Are supercomputers moving to laptops with next-generation chips?

ISTANBUL

Following US-based tech giant Nvidia Corp.’s release of its new series of AI-powered graphics chips at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, the competition acquired a new dimension.

As the competition for AI-based products intensifies, consumers will be able to perform the kind of operations that supercomputers used to be able to do at affordable prices on laptops.

Nvidia on Tuesday unveiled the most advanced consumer graphics processing units (GPUs) for gamers, creators and developers -- the GeForce RTX™ 50 Series Desktop and Laptop GPUs.

The GeForce RTX 5090 GPU -- the fastest GeForce RTX GPU to date -- features 92 billion transistors, providing over 3,352 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS) of computing power.

Nvidia's RTX 5090 will be sold for $1,999, RTX 5080 (1,800 AI TOPS) for $999, RTX 5070 Ti (1,400 AI TOPS) for $749, and RTX 5070 (1,000 AI TOPS) for $549.

GeForce Blackwell comes to laptops with all the features of desktop models, bringing a considerable upgrade to portable computing, including extraordinary graphics capabilities and remarkable efficiency.

Powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, fifth-generation Tensor Cores and fourth-generation RT Cores, the GeForce RTX 50 Series delivers breakthroughs in AI-driven rendering, including neural shaders, digital human technologies, geometry and lighting.

The latest GPUs feature Nvidia’s proprietary Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 4 technology, including a newly developed multi-frame generation function.

DLSS improves gaming performance by lowering a scene’s internal rendering resolution and using AI to upscale the image in real time, allowing for smoother, faster gameplay without a noticeable drop in image quality.

In a news release, Nvidia said DLSS 4 and multi-frame generation will be exclusive to the RTX 50 Series and enable ray-traced gaming at 4K resolution with up to 240 frames per second, marking a major advancement in graphics performance.

Laptops with GeForce RTX 5090 and other 50 series models will be available starting in the first half of this year from several manufacturers, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, GIGABYTE, HP, Lenovo, MECHREVO, MSI and Razer.

Nvidia first introduced its GeForce RTX series in September 2018 as the world’s first graphics chips capable of real-time ray tracing -- a technique that simulates how light behaves in the real world.

In December, another tech giant, Google, introduced a quantum chip called Willow that can complete a benchmark computation in under five minutes, a task that would take today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years, the company claimed.

This breakthrough highlights the potential to overcome current computational limits, enabling advanced AI models to tackle previously insurmountable challenges.

As companies produce AI-based and quantum-related technologies for everyday life technologies, people are likely to see many more high-tech products entering their lives at more affordable prices.