Nvidia has shown off RTX graphics running on ARM processors as a way to showcase the potential performance of non-x86 processors. The presentation is a warning to both Intel and AMD, but it's also an opportunity to discover the power of Nvidia's graphics.
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Nvidia showed off a game, Wolfenstein: Youngblood , and a tech demo (Bistro, from the Open Research Content Archive (ORCA). The video, released for GDC, shows the testbed running the RTX 3060 on a MediaTek Kompanio 1200, which is based on the MT8195 SoC. MediaTek calls these parts “chipsets,” but that word is usually used to refer to motherboard control logic, not SoCs.
The CPU contains four Cortex-A78 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores with an AI processing unit, which MediaTek refers to as an “APU.” The chip uses quad-channel LPDDR4x 2133, but we don’t know how wide the channels are. Overall, it’s a mediocre chip, but the MT8195 does hit a maximum default clock speed of 2.2 GHz on the Cortex-A78 cores. The SoC is typically used in Chromebooks.
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The MT8195 isn't the kind of CPU we'd expect to see in a true ARM-based gaming system, but if it can run RTX games well when paired with an RTX 3060, that bodes well for products that could emerge in the future.
Nvidia has ported five specific features to Linux: DLSS, RTX Direct Illumination, RTX Global Illumination, Nvidia Real-Time Denoisers , and the RTX Memory Utility. DLSS is used to improve image quality by upscaling lower-resolution output to higher resolutions, Direct Illumination supports dynamic lighting, and global illumination is used for ray tracing.
There is Windows support on ARM, but Nvidia chose not to show off a system running Windows. Linux isn't normally considered a gaming operating system, but Valve has announced that its upcoming Steam Deck will ship with SteamOS and run a range of Windows games via Proton. The Steam Deck is based on an AMD APU, but this is still an interesting demonstration of gaming performance.
See also: Linux 5.13: Notable changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V architectures
Nvidia has more reason than any other company to be excited about this launch. If the company's attempt to buy ARM is approved by regulators, it will have the opportunity to make a play to become the leading provider of both GPU and CPU solutions for gaming. Intel is making its own play for that title with its Xe HPG product line, and AMD already holds that position for console gamers.
But no manufacturer has ever claimed a dominant position in both the CPU and GPU markets when it comes to supplying PC gaming. There are still no plans to release this version of Youngblood commercially.
