offerings. This latest partnership between NVIDIA and MediaTek can be seen as a counter to the AMD-Samsung deal wherein the Korean smartphone-maker will be using RDNA-based graphics in future Exynos SoCs.
Samsung’s RDNA-powered SoCs have been delayed to 2022, giving NVIDIA and MediaTek ample time to come up with a competing solution. However, it’s important to note that unlike the former, the latter was primarily aimed at making SoCs for Chromebooks and convertibles, although we’re likely going to see smartphone products in the future as well. It’s worth noting that NVIDIA and MediaTek were the most prosperous semiconductor companies in 2020, showing the highest growth in the industry by revenue.
