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Nvidia Reportedly Could Be Pursuing ARM In Disruptive Acquisition Move (hothardware.com) 89

MojoKid writes: Word across a number of business and tech press publications tonight is that NVIDIA is reportedly pursuing a possible acquisition of Arm, the chip IP juggernaut that currently powers virtually every smartphone on the planet (including iPhones), to a myriad of devices in the IoT and embedded spaces, as well as supercomputing and in the datacenter. NVIDIA has risen in the ranks over the past few years to become a force in the chip industry, and more recently has even been trading places with Intel as the most valuable chipmaker in the United States, with a current market cap of $256 billion. NVIDIA has found major success in consumer and pro graphics, the data center, artificial intelligence/machine learning and automotive sectors in recent years, meanwhile CEO Jensen Huang has expressed a desire to further branch out into the growing Internet of Things (IoT) market, where Arm chip designs flourish. However, Arm's current parent company, SoftBank, is looking for a hefty return on its investment and Arm reportedly could be valued at around $44 billion, if it were to go public. A deal with NVIDIA, however, would short-circuit those IPO plans and potentially send shockwaves in the semiconductor market.
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Nvidia Reportedly Could Be Pursuing ARM In Disruptive Acquisition Move

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  • Microsoft has to be concerned about Appleâ(TM)s in-house chip designs. Iâ(TM)m surprised M/S isnâ(TM)t trying to acquire ARM. What am I miss omg here?
  • At this time is this all just talk and nothing has happened yet, with SoftBank even saying they might not sell at all when the price isn't right. Apple also must have shown interest, and also owned Arm once in the past, but currently must have bailed out of the talks. Even Intel has been mentioned as one of the possible buyers. SoftBank only ever bought Arm for profit. Who knows how this will end. I just hope it doesn't end in a disaster deal.

    • Any potential bidder should wait before making an offer for ARM, as Softbank have a terrible track record, and if they decide to get more involved in the management of ARM, the value will plummet.

      Softbank have already made noises about not getting enough money from ARM because they paid way too much for it, which is the start of the beginning of the end.

      Long term a bunch of vultures will be picking over the bones of Softbank, but medium term Nvidia might be able to get ARM for a lot less than Softbank p

      • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        Then maybe Apple waits, and grabs nVidi-ARM after they consolidate. They don't have their own in-house GPU department yet...

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      They'd better do something to make up for the fiasco of WeWork.

    • AMD's stock is up through the roof. This would be the perfect time for them to do a stock swap. In one swoop, that would put them much closer to the size of Intel (at least in terms of deployed devices).

  • Well if this does happen, I hope Nvidia does not lock down arm. But I suspect it could hapen.
    • In that case, everybody involved in ARM will chip in and buy Nvidia together, eviscerate their CEO, take out his appendix, throw away the CEO, and appoint the useless flap of colon as the new Nvidia CEO.

      • by Shag ( 3737 )

        "There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” -- Douglas Adams

      • In that case, everybody involved in ARM will chip in and buy Nvidia together, eviscerate their CEO, take out his appendix, throw away the CEO, and appoint the useless flap of colon as the new Nvidia CEO.

        When you dream man, you DO dream BIG! I hope this particular dream comes true.

        Also, I'm guessing that you're a Philip K. Dick fan? Nothing specific in mind - there's just something about your whole vibe that reminds me of him.

    • Well if this does happen, I hope Nvidia does not lock down arm. But I suspect it could hapen.

      I suspect that the long term effect would be to promote RISC-V.

      • nVidia could buy SiFive for a fraction of the cost of ARM and get ahead of the competition!

        • Re:proprietary ? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Way, Way Smarter! ( 6878018 ) on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:49PM (#60324299)

          nVidia could buy SiFive for a fraction of the cost of ARM

          So? SiFive isn't the only company working on RISC-V cores.

          RISC-V is an open-source ISA. Seeing a commonly used core get locked down would show the benefit of an open-source solution.

        • NVDA has been using RISC-V [riscv.org] in their products [nvdla.org] longer than most other companies. So what? Maybe they should buy themselves?

          For embedded software engineers and ASIC hardware engineers, RISC-V is a great deal. It's flexible enough to adapt to specific needs, but you get to leverage a common set of tools like compilers and verification tests. On the low-end it competes heavily with ARM Cortex-M0, on the high-end it isn't quite there yet. It theoretically can do enough DSP-like work to replace an embedded DSP or

      • That seems too RISC-E

    • What happens to Mali?

      nVidia are a GPU company, first and foremost. I doubt nVidia are that keen on maintaining a graphics IP on behalf of their competitors.

    • ARMs are in everything - to lock it down would be commerically suicidal (for the future Arm division of nvidia, if they bought it). Not to say you couldn't just burn a load of lucrative contracts, but it's unlikely nvidia could buy Arm with petty cash they have laying about - more likely they'd have investors to pay off, so will need the income from existing Arm contracts.

