MediaTek’s PD Rajput joins Fierce Network to unpack the sweeping impact of AI on personal computing—from apps to systems to silicon. With language models transforming OS platforms and on-device AI reshaping user experiences, the PC is evolving beyond its legacy CPU roots. At the silicon level, MediaTek is leading with NPUs, enhanced memory bandwidth and parallel processing, all aimed at optimizing AI workloads at the edge. Their recent launches with Google, Lenovo, and NVIDIA showcase a commitment to delivering powerful, agile platforms ready for next-gen AI demands.
Beyond AI, Rajput highlights major shifts on the horizon: chiplet-based design, advanced packaging, and the rise of Arm architecture across personal devices. He emphasizes that agility and execution speed are critical in an industry where silicon cycles can lag behind AI breakthroughs. MediaTek’s open roadmap strategy and long-term planning give partners confidence while enabling rapid response to market changes. In Rajput’s view, AI is the great equalizer—reshaping how companies compete and how users experience computing. In the next five years, expect edge AI and custom silicon to redefine performance, economics, and personalization in the PC market.
James Careless:
Hi everyone, I'm James Careless and I'm here today with PD Rajput. He is associate vice president of MediaTek's Client Computing and Display Business Unit. MediaTek develops system-on-chip solutions for mobile devices, home entertainment, connectivity and IoT products. They are at the cutting edge of advances such as AI for personal computing. PD Rajput Is here to tell us all about it. PD, thanks for joining us here today. What impact is AI having on personal computing?
PD Rajput:
AI is having an impact on everything, right? Specifically on personal computing, it's the same thing. It's on the full stacks, starting from the applications to the system to the silicon. We can even go through each one by one. So if you look at the application space, we see all the productivity apps now coming out with these agents and co-pilots to help. You've seen Notebook LM by Google, which is just an awesome organization and research tool for your desktop or a PC. Obviously it's available on cloud as well.
We just announced a product with Google and Lenovo in the last week and you see some on-device AI applications like smart grouping and image generation as well. So lots of application innovation going on because of AI in the application space, which hopefully all aims to make the user experience extremely good and get away from the drudgery of just managing the system and the device. At the system and platform level, we see innovation on the OS side a lot too. I mean, I think we noticed that the OS itself is becoming a collection of language models, and there are many examples of that.
And then at the silicon level, the innovation is also continuing because now the applications in OS both are kind of based upon this language model or that generative AI-based architecture. So the silicon itself is evolving to ensure it is the best engine for the machine. And we are seeing a lot of innovation in the personal computing space, even on the silicon side with NPUs, with focus on memory bandwidth, focus on parallel computing. And it's not just about the legacy CPU, primarily legacy x86 CPU, which has basically dominated the silicon space for the last several decades. It's all evolving now with AI.
James Careless:
What is MediaTek doing to keep up with the AI trend?
PD Rajput:
We have a focus on really three areas, but first and foremost we are laser focused on building the best silicon and platform for peripheral computing and for AI. We don't pretend to be anything different from that. We are and still are, we aim to be the best silicon vendor on this planet and we continue to focus on that. In fact, and especially with AI, our focus is even more driven with that aim. In the last few months and just including last week's announcements with Google and Lenovo, you would've seen that we have announced some leadership products in AI.
First our announcements with NVIDIA on the GB10 based on DGX Spark, which we believe will usher in a new era of computing for developers generally across pre-training and inference. And in the last week we just announced a Chromebook plus with Lenovo and Google with our Kompanio Ultra silicon, which is the leading silicon with 50 tops NPU or on-device AI in the market. So laser focus on providing the best silicon platform.
Second pillar of our strategy is focusing on ecosystem and software. We are obviously very tightly engaged with Google through our Chromebook partnership and you've seen our announcements with NVIDIA, the two leaders in AI. We are very, very tightly working with them. So we continue to have this partnership mindset. So ecosystem and software is the second one.
The third one that I believe we have been very mindful of about is execution excellence and agility. Silicon cycles are usually three to four years long. Three to four years is like eons in the AI land. ChatGPT came out December '22 if I'm not mistaken, it's less than three years. The world has changed since then. If somebody started building silicon right before then, they're probably still building that silicon now. But so many things have happened in the meantime. LLMs, SLMs, the inference time compute, DeepSeek moment, which suddenly has elevated edge AI. All of those things have happened while during the same timeframe of a typical silicon development time.
