Feed: AnandTech
Feed Link: https://www.anandtech.com
---

Title: Report: MediaTek Working on Arm-Based Processor for Windows PCs

Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:00:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21442/report-m...

As Qualcomm's exclusivity for Arm-powered processors for Windows PCs is
reportedly coming to its end, other chipmakers are getting ready to offer
their Arm-based system-on-chips for Windows computers. And, according to a
new report from Reuters, MediaTek will be among the companies jumping into
the Windows-on-Arm field, with plans to launch their first PC processor late
next year.

MediaTek's system-on-chip for Windows PCs will rely on Arm's 'ready-made
designs,' according to Reuters. Which in turn hints that MediaTek would be
using Arm's compute sub-system (CSS) for client PCs, a building block
designed to significantly speed up development of SoCs.

With the vauge nature of the Reuters report, however, which version of Arm's
IP MediaTek might be using remains unclear, and the answer to that will
largely hinge on timing. Arm refreshes its client cores and IP offerings
yearly - typically announcing them to the public in May - with finished chips
rolling out as early as later in the year. So depending on just how late in
the year MediaTek is planning to launch their chip, the company has a large
enough window to potentially use either the current 2024 client designs, or
next year's 2025 designs.

For reference, Arm's 2024 CSS for client systems is quite powerful on its
own. It includes two ultra-high-performance Arm Cortex-X925 cores (each with
up to 3MB L2 cache and clock speeds over 3.60 GHz, supporting SVE and SVE2),
four high-performance Cortex-A725 cores, two energy-efficient Cortex-A520
cores, and an Immortalis-G925 graphics processor. And, of course, MediaTek
has the expertise to skip Arm's CSS and build their own bespoke designs as
well, if that's what they'd prefer.

Overall, the latest client designs from Arm can accommodate up to 14 CPU
cores - Arm intentionally leaves headroom for designs to be scaled-up for
laptops - which would make for quite a formidable chip. But the PC SoC market
has no shortage of capable contenders with their own designs; besides
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors, MediaTek would also be going up against
the latest designs from Intel and AMD. All of whom are planning to make big
plays for the mobile PC market in the next several months. So MediaTek will
need to make a serious effort if their effort to jump into the PC SoC market
are to succeed.

Since 2016, Microsoft has partnered with Qualcomm to bring Arm's processor
architecture, which is widely used in smartphones, to Windows PCs. Qualcomm
has an exclusive agreement to supply these chips for the next several months
(the exact timing remains unclear), after which other designers like MediaTek
can enter the market. Qualcomm, for its part, has benefited greatly from
collaborating with Microsoft, so it will be interesting to see if Microsoft
extends a similar hand out to other Arm chip makers.

Ultimately, the market for Arm PC SoCs has the potential to get crowded
quickly. According to previous reports from Reuters, both AMD and NVIDIA are
also developing Arm-based chips for Windows. So if all of those projects come
to fruition, there could potentially be several Arm SoCs available to PC
manufacturers around the same time. All of which would be a massive change
from the past 20 years of the PC, where Intel and AMD have been the entire
market.

Both MediaTek and Microsoft have declined to comment on the ongoing
developments, the news agency states.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528