The “Intel Inside” marketing campaign made Intel a household name and the ubiquitous supplier of PC chips in the 1990s.
Today, “Nvidia Inside” has a much stronger sales force.
That’s Nvidia’s bet New PC chip serieswhich will be available for Windows-based computers later this year. With its reputation in artificial intelligence, Nvidia is likely to succeed and potentially upend the order in the PC world that has prevailed over the past five years.
Investors are optimistic. Nvidia stock Increased by more than 6% Shares of Windows maker Microsoft rose more than 2% on Monday. Shares of PC makers Dell Technologies Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. both rose more than 8%. Arm Holdings gained more than 15% after licensing the basic blueprint used by Nvidia in its PC chips.
Considering Nvidia’s PC games may have a limited direct impact on its finances. huge size The company sells artificial intelligence chips for data centers. But the move does allow Nvidia to bolster the market for artificial intelligence computers and disrupt incumbents in the process.
Nvidia is not a new entrant into this market. It has been a staple in PCs for decades with its graphics chips that produce sharper, smoother images on computer monitors, an ability favored by video gamers. But before detailing its latest chips at a trade show in Taiwan, it does not yet produce the central processing units at the heart of PC computing. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices dominate the market.
Nvidia’s new chips, which combine CPUs with the company’s popular artificial intelligence computing hardware, come amid weakness for Intel. According to data from Mercury Research, Intel remains the largest CPU supplier for traditional Windows PCs, with a market share of approximately 64% in the fourth quarter of last year. But Intel and other players in the PC market failed to convince large numbers of consumers or companies to buy new computers because The AI capabilities of their chips.
According to Gartner, PC sales last year were approximately 270 million units, an increase of approximately 9% from 2024. The growth is modest amid the boom in artificial intelligence, which is supposed to transform the way people work and live. The total is still below the 2021 coronavirus-era peak of about 340 million.
So far, most sales AI-enabled computers So far it has been the default. Computer makers are adding neural processing chips to all of their high-performance product lines to enable artificial intelligence capabilities on some devices.
“Buyers buying AI PCs today are not necessarily buying AI for the AI,” said Jitesh Ubrani of IDC, a market research firm that tracks PC sales. “They are doing it because, at a certain level of performance, there is no other choice.”
For Nvidia, PCs are now just a small part of its business. But the company has strong traction in the space, which bodes well for its latest endeavor. Nvidia’s PC-related revenue rose 41% to just over $16 billion in the fiscal year ended in January, driven in part by the company’s rollout of new video game chips. Popular Blackwell Brands. According to IDC, total PC sales grew only 8% during the year.
Whether Nvidia can make further progress in its PC chips will be a test of the strength of its brand and its close ties to the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia may have an easier time selling new artificial intelligence computers to individuals and companies than Intel or AMD or Apple, which also has a line of popular computers that use domestic chips.
Nvidia’s rise won’t be without challenges, the biggest of which may be the software stickiness built around Intel and AMD processors. They use basic chip architecture called x86. But software that runs on x86 processors needs to be tweaked to run properly on Arm-based chips from Nvidia or Apple.
There is now a version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system for Arm-based chips, and as the number of Arm-based PCs grows, software engineers have been developing more programs for Arm. But compared with x86, Arm as a PC platform is still at a disadvantage in software development, including in areas such as games, and games are still an important end market for Nvidia.
But ultimately, Nvidia’s move into PC CPUs could further erode x86’s remaining advantages, especially in Windows-based PCs, where new Arm-based players will struggle to gain a foothold.
“Intel Inside” has been in the works for many years. But in tech, even memorable marketing slogans have a shelf life.
Write to Dan Gallagher: dan.gallagher@wsj.com with Asa Fitch in asa.fitch@wsj.com
