Nvidia RTX Spark • Hacker News Board

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#151

Post by rvz » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

chris_money202 wrote: post #135

fg137 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of machine learning workflows support Linux better than Windows, if they run on Windows at all. (e.g. https://docs.vllm.ai/en/latest/getting_started/quickstart/ ) DGX Spark runs Linux, and nobody is going to install Windows on that machine. This laptop got it backwards. If someone decides to run Ollama for local inference with this laptop, they fit perfectly into the "has too much money to waste" bracket, which…

WSL

Believe it or not, Windows (WSL) is the best Linux distro and Nvidia knows that.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#152

Post by TiredOfLife » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #19

try-working wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM cpu made by MediaTek.

But probably worth clarifying it's not a typical "MediaTek CPU" some might assume by that. It has Nvidia's customized ARM CPU implementation + their GPU.

This has off-the-shelf Arm cores.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#153

Post by TreeInBuxton » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #2

It all sounds good on paper. But I have trouble believing Windows can be a good platform for this. Microsoft has lost all trust after inserting ads into windows, slowly removing power user features, and exploiting every dark pattern they can. And for years, the ARM based Windows laptops have been useless due to app compatibility issues. Why would this change now? Is it priced to be a lot cheaper than Apple’s laptops?…

A lot of the app compatibility issues on current machines are down to Qualcomm's poor drivers - the actual core bits are mostly okay.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#154

Post by ptole_my » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #14

cyanydeez wrote: post #10

competitor is already on the market and is x86: AMD AI 395+ bechmarks with DGX arnt spectacular for NVIDIAs software and CUDA lead. wouldnt count on this being a price/compute challenger. especially with overpriced VRAM.

Is CUDA really a lead for long? Aren’t all the latest competitive approaches avoiding all the standard software stacks and writing deeply customized software that is very directly tied to whatever hardware they use? And is it really a way to lock in people? With AI coding tools, isn’t it trivial to write software on top of CUDA and rewrite it to target some other hardware?

yes.

no.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#155

Post by ptole_my » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

trvz wrote: post #26

zmk5 wrote: post #12

I really like this, but I think the reason Apple Silicon took off was that Apple sort of forced devs to support ARM. Not sure if Microsoft can do the same for Windows…

They didn’t though. Rosetta 2.

rosetta is a relatively short term solution. will be supported up to macOS 28

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#156

Post by pbadams » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #77

pella wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, same chip + Windows + Screen - ConnectX-7 Smart NIC

+ battery too. I've wondered if a mini pc with battery would make for a good form factor. I often move between places where I have a desk with a screen but still use a laptop because I want to just suspend and resume. If a mini pc had a small battery just to hold its RAM while suspended I could move between places and just plug in a single USB-C cable and have my full workstation up and running. The thermals could be…

There's the Khadas Mind series of mini pcs. They have a proprietary docking interface though. Agree that it would be great if this form-factor was more common.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#157

Post by phh » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

nycdatasci wrote: post #72

rsolva wrote: post #60

Will NVIDIA get a monopoly on providing laptops and desktops with a lot of RAM going forward?

No. You can get a PowerBook today with 128 GB ram. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1957120-REG/apple_mbp...

I'm sorry to announce this to you, but the last PowerBook was released 21 years ago

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#158

Post by wbolt » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

spwa4 wrote: post #69

Rekindle8090 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M5 max is 3x stronger and 50% more power efficient. nice try though.

... but you'll be rewriting inference for any model that isn't a well-known LLM. Yourself.

AI coding agents can do that pretty nicely already and it will only (slowly) improve over time.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#159

Post by 2001zhaozhao » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

I think this is the first time an ARM windows device gets marketed for gaming. Would be interesting to see what kind of performance hit games have on the x86 to ARM translation layer.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#160

Post by pseudosavant » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

TiredOfLife wrote: post #141

pseudosavant wrote: post #44

This may finally be the chip family ARM on Windows has always needed. Qualcomm's chips have always been dogs with slow off-the-shelf ARM CPU cores that have pathetic single-threaded performance compared to x86 AMD/Intel or ARM Apple Silicon designs.

Qualcomm Snapdragon x1 and upcoming x2 use their Oryon core and have much faster single-thread performance than Intel/Amd and this nvidia soc that uses off-the-shelf arm cores

That wasn't true of the X1, but apparently the X2 (which is only in a single device so far) does appear to finally be fast. The first Windows ARM CPU to be faster than any of its x86 rivals. Competitive with Apple Silicon single-thread performance even.

I was disappointed to see that the RTX Spark has the ARM cores from the DGX Spark. I was hoping it had their new in-house developed cores that Nvidia is starting to use on their latest gen server parts. They look really fast. That said, if RTX Spark has CPU performance like the DGX Spark, it will be almost as fast as the top AMD/Intel parts.