At this week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 conference in Barcelona, Spain, Nvidia launched two lightweight GPUs for thin mobile workstations. Intel also introduced a Core Ultra processor with a built-in GPU. Chipmakers and PC manufacturers are upgrading product lines to address the needs of companies preparing to perform AI-driven tasks within business software. Analyst firm IDC expects PCs to perform those tasks locally with a specially designed system-on-a-chip (SoC). “With many new workloads moving to the workstation that includes AI — modeling systems, graphics creation, video editing, oil and gas exploration, etc. — it makes sense to have a GPU subsystem that can be used for AI acceleration,” said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

Nvidia built its new RTX 500 and RTX 1000 GPUs for AI acceleration within the lightest mobile workstations. The company also sells more powerful RTX GPUs for faster and more expensive midrange and high-end workstations. Nvidia typically launches GPUs for higher-end workstations before addressing the less powerful models, IDC analyst Shane Rau said. “The introduction of these low-end products for laptop workstations will likely see their features move into laptop PC discrete GPUs next.