Rumor: NVIDIA is interested in purchasing ARM (updated)
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Andy Watson
Do nvidia actually have this amount of money? Surely it will be a lot more than $29b now. Apple would be a better bet seeing as they are going into making more their own chips also.
Perhaps softbank need the cash after losing all that money on WeWork.
Embra
Nvidia needs to develop APUs or be left behind by AMD and Intel.
This could happen.
Dribble
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.
BD2015
Nvidia reported $16b in cash in Q1. They could raise the money though, but I agree it would be better fit for Apple - their monetary position is also WAY better.
Undying
Nvidia to take on Intel and AMD? Madness!
schmidtbag
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.
H83
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
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
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
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.
Alessio1989
please no, don't let another company kill another CPU ISA...
Venix
well considering that arm has such wide use on myriads of devices , if nvidia own arm they will sure push the envelop of dethroning the x86 from our desktop computers that really it is already moving that way sooner or later ...it makes sense .
I can see 2 futures about it ..1)nvidia buying em and improving their technology adding their own pushing even faster the x86 cpus out of the market .
2)nvidia trying to close down and increase licence fees forcing their technology to everything as much as they can and suddenly break news ...the new mobile phones have risk 5 Cpus !
and 3rd future ? ...Well i don't know :P i guess nothing changes ?
Interesting either way in such cases you only can sit back and watch really.
Astyanax
nvidia is more likely to buy shares in ARM, theres too much redtape to get through to pull an acquisition off since these chips are used across the industry.
Dribble
I agree about apple, we don't want to loose ARM to apple.
fantaskarsef
Too expensive for a total buy I believe.
Gomez Addams
I am really not sure why Nvidia thinks they need to own ARM. I know they are pushing HPC in some different directions so maybe this is part of that. What I mean by that is they are in the midst of porting CUDA to work on ARM CPUs and that could be huge for HPC. It would mean there is no need to transfer data between a co-processor and the CPU any more. Performance levels could take a significant leap. As we already know, ARM-based chips have been made with eighty cores on them and four-way symmetric multithreading. Imagine that kind of density in a multi-chip module, AMD-style. They could have literally hundreds of cores in a single module, if not thousands. That could make incredibly powerful supercomputers. I suspect this is where they want to go with ARM.
Caesar
These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.
😳
At times i look for "if" there 's any button//or some kinda for "Dislike":)...
............ need to think {OUT OF THE BOX}....
H83
I just remembered that with the current political climate between the US and China, Europe should buy ARM in order to have their own CPU maker and to be independent of the US and China regarding CPUs and their sorrouding infrastructure.
Europe should block any attempt of purchase from any company from the US or from China.
Unfortunetly this type of thinking is too much for the "geniuses" in Brussels that are more interested in wasting time with superflous stuff...
Fediuld
Nvidia can develop an MCM APU using ARM as we speak nothing stopping it. Intel, AMD and several others are making ARM CPUs as we speak for various uses from phones to laptops to servers.
As for Nvidia, is the worst company with a horrible track record on buying IPs and tech companies.
Lets not forget bought 3dfx just to kill the much better competitor, while bought Ageia to kill independent physX cards also removing support of the Ageia cards pretty quickly to the annoyance of their owners.
Lets not forget this.
Nvidia is been worse anti-consumer company than Intel and has the track record to prove so.
moo100times
Rumour has it Nvidia if they were pushing for buyout would be a cash and stock based purchase using their >100% rally in their share price in the last year.
I agree Nvidia buying ARM would kill a lot of the innovation and creativity we are currently seeing, but might push RISC-V forwards in development and use if so.
In other news, Microsoft shows interest in buying tik tok........