      A more likely move, IMHO, is some embrace and extend. That is, maybe some features that promote the use of nvidia chips alongside an arm

    • by svirre ( 39068 )

      Doing so will destroy the value of ARM. Semicos are currently tied to ARM, not because they particularly want to but none want to be the first to try to take the hit on making a different platform viable. If a new ARM howner forces the issue by denying licensing then it will take less than 3 years before you get a huge surge of RISCV products with enough capital behind it to ensure a successful transition. Semicos will be vey happy to avoid ARM royalties.

  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:16PM (#60324191)

    It does not mean real money. It means "current favorite toy of the gamblers".

    Whose goal is to /extract/ as much real money as possible.

    It says nothing about whether they will do that with or against Nvidia.

  • by ruddk ( 5153113 ) on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:20PM (#60324213)

    As Apple hates Nvidia so much they put inferior graphic chips in their hardware just because the aren’t Nvidia.

    • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      Or Apple just does a hostile takeover of nVidia and kills two birds with one stone.

      • Ahh yes, I look forward to my future GPU: All white with a recessed low profile fan in a magnesium shroud, that thermally throttles every time you load up Photoshop, has a single Thunderbolt port on the back, comes with a dongle pack that weighs more than the GPU to allow you to use "legacy" DisplayPort and HDMI connections, and comes with a proprietary PCI-e rear bracket which only supports cases with glass panels and vertical GPU orientations, because otherwise how will anyone see the Apple logo.

  • Ars Technica has an article about this also. They specifically mention Apple not being particularly interested and that, for many licensees of the technology, it would be a regulation nightmare to buy Arm. Nvidia is a licensee also, but apparently not so much in direct competition with other licensees, if I understood the article right.

    I can't help but think about RiscV though. I wonder if the current owner, Softbank Group, a big Japanese holding company, sees Arm's value as peaking right now, with Risc

    • by seoras ( 147590 )

      I wondered about Softbank's timing too and it did seem to follow Apple's announcement (confirmation) that they would be transitioning MacOS to ARM.
      Yes, I understand that there are regulation hurdles so Apple may not be in a position to acquire or even interested in doing so.
      However Apple's big reveal has put the spot light on ARM being a viable desktop/laptop alternative to the x86 monopoly.
      Nvidia isn't a bad match from the perspective of Apple and other ARM licensees as they sell chips not devices.
      Qualcomm

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Ars Technica has an article about this also. They specifically mention Apple not being particularly interested and that, for many licensees of the technology, it would be a regulation nightmare to buy Arm. Nvidia is a licensee also, but apparently not so much in direct competition with other licensees, if I understood the article right.

      I can't help but think about RiscV though. I wonder if the current owner, Softbank Group, a big Japanese holding company, sees Arm's value as peaking right now, with Risc V l

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:50PM (#60324301)

    Nvidia doesn't know how to play nice with others and if they acquired ARM then it could easily be the promotion of RISC-V as an attractive alternative to ARM for low-end cores. ARM has some great stuff but they are hardly a unicorn in the CPU market.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You underestimate the amount of investment everyone has in ARM. A lot of companies have put a lot of effort into optimizing their ARM based designs and switching now would be expensive, and that's before you even consider the software side of things.

      Nvidia would really have to screw them hard to make it worthwhile.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      Well... when Microsoft bought Mojang, I figured that was the end of the line for Bukkit and other such extensible server implementations. But they've changed absolutely nothing about that, and the only obviously Microsoftian elements are related to the way they port it to everything and use it to garner goodwill as a popular "face". They've left the golden goose, which is the Java version, to continue pretty much on the trajectory it had before the takeover. So it is possible. It just takes a company that h

  • Nvidia loves lock-in tech.

    They will find a way to screw everyone, this would be a catastrophe to ARM...but perhaps a warning to the market and invest in a more open cpu, like Risc-V or POWER.

  • If this were to go through, it would bury the microprocessor market. Arm is in so many chips. Eventually many industries would move to RISC-V

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • There are plenty of cores but I think most people are thinking about chips they can buy like you get from most microcontroller vendors. There are some out there like GigaDevices but a tiny fraction of the number of alternatives like the Arm platform. Most of the RISC-V cores are hidden in proprietary devices from disk controllers to IoT sensors where all software comes from the vendor that may be "building" the chips. These days that work is done in a foundry and the design of the chip may be done by a thi
  • And here I was for years thinking nVidia would wrangle an x86-64 license from AMD.

    I'm so wrong.

  • Not a bad idea. They used to make a great x86-compatible SoC. I own one of the netbooks that uses it and, for the period, its processor and graphics performance were superior to competing chipsets.

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