Qualcomm Re-enters Data Center CPU Market with Nvidia GPU Integration

Market IntelMonday, May 19, 2025 10:04 am ET
1min read

Qualcomm, a prominent chipmaker, has announced its return to the data center CPU market with the introduction of a custom chip designed to directly connect with Nvidia's GPUs. This new CPU will utilize Nvidia's NVLink Fusion technology to achieve high-speed direct interconnection with GPUs, a move that extends Qualcomm's capabilities in delivering high performance with low power consumption.

Qualcomm's president and CEO, Cristiano Amon, emphasized that by integrating its custom processor with Nvidia's rack-level system architecture, the company is bringing its vision of efficient, low-power computing to the data center realm. This technological integration is set to significantly enhance communication efficiency between chips under AI workloads, addressing the bottlenecks in traditional architectures where CPUs and GPUs collaborate.

Historically, Nvidia's GPUs in data centers have primarily been paired with CPUs from Intel and AMD. However, with Nvidia's recent entry into the CPU market with its Arm-based "Grace" CPU, the competition in the data center computing ecosystem has intensified. Qualcomm's entry into this market not only provides Nvidia with a new hardware partner but also has the potential to reshape the "CPU+GPU" computing model.

In a recent development, Qualcomm has signed a cooperation agreement with Humain, a Saudi Arabian AI company, to jointly build a data center. This collaboration not only provides an early application scenario for Qualcomm's new CPU but also suggests that the company's market strategy may focus on specific regions and vertical industries, avoiding direct competition with Intel and AMD.