It's official: Nvidia is acquiring Arm

[onetheycallEric]

The big picture: In acquiring Arm, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that Nvidia will build the premiere computing company for the age of AI, which Nvidia has long touted as the future. With access to Arm's IP and the Arm instruction set architecture that underpins Arm-based chips, Nvidia will look to develop its own custom CPUs to fuel an ever broadening push into the data center, AI, big data, autonomous vehicles, supercomputers, and more.

Follow-up analysis: Nvidia purchase of Arm completely resets semiconductor landscape

Nvidia has announced that it has reached an agreement with SoftBank to acquire Arm Limited, in a transaction worth $40 billion financed using common stock and cash. While Nvidia will take possession of Arm and its lucrative IP portfolio, the transaction does not include Arm's IoT Services Group, which will remain with SoftBank.

The transaction is expected to be "immediately accretive to Nvidia’s non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP earnings per share." Additionally, SoftBank notes it will continue to remain invested in Arm through its shareholder stake in Nvidia, which is expected to come in under 10 percent.

There will be several regulatory hurdles to be cleared in the process, and Nvidia notes that the acquisition could take up to 18 months to complete. The deal will require regulatory approval from the U.K., China, the European Union, and the United States.

Nvidia has stated that they will remain committed to maintaining Arm's neutrality in licensing its IP. "Arm’s business model is brilliant. We will maintain its open-licensing model and customer neutrality, serving customers in any industry, across the world, and further expand Arm’s IP licensing portfolio with Nvidia’s world-leading GPU and AI technology," said Jensen Huang in a letter to Nvidia employees.

Furthermore, Nvidia intends to keep Arm based in the U.K., as well as keeping Arm's IP and trademarks registered in the U.K.

Nvidia has committed to make substantial future investments in Arm's home base of Cambridge, with plans to expand Arm's research and development presence, as well as building a new Arm-based supercomputer that will be housed at a new AI research center.

The new AI research center will also see Nvidia and Arm host research fellowships, AI training, as well as a startup accelerator that will build on Nvidia's Inception program. Nvidia will be hosting a conference call and webcast on Monday, September 14, to further discuss the details of the acquisition.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/86727-official-nvidia-acquiring-arm.html

 

[Evernessince]

"Nvidia has stated that they will remain committed to maintaining Arm's neutrality in licensing its IP"

Hopefully the EU makes this statement a requirement rather than relying on Nvidia's non existent good faith when it comes to not interfering with competition.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

"Nvidia has stated that they will remain committed to maintaining Arm's neutrality in licensing its IP"

Hopefully the EU makes this statement a requirement rather than relying on Nvidia's non existent good faith when it comes to not interfering with competition.

No hopefully EU says get stuffed and blocks the move.

 

[Stoly]

NvidiARM

 

[zamroni111]

Wework causes this

 

[EndRessentiment]

This is ridiculous. Is Nvidia trying to ruin mobile tech?
Nothing good can come from this.

 

[Vulcanproject]

It's a blow to the Chinese that's for sure. Major chip designer under the control of an American company and potentially American trade controls. As for many other implications the impact remains to be seen.

 

[Vulcanproject]

No hopefully EU says get stuffed and blocks the move.

One word: Brexit.

Up until the end of this year the UK is subject to EU antitrust law and like most other EU laws has agreed to adopt them straight across to ease Brexit.

But after that transition point the UK regains ultimate sovereignty including decisions made over matters of antitrust. EU jurisdiction no longer applies. They will say it will, but reality is they will have no real avenue to enforce it.

All terms subject to any withdrawal deal of course. It could get messy legally if any investigation and decision was made post Brexit, however this deal is unlikely to be heavily questioned.

 

[Aryassen]

I for one am more worried about NVIDIA itself, on the account of what happened to AMD after acquiring ATI. I know, I know, this is different in a good number of ways, but it is an insanely expensive purchase, and I wouldn't want it to hurt NVIDIA in the end.

At this stage I fail to see the added benefit, especially worthy of that $40 billion. Anyone (including NV) can licence any ARM product, they even make custom designs if required (like for Apple or Qualcomm), so I don't see the breakthrough here. What will be NV capable of doing that they can't do today?

All I can do is to trust Mr Huang that he knows what he is doing (and based on this track record, that he usually does)

 

[Dimitriid]

One word: Brexit.

Up until the end of this year the UK is subject to EU antitrust law and like most other EU laws has agreed to adopt them straight across to ease Brexit.

But after that transition point the UK regains ultimate sovereignty including decisions made over matters of antitrust. EU jurisdiction no longer applies. They will say it will, but reality is they will have no real avenue to enforce it.

All terms subject to any withdrawal deal of course. It could get messy legally if any investigation and decision was made post Brexit, however this deal is unlikely to be heavily questioned.

Does this means that Nvidia could just wait for the UK to approve it in 2021 possibly without much oversight just to flex potentially screw the entire world including Apple who just decided to go full ARM on all their line up?

I gotta think giants like Apple and Samsung gotta be kicking themselves for not at least trying to purchase and now having to potentially start paying Nvidia to the tune of billions.

 

[EndRessentiment]

I for one are more worried about NVIDIA itself, on the account of what happened to AMD after acquiring ATI. I know, I know, this is different in a good number of ways, but it is an insanely expensive purchase, and I wouldn't want it hurt NVIDIA in the end.

