Nvidia has approached Softbank and is considering buying ARM Holdings

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uzzi38

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Oct 16, 2019
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Will update with articles as they come out (they haven't yet but news is public). For now just a couple of Tweets:



This is a real significant move for Nvidia, having a huge role in ARM core designs could have major implementations down the line. Most importantly, it secures them a platform and ecosystem down the line.

Oh and I guess Nvidia becomes the defacto standard for GPU IP for mobile instead of Mali. That too.

EDIT: Bloomberg article here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ompany-arm-is-said-to-attract-nvidia-interest
 
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ThatBuzzkiller

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Nov 14, 2014
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Even if no one else would review or block the acquisition, the CCP would've at least stepped up and demanded that there'd be major concessions before the deal could go through ...

It's not just Nvidia that would've faced sanctions from China but SoftBank Group would've likely faced sanctions as well. Are SoftBank Group willing to effectively let ~27.5% (currently worth ~$170B USD) of their stake in the Alibaba Group become paperweight overnight ?
 

DeathReborn

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Oct 11, 2005
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Historically, obviously yes. I guess that it must be a bit less clear how they (& the politicians) might behave post Brexit.

I'd say post Brexit they'll be more erratic, possibly more dogmatic. They will however still approve deals with conditions that they never hold them to account for (Facebook & WhatsApp, Oculus etc re. separate data for example).
 
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Heartbreaker

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Stuka87

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Dec 10, 2010
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Bit of updated news on this item. Qualcomm has contacted regulators in the US, EU, and China that it is against nVidia's proposed acquisition as it fears nVidia will try and become a gate keeper of ARM, which would give them huge power of much larger companies like Qualcomm (and Apple and such). The FTC is currently in the second stage of approval where it has requested information from SoftBank, nVidia, and ARM.

 

Karnak

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Jan 5, 2017
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Qualcomm is not the only one according to Bloomberg, even Microsoft and Google are against the acquisition. Not a surprise IMO. And one of them want's more than just "complain" about it...

Some of the world’s largest technology companies are complaining to U.S. antitrust regulators about Nvidia Corp.’s acquisition of Arm Ltd. because the deal will harm competition in an area of the industry that is vital to their businesses.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. are among companies worried about the $40 billion deal and are asking antitrust officials to intervene, said people familiar with the process who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. At least one of the companies wants the deal killed. Nvidia shares fell 1.6% in New York trading on Friday.
 
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ThatBuzzkiller

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Qualcomm complaining about tech gate keepers, is fine irony.

There's a fine difference between having an industry standard dictated by an oligopoly vs a pure monopoly ...

Qualcomm doesn't have sole control over wireless telecommunications standards since that responsibility goes to 3GPP which includes other corporations like Samsung or Huawei so Qualcomm is pretty much forced to share their power with others inside 3GPP ...

Meanwhile, CUDA as a GPU compute standard has a near total monopoly on the professional GPU compute market is controlled behind a single corporation which is none other than Nvidia!

The last time Qualcomm tried to control wireless standards with their own hands was when they introduced CDMA which didn't see much adoption outside of America and they then established 3GPP2 where other members amounted to nothing more than puppets for Qualcomm since they were calling all the shots around the organization. Both of them ended in failure since CDMA networks are shutting down and 3GPP2 was effectively disbanded so there's practically no legacy symbolizing Qualcomm's unilateral dominance in wireless standards while CUDA has still haunted the GPU compute and professional rendering communities for the last good decade ...
 
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Steltek

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Well, Nvidia is officially facing their first bump in the road (hopefully with more to come) in their quest to buy Arm:


Most governments usually use "national security grounds" to represent the hill they are willing to die on, so we'll see how this turns out.

Plus, they haven't even gotten to the hard part (i.e. China) yet....
 

uzzi38

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Oct 16, 2019
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Well, Nvidia is officially facing their first bump in the road (hopefully with more to come) in their quest to buy Arm:


Most governments usually use "national security grounds" to represent the hill they are willing to die on, so we'll see how this turns out.

Plus, they haven't even gotten to the hard part (i.e. China) yet....
By the way, it's also an investigation into competitive impacts as well.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will prepare a report on the competition and national security aspects of the proposed transaction. The CMA has until midnight on 30 July 2021 to complete and submit this report to the Secretary of State.

From the source: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA Corporation: public interest intervention - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
 

gdansk

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Feb 8, 2011
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Good. We should be keeping UK tech out of US hands.
ARM is thoroughly international at this point. It's already owned by a Japanese company. Designs come not only from the UK but Texas and France too. I'd say ending up in US ownership would not be a problem as long as it some holding company and not a technology company. But Nvidia is rather worrisome given their past licensing behavior.
 

scannall

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Jan 1, 2012
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ARM is thoroughly international at this point. It's already owned by a Japanese company. Designs come not only from the UK but Texas and France too. I'd say ending up in US ownership would not be a problem as long as it some holding company and not a technology company. But Nvidia is rather worrisome given their past licensing behavior.
A consortium of all the big ARM players and everyone wanting a buy in with equal shares to each would be the best bet. Let ARM run itself and be independent.
 
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Steltek

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Mar 29, 2001
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ARM is thoroughly international at this point. It's already owned by a Japanese company. Designs come not only from the UK but Texas and France too. I'd say ending up in US ownership would not be a problem as long as it some holding company and not a technology company. But Nvidia is rather worrisome given their past licensing behavior.

It'll be a big problem for China, though, especially given the worsening status of US/China relations at this point. And China does effectively, for all intents and purposes, have the ability to block the acquisition entirely if they wish.

I expect China's bargaining position with Nvidia will start out as "we wouldn't even bother to piss on you to put you out if you were on fire" and will go downhill from there. Nvidia will have to make MAJOR concessions to get Chinese approval, and any concessions of that level will have repercussions on both US and British approval processes.

With Nvidia being Nvidia, I have every reason to doubt (absent a miracle) they have the ability to pull this off at this point.
 

Thala

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Nov 12, 2014
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Well, Nvidia is officially facing their first bump in the road (hopefully with more to come) in their quest to buy Arm:


Most governments usually use "national security grounds" to represent the hill they are willing to die on, so we'll see how this turns out.

Plus, they haven't even gotten to the hard part (i.e. China) yet....

Indeed i would expect China to be the strongest opponent - having ARM in the hands of a US company looks to me a no-go from Chinas point of view. This holds in particular since it does not matter what NVidia as a company agrees to - as we have seen the US government can easily overrule any prior agreements.
 

soresu

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Dec 19, 2014
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Designs come not only from the UK but Texas and France too.
I think going forward the Austin design team may be moved elsewhere to prevent US claims of ARM tech ownership.

Lessons learned and all that.

It would be a shame for multiple generations of ARM cores of a given design team in the future to become unlicensable to lucrative clients simply because of political factors.
 

Thibsie

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Apr 25, 2017
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I would have thought, some of them.already moved to AMD. Or is this the source of the collab between Samsung and AMD about RDNA for mobile ??