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Rumor: NVIDIA is interested in purchasing ARM (updated)
Nvidia is said to be interested in obtaining chip designer Arm. That is what sources involved in this say to financial news agency Bloomberg. Last week it was revealed that SoftBank, the current owner of Arm, would be considering a sale.
Nvidia has, according to Bloomberg sources, approached Arm in recent weeks about a possible acquisition. According to the sources, other bidders could emerge, but details are not yet known. Four years ago ARM was acquired by Softbank for a sum of 29 billion euros, and since then the value raised. Nvidia may have the means to acquire ARM after having recently been listed higher than Intel, but whether Nvidia's interest will eventually lead to a deal with SoftBank remains to be seen. Should it come to this, it would be the largest takeover in the history of the chip industry. A takeover of Arm will be watched by numerous authorities as many companies depend on its technology. An acquisition of Arm by Nvidia will mean a shift in the market and increase Nvidia's chances of growing in different markets.
Updated: Bloomberg now reports that NVIDIA is in advanced talks:
-- Bloomberg --
Nvidia Corp. is in advanced talks to acquire Arm Ltd., the chip designer that SoftBank Group Corp. bought for $32 billion four years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.
The two parties aim to reach a deal in the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Nvidia is the only suitor in concrete discussions with SoftBank, according to the people.
A deal for Arm could be the largest ever in the semiconductor industry, which has been consolidating in recent years as companies seek to diversify and add scale. Cambridge, England-based Arm’s technology underpins chips in products including Apple Inc. devices and connected appliances.
No final decisions have been made, and the negotiations could drag on longer or fall apart, the people said. SoftBank may gauge interest from other suitors if it can’t reach an agreement with Nvidia, the people said. Representatives for Nvidia, SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.
Any deal with Nvidia, which is a customer of Arm, would likely trigger regulatory scrutiny as well as a wave of opposition from other users of the company’s technology. Other Arm clients could demand assurances that a new owner would continue providing equal access to Arm’s instruction set. Such concerns resulted in SoftBank, a neutral company, buying Arm the last time it was for sale.
A deal for Arm could become the biggest-ever acquisition in the chip industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Arm is owned by SoftBank and its $100 billion Vision Fund. The Japanese group bought Arm, which at the time was the U.K.’s largest listed technology company, for about $32 billion in 2016.
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H83
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#5811491 Posted on: 07/23/2020 03:20 PM
I don´t know if Nvidia has the financial muscle to pull this off but even if they have i hope this doesn´t happen. The last thing we need is another super gigantic corporation with too much power over a certain area. I hate this trend of consolidating big companies in even bigger companies destroying any possibility of competition!...
I don´t know if Nvidia has the financial muscle to pull this off but even if they have i hope this doesn´t happen. The last thing we need is another super gigantic corporation with too much power over a certain area. I hate this trend of consolidating big companies in even bigger companies destroying any possibility of competition!...
thesebastian
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#5811499 Posted on: 07/23/2020 03:51 PM
You don't need to purchase ARM to do that, you can just use ARM cpu cores like Nvidia have been doing for many years.
Tbh it would be a bit of a disaster if Nvidia got their hands on ARM, the whole way ARM works is to license out the architecture, let people make custom stuff and so on. Hence everyone uses it for everything unless they have to use x86 these days.
Nvidia like to close and lock down everything, and I can't seem them not doing that eventually if they get their hands on ARM.
That was my thought too. However, imagine Apple buying ARM. That would be even much more closed.
Anyway I don't think they would close stuff in ARM. Otherwise they would lose money right after investing on it. ( shooting their own feet. )
You don't need to purchase ARM to do that, you can just use ARM cpu cores like Nvidia have been doing for many years.
Tbh it would be a bit of a disaster if Nvidia got their hands on ARM, the whole way ARM works is to license out the architecture, let people make custom stuff and so on. Hence everyone uses it for everything unless they have to use x86 these days.
Nvidia like to close and lock down everything, and I can't seem them not doing that eventually if they get their hands on ARM.
That was my thought too. However, imagine Apple buying ARM. That would be even much more closed.
Anyway I don't think they would close stuff in ARM. Otherwise they would lose money right after investing on it. ( shooting their own feet. )
mbk1969
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#5811506 Posted on: 07/23/2020 04:32 PM
So when they get all parts they can raise the quality of their source code to another level!
Rumor: NVIDIA is interested in purchasing Arm Of A Programmer
So when they get all parts they can raise the quality of their source code to another level!
Ne1l
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#5811610 Posted on: 07/23/2020 08:11 PM
Makes perfect sense..
People who've wanted clusters based on nvidia GPU's have been forced to add an x86 CPU to their BOM (Bill Of Materials) -- All the GPU cluster's I worked on used Intel CPU's but I heard recently there have been more orders using AMD EPYC, even Nvidia use them in their DGX servers. For x86 only software, they could always dig up that Transmeta IP, I think the agreement not to use it has ended.
Nvidia could introduce a new ARM design with all the bells and whistles to keep everybody people happy and then people can licence it if they want to. This would allow Nvidia to put the hooks in place to easily integrate Infiniband and their latest GPU architecture via a SOC ala PS5 / Series X.. they just need to create/use some universal backplane (www.opencompute.org?) and future 'system' upgrades could be like swapping out a GPU or sliding out a node from a BladeCenter.
Makes perfect sense..
People who've wanted clusters based on nvidia GPU's have been forced to add an x86 CPU to their BOM (Bill Of Materials) -- All the GPU cluster's I worked on used Intel CPU's but I heard recently there have been more orders using AMD EPYC, even Nvidia use them in their DGX servers. For x86 only software, they could always dig up that Transmeta IP, I think the agreement not to use it has ended.
Nvidia could introduce a new ARM design with all the bells and whistles to keep everybody people happy and then people can licence it if they want to. This would allow Nvidia to put the hooks in place to easily integrate Infiniband and their latest GPU architecture via a SOC ala PS5 / Series X.. they just need to create/use some universal backplane (www.opencompute.org?) and future 'system' upgrades could be like swapping out a GPU or sliding out a node from a BladeCenter.
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If they follow through on this, I'm not sure how I feel about it.
On one hand, Nvidia will do a better job - their engineers are good and they have the money to speed up the development of ARM (I just hope they don't ruin ARM's efficiency). ARM's Mali graphics are crap and should Nvidia ditch those graphics for their own, that will make ARM much more accessible for tinkerers and hobbyists who want to run more than just Android or a headless system. Nvidia might also make ARM servers more appealing, and, their software developers will make good SDKs and APIs, as they always do.
On the other hand, Nvidia is greedy and pushy. They could make ARM inaccessible to many of the current licensees (especially Qualcomm) and add a bunch of proprietary nonsense to the architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if the price of all ARM chips goes up, especially since their main competitors (MIPS and RISC-V) are already really far behind.