Tuesday, January 25th 2022
NVIDIA Arm Deal Said to be Over According to Bloomberg
It appears that NVIDIA is getting ready to give up on its acquisition attempt of Arm, at least if news coming via Bloomberg is correct. Due to a paywall we can't access the original story, but the reason for the possible end to the deal seems to be issues related to getting government approval. The US$40 billion deal has rubbed many of Arm's partners the wrong way as well, as they don't trust NVIDIA to continue to license future Arm based processor cores to them, had the deal gone through.
At the same time, Arm has tried to convince the UK government that it will suffer terribly if NVIDIA isn't allowed to buy them, as the company claims to have lost ground to Intel and RISC-V over the past year. What's also rather bizarre, is that Arm is claiming Qualcomm is one of its competitors, despite Qualcomm being one of its licensees. On top of that, Arm also claims that "Architectural licensees do not use Arm's CPU designs. Arm architectural licensees create their own proprietary CPU designs using their own engineering teams", as part of their reasoning as to why its customers are their competitors. We suggest reading the EE Times article linked in the sources below for more details with regards to the claims Arm has filed with the UK government. The deal with NVIDIA might not be quite over as yet, but it looks like Softbank might have to consider other alternatives for Arm, if it really falls through.
Sources:
Bloomberg (paywall), EE Times
At the same time, Arm has tried to convince the UK government that it will suffer terribly if NVIDIA isn't allowed to buy them, as the company claims to have lost ground to Intel and RISC-V over the past year. What's also rather bizarre, is that Arm is claiming Qualcomm is one of its competitors, despite Qualcomm being one of its licensees. On top of that, Arm also claims that "Architectural licensees do not use Arm's CPU designs. Arm architectural licensees create their own proprietary CPU designs using their own engineering teams", as part of their reasoning as to why its customers are their competitors. We suggest reading the EE Times article linked in the sources below for more details with regards to the claims Arm has filed with the UK government. The deal with NVIDIA might not be quite over as yet, but it looks like Softbank might have to consider other alternatives for Arm, if it really falls through.
49 Comments on NVIDIA Arm Deal Said to be Over According to Bloomberg
www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-how-arms-business-model-works/3
www.anandtech.com/show/10366/arm-built-on-cortex-license
Also, I don't think Qualcomm is in that bucket any more, even though they call their CPU cores Kryo, they're doing a lot less customization than they used to in the past, as it was both expensive and time consuming. Apple seems to be one of the few who's doing extensive proprietary work these days.
It's still bizarre that Arm sees Qualcomm as one of its competitors.
Anyway, Bloomberg's article mostly goes over the regulatory hurdles the deal has faced basically everywhere and the rather fierce opposition it has amassed from nearly everyone. Mostly a rehash of how things have gone until now, just to add some context to the actual news which is Nvidia being ready to accept defeat if things keep going downhill with the regulators.
I suggest reading the EE Times story linked.
Arm China pretty much stole Arm's intellectual property and became its own thing.
www.techpowerup.com/270474/arm-china-goes-rogue-ex-ceo-blocking-the-business
It's all explained better here: www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-how-arms-business-model-works/3
This was about Arm claiming that their customers are their competitors.
It's also not hard to paint Qualcomm as a competitor for ARM. When you, as a system builder, decide to buy chips, you have a choice of ARM standard vs Snapdragon. At that level, Qualcomm is the competition. And tomorrow, who knows, Qualcomm may start selling RISC-V cores instead of (or in addition to) ARM cores. It's a stretch, I agree with you, but not that big a stretch.
I think part of it also has to do with Nuvia, as Qualcomm bought them and is working on server chips based on their ISA. However, so far, exactly zero chips have been released, which makes it vapourware.
I thought the laptop thing was further into the future, since that's obviously a different design. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but beyond churning out the chips, Qualcomm is also going to have to deliver an OS that can run on these chips and utilise the to their full potential.
www.anandtech.com/show/16416/qualcomm-to-acquire-nuvia-a-cpu-magnitude-shift
I'd be tempted to say Elon/Tesla, if only to try and develop more ARM-based automotive solutions and profit off licensing them to other automotive companies and their partners.
On the other hand, I could see Softbank selling or sharing control with other Japanese tech firms who have more experience with managing a tech company, but they'd still have to deal with the rogue China branch.
Linux would be the premiere candidate for OS, but it were the case, we'd have seen some support at least proposed for upstreaming till now. Afaik, that hasn't happened. So who knows, you may be right, it may be vaporware. But I won't admit that till H2'22 has come to pass :D
I think the whole china thing has been written off and largely forgotten about, as they don't have access to everything and obviously nothing new since Arm cut them off. Arm could technically sue any and all of their customers, at least if they try to sell their products outside of the PRC.
The best thing that could happen was if a consortium bought Arm, one that would focus on furthering the Arm architecture and license it to anyone interested. It's unlikely to happen though, so a public Arm might be the best of the available options right now.
The reasons given are confusingly odd, claiming that their customers are their competitors?!
As for the news, no one should be surprised.