Acer has introduced the Acer SFF RTX Spark, a compact desktop built around NVIDIA's RTX Spark superchip and designed to run local agentic AI workloads. The announcement came on September 2, 2026, at the next@Acer global press conference during IFA 2026 in Berlin. The system targets creators, AI developers, and gamers who want serious compute power without sending data to the cloud.
The machine pairs up to a 6,144-core Blackwell RTX GPU with up to a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU. It offers up to 1 petaflop of AI compute and up to 128 GB of high-speed unified memory. That combination lets users run large language models with up to 120 billion parameters and context windows of up to 1 million tokens. NVIDIA also claims the system can render 90 GB 3D scenes using OptiX and DLSS, edit 12K 4:2:2 video with the Blackwell decoder, and play AAA games at 1440p above 100 FPS with ray tracing, DLSS, and Reflex enabled.
The RTX Spark Platform
RTX Spark is not just another chip. It consolidates AI and graphics technologies for a new class of Windows PCs. The superchip brings together CUDA, RTX, DLSS, FP4, TensorRT, OptiX, Reflex, and G-SYNC in one package. The GPU contains 6,144 CUDA cores and fifth-generation Tensor Cores with FP4 precision. It links to the CPU through NVIDIA's NVLink-C2C chip-to-chip interconnect.
The CPU side is a 20-core Grace processor. MediaTek collaborated with NVIDIA on the custom Arm-based CPU design. This partnership helped NVIDIA craft a processor that balances power efficiency with the demands of local AI inference.
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, framed the moment as a shift in how people interact with computers. "For forty years, you launched apps. Click. Type. With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask, and the PC does the work."
Security and Agents on Windows
NVIDIA and Microsoft developed new Windows security primitives and the NVIDIA OpenShell runtime. These primitives provide identity, containment, policy, and end-to-end security capabilities. OpenShell lets users define agent permissions, route queries to local models based on privacy policies, and obscure personal information in cloud queries.
Agent developers OpenClaw and Hermes Agent are adopting the security layer in new Windows apps. Those apps will execute tasks across applications, reason through cross-app workflows, generate images and video, and semantically search local files. The goal is to make personal AI agents safe enough to run on primary devices.
The collaboration matters because agentic AI needs both compute and trust. Running models locally keeps sensitive data on the machine. The security layer adds guardrails for what agents can access and do.
Creative Software Gets a Boost
Adobe is rearchitecting Photoshop and Premiere for RTX Spark. NVIDIA claims the rearchitected versions deliver up to 2x faster AI, editing, coloring, and effects on the platform. Adobe's Substance 3D Painter and Stager will run natively on RTX Spark systems. Updates to Adobe applications are expected to roll out alongside RTX Spark availability.
Other software is also getting updates. DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction with a second-generation transformer model is coming to Blender 5.3 and dozens of games. RTX Video with 4x Frame Generation is coming to ComfyUI. NVIDIA lists Blackmagic Design, CapCut, OTOY, KRAFTON, NetEase, Remedy Entertainment, Riot Games, and XBOX among the software providers and game developers embracing the platform.
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More than 100 Windows software providers and game developers are embracing RTX Spark, according to NVIDIA. That breadth suggests the platform is not a niche experiment but a serious push across the Windows ecosystem.
Hardware Lineup and Availability
RTX Spark laptops are engineered as slim as 14 millimeters and as light as three pounds. They come in 14- to 16-inch sizes with precision-machined aluminum chassis and tandem OLED displays with G-SYNC. Compact desktops will follow the same design philosophy.
RTX Spark laptops and compact desktops will be available in fall 2026 from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface, and MSI. Models from Acer and GIGABYTE will follow after the initial fall 2026 availability. Acer said availability of its own RTX Spark devices will be announced at a future date.
Acer itself has deep roots in the PC industry. The company was founded in 1976 and now operates in more than 160 countries. It employs nearly 12,000 people across the Acer Group. The SFF RTX Spark desktop fits into a lineup that includes the Veriton RI110 Mini Workstation, which Acer also showcased recently.
What This Means for Local AI
The Acer SFF RTX Spark sits at the intersection of two trends. One is the move toward running agentic AI workloads locally on personal devices. The other is the demand for high compute capacity without sacrificing data privacy. By combining a powerful GPU, a custom CPU, and unified memory, the system aims to handle serious AI tasks on the desk rather than in a data center.
NVIDIA's performance claims are its own, and they are ambitious. The company says RTX Spark systems can render 90 GB 3D scenes, edit 12K 4:2:2 video, run 120-billion-parameter LLMs, and sustain 1440p gaming above 100 FPS. Those numbers, if they hold up in real-world use, would make the platform a genuine alternative to cloud-based AI for many professionals.
The partnership with Microsoft is a key enabler. Windows security primitives and the OpenShell runtime give developers a foundation for building agents that can act across apps with user-defined permissions. That is a different model from today's cloud agents, which often have broad access to user data.
For Acer, the SFF RTX Spark is a statement product. It shows the company can lead with design and engineering in a new category. For NVIDIA, it is another step in making AI hardware a mainstream PC component. For users, it promises a future where the PC does the work, as Huang put it, without sending every query to the cloud.
The fall 2026 launch window will tell whether the platform delivers on its promises. Until then, the Acer SFF RTX Spark stands as one of the most ambitious compact desktops announced this year.