Huge industry news to mention this morning! NVIDIA has confirmed they're buying Arm for $40 billion. This news comes after speculation over it for some time, which yesterday was finally announced.
Before getting wild with speculation about what will happen, NVIDIA noted a few keys points about the acquisition. Notably, they will actually keep the headquartered presence in Cambridge, UK and expand the R&D there with "establishing a world-class AI research and education center, and building an Arm/NVIDIA-powered AI supercomputer for groundbreaking research". Additionally, they will be continuing the same open-licensing model that Arm has along with "customer neutrality" and additionally they will be expanding Arm's IP licensing with some of NVIDIA's own tech.
Nothing is actually complete yet though, as these take time to go through all the proper channels. This includes regulatory approvals across the U.K., China, the European Union and the United States which they're estimating to take 18 months. See the full announcement here.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang also sent a letter to NVIDIA employees, which was posted officially online as well. In it, Huang mentions "Uniting NVIDIA’s AI computing with the vast reach of Arm’s CPU, we will engage the giant AI opportunity ahead and advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars, robotics, 5G, and IoT.".
NVIDIA were already a powerhouse, being the most popular desktop GPU brand and now they own Arm. What do you make of this news, what are you expecting to come from it? Let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
That's huge.
(I wonder if ARM would have been a billion cheaper some months ago, before Mac officially changed to ARM and number one of the top 500 supercomputers was taken by ARM. ;) )
Remember the x86 license war against china to make them unable to produce or own x86 chips ?
Now that ARM is a US license, what will allow the US the revoke any ARM or x86 license to leverage decision against ANY country in the world ?
The US already threaten countries all around the globe with their dollars, now they can threaten with x86 and arm licenses to prevent countries to get super computer even for research. In Europe we're already very wary of the US expansionism.
That's the kind of move that will make open architecture like RISC V but also MIPS and others really worth investing. At least in Europe we have STM who studies RISC V and uses MIPS ( or a derivative of MIPS ) for micro controllers on top of ARM.
( I'm using and programming micro controllers in electronic projects as a hobby and I was looking for info about a european manufacturer if there was one, it's franco-italian from what I know, maybe i'll buy some stocks just in case )
Last edited by ElectroDD on 14 September 2020 at 9:19 am UTC
Quoting: BumadarNot much will change in the short run, long run this is bad, licenses will be changed by nvidia as they now both own arm and will get more arm devices themselves and thus compete with the same people they sell licenses to. I guess risc v no longer sounds as bad for a lot of companies.
There is also the potential for abuse of arm's market position by linking gpu licensing to arm.
On the other hand it could be terrible for consumers like acquisition like this see IBM buying red hat there are pitfalls and potential. Am glad they are keeping the offices here in the UK as they are driving a lot of jobs in the area thanks to them and Microsoft UK being based about 5 miles away.
It turns out they also acquired "Arm Norway" which is part of the "Arm Holdings".
At least we'll get to see improved graphics and processing power on Arm platforms be it handheld or small laptops (pinebook for example).
But I'm really worried about open source licencing and " all Nvidia" devices as in Nvidia Arm SoC CPU + Nvidia GPU. They might slowly introduce proprietary optimisation extensions between CPU and GPU that would make the "all Nvidia" system the default consumer choice and lock competitors out (like AMD vs Physx or RTX scenari).
Quoting: GuestI am vaguely worried at a possible license change as nvidia now owns the IP that was sold to competitors. More anecdotal, i wonder what will happen to the MALI GPUs and their open source drivers.
Am guessing they will keep the name and you we start seeing propriety drivers for them on nvidia website, also nothing is going to stop Mesa drivers still working on Mali gpus granted support is still relatively new.
Quoting: Whitewolfe80Am guessing they will keep the name and you we start seeing propriety drivers for them on nvidia website, also nothing is going to stop Mesa drivers still working on Mali gpus granted support is still relatively new.
Yeah, just like nothing prevents to have noveau woking as expected :P
Quoting: NvidiaNVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang also sent a letter to NVIDIA employees, which was posted officially online as well. In it, Huang mentions "Uniting NVIDIA’s AI computing with the vast reach of Arm’s CPU, we will engage the giant AI opportunity ahead and advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars, robotics, 5G, and IoT.".
Quoting: AlsoNvidiaThe transaction does not include Arm’s IoT Services Group.
Are they contradicting them self?
Last edited by x_wing on 14 September 2020 at 1:04 pm UTC
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