MediaTek Develop Arm-Based PC Chips To Run Windows

Taiwanese chip design giant MediaTek is developing Arm-based PC chips (photo: x @MediaTek)

JAKARTA - Taiwanese chip design giant MediaTek is developing an Arm-based PC chip that will run Microsoft's Windows operating system. According to three sources familiar with the issue last May, Microsoft launched a new generation of laptops featuring chips designed with Arm Holdings technology.

This chip is powerful enough to run an artificial intelligence application called by the executive as the future of consumer computing. The MediaTek chip is aimed at this endeavor.

The software company's move aims to rival Apple, which has released Arm-based chips for Mac computers for approximately four years. Microsoft's decision to optimize Windows for Arm could threaten the long-standing dominance of Intel in the PC market.

Taiwan-listed MediaTek shares closed up 2.4% on Wednesday, June 12, ahead of a wider index that rose 1.2%.

The MediaTek PC chip is scheduled to launch later next year after Qualcomm's exclusive deal to supply chips for laptops ends, according to two of those sources. The chip is based on a ready-to-use design of Arm, which can accelerate development due to less design work required using the chip components that have been tested.

However, it is unclear whether Microsoft has approved the MediaTek PC chip for the Copilot+ Windows program. Executives at Arm have said that one of its customers uses ready-to-use components to build chips within about nine months for a complete design, which does not apply to MediaTek.

For experienced chip design businesses, state-of-the-art chips usually take more than a year to build and test, depending on their complexity.

In 2016, Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm to lead the transfer of the Windows operating system to the Arm processor architecture, which has long supported their small smartphones and batteries. Microsoft struck Qualcomm with an exclusivity deal to develop a chip compatible with Arm-based Windows until 2024.

As Qualcomm's exclusivity deal with Microsoft is coming to an end, other designers have chosen to build chips to support Microsoft's latest ambitions in using Arm designs. For decades, Windows machines have relied on chip architectures created by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel.

Nvidia and AMD are working on Arm's design for Windows engines. Nvidia's efforts on its PC chip involve help from MediaTek, according to someone familiar with the matter. " MediaTek's efforts for PC chips are separate from its collaboration with Nvidia," said the two sources.