Samsung wants to put its own AI chip in your next PC: Here's what Gaia could bring

Looking to build on its success supplying storage chips for AI data centres, Samsung is reportedly developing a dedicated AI accelerator for PCs called Gaia, according to a report by the Korea Economic Daily.

Samsung's LSI division has reportedly supplied early samples of the chip to Lenovo and HP for performance testing, with mass production potentially beginning as early as 2027.

Prominent Samsung tipster Ice Universe described the project as the company's return to the PC processor market after roughly 13 years. However, Gaia is expected to differ from a traditional laptop processor. Rather than replacing conventional CPUs from Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm, the chip is reportedly being designed as a specialised companion processor dedicated to handling AI workloads.

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Gaia to be built on a 4nm process

According to the leaks, Gaia will be manufactured using Samsung's 4nm process. Its architecture is expected to centre around an optimised Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capable of accelerating generative AI and other on-device workloads without relying heavily on cloud servers.

Reports also suggest Samsung is exploring Processing-in-Memory (PIM) technology, which enables certain calculations to be performed directly inside memory, reducing the amount of data transferred between the processor and RAM. Samsung could potentially pair Gaia with its own memory products, giving the company greater control over key parts of the AI computing pipeline.

While the reports provide insight into Samsung's direction, they do not reveal details about Gaia's AI performance, power consumption, or other technical specifications. If launched, the dedicated accelerator could enable PC manufacturers to deliver stronger on-device AI capabilities without redesigning entire systems around a new processor architecture.

This would not be Samsung's first attempt at building PC chips. The company previously developed Exynos 5 processors that powered a handful of Chromebooks in the early 2010s. Today, however, Samsung's Galaxy Book laptops primarily rely on processors from Intel and Qualcomm.