So what MediaTek is really focused on is ensuring the agility, being able to pivot based upon where customers and market is going. We are also driving some of those changes with our partners. So agility in our development and go-to-market practices is something we are very focused on and that is giving us an edge in being at the leadership in this AI space. So really this three-part strategy, James. I do want to add one more thing in here.
I believe AI is a great equalizer. I believe gone are the days when the size of your marketing budgets will drive the size of your market share. In this era, product performance, product cost and other things like security is what really will drive the best user experience, the best user adoption. So we believe those who have leadership on the product and cost side will be the winners and we believe AI will usher in the era where everybody start from a level playing field.
James Careless:
What else is MediaTek doing in the computer industry to retain its leadership position and what benefits do your actions bring to your customers?
PD Rajput:
James, that's a good question. You probably saw our CEO, Rick Tsai's keynote at Computex last month in Taiwan. He talked about MediaTek's leadership across from edge to cloud. That keynote gave a very good perspective on really what MediaTek is doing and how we are leading across the board. You see that we have a unique building position across each of those compute location from edge to the cloud. I already talked about our focus on the best silicon, focus on ecosystem and execution and agility.
The other thing I would say is that we are very mindful of our product roadmaps and we are very open about it with our customers. We are not trying to solve everything for everyone. We are solving the most pressing problems through our roadmap for the customers, and AI is a north star there. And when we talk about our roadmap with our customers, we give them a long-term view and we bring predictability for them across the segments we play in.
And we just don't talk about the great things about the product. We give them the guidance on, hey, how much will such a product will cost you this year, next year, two years from now or three years from now. So they can plan the entirety of their product and business plan around MediaTek products. So we're being very intentional in our roadmap planning, in our business planning and being very open with our customers so that they can rely on MediaTek as a partner for the long term.
James Careless:
Beyond AI, what other trends do you see affecting personal computing and what is MediaTek doing to keep up?
PD Rajput:
Beyond just AI, there are many trends, especially on the silicon space that are really driving changes in personal computing. Some of these trends started first in cloud hyperscaler space, but we see more and more of the silicon innovations coming into the personal computing space. Let me give you a few examples. We believe chiplets will become very prevalent in the personal computing area. It's obviously pretty much standard now in the data center space. It's definitely going to be the reality in personal computing.
Rise of NPUs, parallel compute engines. It's not new, it's just going to keep getting more and more important. Advanced packaging. Again, very much a hyperscale paradigm coming to personal computing and personal devices. Separately, from a general ecosystem standpoint, the rise of Arm is something that that is ongoing and will continue to get stronger. We are growing our leadership position with Chrome on Arm. Last year we ended the year 20% segment share within the Chromebook space and we are on a very strong trajectory to keep growing that. So we are bringing Chrome on arm strongly to the industry and we have seen Arm growth in other parts of the personal computing segments as well.
And then the last thing is in personal computing, we'll see new business models evolving as well. As chiplets come along, multi-vendor chiplets coming in. It's not just one company doing end-to-end partnerships coming together to build a piece of silicon. So business models will evolve and that will drive how the personal computing industry looks at working between each other.
James Careless:
Where do you expect personal computing and your company to be in five years?
PD Rajput:
James, personal computing has been around for a long time and even in five years from now with the growth from AI, it's just getting supercharged. Andy Grove said it before anybody else. So PC is the ultimate Darwinian device. PC has evolved and stayed more important than ever and it has gone through the cloud era, the phone era, the tablet era. It is still as important. In fact even with the rise of console gaming through Xbox and PlayStation, PC gaming is more popular than it ever has been. So personal computing remains important. It will remain important. AI is going to supercharge it.
One key thing we are seeing is that edge AI is going to be a catalyst for even faster growth, actually. Edge AI has many benefits. I think it's pretty well known, personalization, security, working in offline, more in latency. But what's becoming more clear now, especially after the DeepSeek moment, is the economics of running AI locally is not just a theoretical case anymore. It is really possible. Models can run locally with the right silicon on the device and it will drive a better economic incentive for the users. You don't have to pay for the cloud infrastructure costs as part of your office budgets. So edge AI is a catalyst.
Lastly, over the next few years, we believe custom silicon will play a hugely important role even in the personal computing space. It is very much a standard in hyperscaler area that is going to be very prevalent in the personal computing space. MediaTek we believe will play a very important role as the world evolves into custom silicon for personal use.
James Careless:
PD, thanks so much for joining us today.
PD Rajput:
Thank you, James.