At this stage I fail to see the added benefit, especially worthy of that $40 billion, Anyone (including NV) can licence any ARM product, they even make custom designs if required (like for Apple or Qualcomm), so I don't see the breakthrough here. What will be NV capable of doing that they can't today?

All I can do is to trust Mr Huang that he knows what he is doing (and based on this track record, that he usually does)

I don't think you have to worry that way, Nvidia is going nowhere, their financial prospects are only improving. Their business beyond GPU's seems quite broad and healthy.
What's a lot more worrying is how Nvidia could misuse the powerful position they're getting with this purchase. ARM is way too important to be bought by a client of theirs.

 

[SirDigby]

I don't understand why this is a bad thing?
TBH I thought this was really exciting?

 

[Loadedaxe]

This wont get past approval.

 

[Lounds]

This wont get past approval.

Boris's Britain would just ignore any backlash anyways, as long as money is flowing that's all the HM Government of the UK care about.

 

[grumblguts]

No hopefully EU says get stuffed and blocks the move.

UK you mean.
Nothing to do with the EU

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I'm not exactly worried about licensing. Regardless of political back and forth, control of ARM by america VS britian wont change much, if the chinese are cut off they'll just keep making them anyway, they dont particularly care about IP law. Shocking, I know. And Nvidia will not stop licensing, because that is easy money.

The real troubling thought is stagnation. Nvidia's custom ARM architectures have been middling failures. Meanwhile Apple and Qualcomm have both successfully made custom designs int he past that outperformed stock designs. If this design malaise makes its way to stock ARM designs it could stall out the ARM design industry outside of the giants, whcih could lead to stagnation of midrange and lower SoCs that dont make enough money to attract the likes of kyro cores.

 

[poohbear]

If Apple releases a solid ARM-based Macbook next year that rivals or surpasses Intel's CPUs, then x86 is done and we're entering a new era for CPUs. Rumor has it that Apple is producing a 12-core ARM CPU for its Macbooks next year, 8 big cores and 4 small cores.

I don't see how this is bad for Nvidia? It has become an AI powerhouse, this purchase solidifies that. If it can create its own computers vertically from top to bottom with their own CPUs & GPUs then that's phenomenal for them.

Quite frankly , Nvidia CEO Jenseng Huong has run Nvidia like a visionary, his track record speaks for itself. 10 years ago would anyone think Nvidia would be the top semiconductor in the world going far beyond gaming?

 

[Stoly]

I don't think you have to worry that way, Nvidia is going nowhere, their financial prospects are only improving. Their business beyond GPU's seems quite broad and healthy.
What's a lot more worrying is how Nvidia could misuse the powerful position they're getting with this purchase. ARM is way too important to be bought by a client of theirs.

Exactly, nvidia can afford to "waste" that kind of dough, AMD got a huge debt that haunted it for years and it got even worse because it took like forever to see the fruits of the investment.

 

[Stoly]

I don't understand why this is a bad thing?
TBH I thought this was really exciting?

because its ngreedia man, its evil and stuff

 

[mattferg]

Exactly, nvidia can afford to "waste" that kind of dough, AMD got a huge debt that haunted it for years and it got even worse because it took like forever to see the fruits of the investment.

7 years after acquisition they became pretty much the sole supplier of processors to the entire home console industry based off this acquisition. I don't think AMD was haunted by anything.

 

[mattferg]

Later this week:

"Apple quietly finally signs MacOS drivers for nVidia graphics cards"

 

[Stoly]

7 years after acquisition they became pretty much the sole supplier of processors to the entire home console industry based off this acquisition. I don't think AMD was haunted by anything.

given that AMD was tought to go bankrupt, because of its financial problems, more than once during all these years, I beg to differ.

It's only recently (and I mean like the last couple of years) that AMD has become "strong" thanks to Zen and Lisa Su. Its hasn't been long since AMD stock was selling for a couple of bucks.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

7 years after acquisition they became pretty much the sole supplier of processors to the entire home console industry based off this acquisition. I don't think AMD was haunted by anything.

You forget it became the supplier because it was cheaper. Much cheaper. And AMD was desperate for the sales to keep afloat. They very nearly went bankrupt from their ATi stunt, fell behind in CPU benchmarks for a decade (and to this day the last time AMD CPUs held the crown in gaming was 2005), and are still playing catchup with nvidia.

The ATi deal utterly screwed AMD for years, it ended up saving them, yes, but dont forget that ATi's purchase put them into that situation in the first place.

 

[mbrowne5061]

...At this stage I fail to see the added benefit, especially worthy of that $40 billion. Anyone (including NV) can licence any ARM product, they even make custom designs if required (like for Apple or Qualcomm), so I don't see the breakthrough here. What will be NV capable of doing that they can't do today?...

The benefit to them in embedded computing scenarios, like processors for self-driving cars. Right now, most of their offerings in that space make use of ARM technologies, but they were bound by whatever ARM already had on offer. Yes, ARM was working on processors capable of being put to usage in self-driving cars, but they weren't developing purpose-built ones. Now nVidia can instruct them to design the chips they need, to exactly the specifications that they need.

The same will also be true for more traditional embedded products: mobile game consoles, phones, smart watches. Don't forget, ARM is going to get access to nVidia GPU tech as well, so I would expect to see the graphics capabilities of ARM's mobile CPUs to increase as well.