NVIDIA and Microsoft tease 'a new era of PC' ahead of Computex, and it's hard not to link this to the fabled N1X chip

NVIDIA has teased a new era of PC ahead of Computex, fueling speculation about the imminent launch of its own ARM-based PC chips. On Friday morning, both NVIDIA's and Microsoft's Windows accounts posted the phrase "A new era of PC" on X, along with cryptic numbers "25.0528, 121.5990," which appear to be latitude and longitude coordinates.

If you plug those numbers into Google Maps, they will point directly to Taiwan, specifically the Taipei Music Center, where NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will host his GTC Taipei keynote during Computex. There is no official confirmation about the announcements, but simultaneous posts from both companies make it clear that the clues were intentional.

Back in October 2023, Reuters reported that NVIDIA had been developing Arm-based CPUs capable of running Windows. Since then, rumors and alleged sightings of the mysterious N1 chip have surfaced regularly. That is where our money is. Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri, who leads Windows and Surface, has already ruled out a new OS version, so Windows 12 is off the table.

That brings us back to NVIDIA's rumored N1 and N1X chips and potential Surface hardware to house them. Earlier leaks for the N1X suggest a total of 20 CPU cores split between 10 performance and 10 efficiency cores, Blackwell graphics packing 6,144 CUDA cores, and RTX 5070-grade mobile graphics.

Several major laptop manufacturers have already confirmed through Computex media materials that they are preparing for the N1X. Dell has an XPS laptop with N1X ready, Lenovo accidentally leaked several N1 and N1X laptops, including a Legion 7 model, and ASUS has now joined the list with a teaser for what appears to be a ProArt laptop with NVIDIA N1.

NVIDIA's entry could intensify competition in laptops, challenging decades of x86 dominance with a powerful high-end ARM processor. With Intel's Wildcat Lake and Qualcomm's Snapdragon C targeting the mainstream market, it will be interesting to see where N1X lands in terms of price and performance. We should get most of these questions answered at NVIDIA's Computex keynote, so stay tuned.