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MediaTek confirms that there will also be cheaper versions of the Nvidia RTX Spark CPU. When asked, the company informed Tweakers that there will indeed be several SKUs, including a physically smaller chip with a maximum of twelve CPU cores instead of twenty.

The cheaper version will have twelve CPU cores, a company spokesperson told Tweakers on the Computex exhibition floor. This concerns a configuration with eight fast Cortex-X925 cores and four more economical Cortex-A725 variants.

There would also be a binned variant of the 'expensive' RTX Spark version. That is physically the same chip, but with some disabled cores due to production defects. This is a model with eighteen CPU cores instead of twenty.

The company seems to confirm previous rumors. Tech website VideoCardz already reported before the announcement that several variants of the chip were coming, in addition to the top model with twenty cores.

Nvidia itself also suggested this by talking about CPUs with 'a maximum of twenty cores'. The company also featured a smaller Spark chip in a keynote image, but did not elaborate on it in detail and did not share any specs. This seems to be the first time that the specifications of the lower models have actually been confirmed from an official source.

| Full Nvidia RTX Spark lineup (via VideoCardz) | |||

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Nvidia DLA as an npu

MediaTek also managed to explain another unmentioned aspect of the RTX Spark. The CPU seemed to have an NPU on board. Microsoft wrote in a blog post that RTX Spark PCs would have "powerful NPUs" in addition to the GPU.

According to the spokesperson, the NPU is based on a certain accelerator from Nvidia, called Deep Learning Accelerator (DLA). This is a physical piece of chip design that is incorporated in MediaTek's CPU chiplet and is specifically intended to perform inference calculations. Nvidia already used such a DLA in several other chips, including some Tegra sockets (although it is not in the Nintendo Switch 2).

It was already expected that the RTX Spark would have an NPU, since the chips are part of the Copilot+ program. These provide certain additional AI functions in Windows, but as far as we know this requires an NPU. In theory they could run on the GPU, but that is less efficient and as far as we know, Microsoft does not (yet) allow that. The further specifications of the DLA used are not known.

RTX Spark in the fall

Nvidia officially announced the RTX Spark chips on Monday after years of rumors. This is a chip for Windows laptops, with up to twenty Arm cores and an RTX 5070-like GPU. MediaTek supplies the CPU part, while the GPU comes from Nvidia.

With the chip, Nvidia officially enters the consumer CPU market. The first devices with RTX Spark chip will appear in the fall. It is not clear whether cheaper models with twelve cores will immediately appear.