Nvidia just made a $40,000,000,000 acquisition!

avatar

image.png

Nvidia has just confirmed they are acquiring Arm for $40,000,000,000. This is a very interesting development, even without considering the sheer size of the deal.

As you likely know, Apple has a large partnership with Arm for their custom Apple chips that power the iPhone, iPad, and soon the Mac. While this was certainly a big consideration for Nvidia, the fact Nvidia is one of the largest manufacturers of AI hardware is likely one of the driving forces behind this deal.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,”

“In the years ahead, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet-of-things that is thousands of times larger than today’s internet-of-people. Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI."

- Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

The Raspberry Pi is another popular platform that is driven by the Arm chipset. While the Raspberry Pi is relatively small compared to the Apple & Microsoft desktop market share, they have over 27 million devices sold as of last year which accounts for 2.5% PC global market share. For a single chip computer you can fit in your pocket, this is pretty impressive. Although the deal specifically leaves out the IoT Services Group, there is no question this move will have an impact on this space.

Arm has made a bulk of it's revenue through licensing deals of their technology. The Raspberry Pi for example pays royalties to Arm for use of their technology in the Raspberry Pi. Each feature they want to take advantage of has to be licensed.

With Apple going full tilt into development their own Arm based chips to power their entire line up, this will likely revive the Microsoft Windows on Arm market as well. I have already seen a lot of discussion of this as the reality of MacOS being exclusive Arm sets in.

Nvidia will pay Softbank, the company behind Arm, $21.5 Billion in stock with the rest being paid out in cash. There are also other arrangements offered to Softbank like a signing bonus for $2B, $1.5B of equity being paid out to Softbank employees, and an additional $5B based on financial performance.

Nvidia is having a webcast on September 14th at 5:30 AM PT to discuss the acquisition.


Securely chat with me on Keybase

Why you should vote me as witness

Posted Using LeoFinance



0
0
0.000
12 comments
avatar

Love the graphic!
TheMarkyMark, the fastest draw in the Hive :-)

Posted Using LeoFinance

0
0
0.000
avatar

And I thought SAP acquiring Qualtrics for $8 billion was a high price tag.

This is a bold move.

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

Nvidia would probably make more than $40bn by killing ARM. That this move makes sense is clear by SoftBank taking more than half in Nvidia stock.

0
0
0.000
avatar

This will force China to create his own version... Hwawei is on arm right? Sigh i hate nvidia and intel

0
0
0.000
avatar

Nvidia and Intel have both been proven to partake in anti-competitive practices.
Nvidia's PhysX physics libraries and "Made For Nvidia" partner programs are example of this.
If you're running a game using PhysX on AMD GPU's, the PhysX calculations get placed on the CPU which can degrade overall performance. Kind of underhanded IMO.
Then there's Nvidia and Linux: Nvidia refuses to open-source any of their driver components by claiming they are licensing them from someone else. Whereas the newest official Radeon drivers: AMDGPU-Pro, are open-source now.

Then there's Intel, who paid millions of dollars to OEM's like Dell/HP not to give much attention to their AMD-based products.

AMD on the other hand was approached by an Intel engineer with trade secrets, and told Intel about it rather than buying them.

0
0
0.000
avatar

What nvidia does with physx... As i see... Is just criminal... Same with Microsoft and DX... Not even compatible in every Windows platform... Intel nvidia and microsoft are enemies of the technology

0
0
0.000
avatar

If nVidia owns ARM and their own GPU tech, and AMD owns their own x86 chips and the ATI graphics tech they acquired a decade or so ago, where does that leave Intel now? Suddenly they look like a follower instead of an industry leader.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Intel also is losing out on Apple's Mac line as Apple is switching to their own Arm chips. Windows for Arm I think will start picking up steam.

0
0
0.000
avatar

AMD is also powering the next generation of Xbox & Playstation consoles, if I am not mistaken. I suspect the X86-64 family from Intel & AMD will dominate gaming for the foreseeable future, but ARM will likely make huge inroads on consumer-grade equipment due to power efficiency and mobile app compatibility.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Not happy about this honestly. ARM's licensed cores power everything, most notably Apple's chips, but AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, and so many more are using ARM's licensed cores in their products as the central unit, and for peripheral controllers.

There is a possibility that this will make RISC-V(an open source hardware competitor to ARM) pickup in usage by major silicon manufacturers.

0
0
0.000