NVIDIA Announces $40 Billion Deal To Acquire Arm

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Announces $40 Billion Deal To Acquire Arm

The recent rumors panned out and NVIDIA just announced they have reached a definitive deal with SoftBank to acquire Arm...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Buying-Arm

[coder111]

Oh bugger. This means no more ARM for NVidia competitors. At least not long term. Of course current contracts will be honored, and NVidia will keep promising new and open designs. But in reality in the future, effort will be made that NVidia's ARM CPUs are better than everybody else's, and license prices will likely rise, and competition will diminish. This is yet another move that reduces competition in the market. Probably mobile CPU market will stagnate. Not sure what will Apple do- they'll hate being dependent on NVidia for iPhones, but both them and Android need to support legacy apps which won't be easy if CPU instruction set changes (lots of native stuff even on Android).

On the plus side, maybe people will start seriously consider RISC-V...

[skeevy420]

Not sure what will Apple do

RISC-V

You answered yourself

RISC-V or coming back to POWER would be the likely options if NVIDIA does any shenanigans. With Apple and NVIDIA both being American companies, that will make NVIDIA very open to the various anti-competitive laws we have so it's unlikely they'll do anything disruptive in the short and mid terms. Long term, all bets are off.

I have to imagine that GPUs aren't the big sellers they once were and NVIDIA wants a big piece of the mobile pie. I doubt they'll rock the boat too much because there are other chip makers and designers that would love to say "we won't give you that level of bullshit and we're open source friendly" the second NVIDIA screws it up because they want that piece of the mobile pie too. I'm mainly talking about AMD, IBM, and Intel there.

[increasechief]

I have to imagine that GPUs aren't the big sellers they once were and NVIDIA wants a big piece of the mobile pie. I doubt they'll rock the boat too much because there are other chip makers and designers that would love to say "we won't give you that level of bullshit and we're open source friendly" the second NVIDIA screws it up because they want that piece of the mobile pie too. I'm mainly talking about AMD, IBM, and Intel there.

GPUs have never sold better and RISCV is not really ready.

[bachchain]

I wonder how long Nvidia thinks it's going to take for ARM to make back those 40 billion dollars

[sophisticles]

I personally love this news, in 2 years NVIDIA will bring a desktop ARM based cpu that can actually compete with x86, looking forward to it.

[smitty3268]

I personally love this news, in 2 years NVIDIA will bring a desktop ARM based cpu that can actually compete with x86, looking forward to it.

I don't think they care about the desktop, this is all about the datacenter/machine learning market, and potentially future supercomputer opportunities.

[xerom62]

It makes sense now why they suddenly started caring about upstreaming their ARM processor code. The early Tegra chips were completely ignored in mainline.

[tuxd3v]

And so the rumours were true..

So Japan sells ARM to US,
For US companies this is not so bad, in a lot of ways it is better, unless for Intel, AMD and IBM..

I don't know if Apple has something to loose her( since they change ARM Designs themself s),
But in the long term, ARM will strive for a CPU more close to the Data Center, so that they can also sell their Nvidia accelerators together, and in the long run, Apple may have to jump off the wagon..
Maybe in the Long Run could appear the possibility of the Mainstream market( Desktops and Laptops.. )..in this case maybe Apple will be interested..

For Chinese companies, that are right now, almost blocked from ARM technology and communication's too( specially from US Companies.. which ARM is now.. ), this means the end of Chinese chipmakers with ARM.
So, China as being pushing "alternative horses", for the case the rumours were true, and so RISCV will finally arrive, more than ever China will need it..

For Europe, is bad, because Japan was used to be neutral towards Europe, the US is not!
So I believe RISCV alternatives will also start to appear in the coming years, maybe initially as microcontrollers in Europe..

This is also bad for all the Companies that are right now, creating ARM chips for the Datacenter, will be there some uncertainty for them, and especially the ones only dealing with ARM..

In the mobile phones market, this is bad for the world, ARM will spy for NSA and others, and probably, If a alternative arrive( RISCV?? ), I will jump off too..

For Linux, this is not good,
We start to have now Lima and Panfrost drivers for ARM devices and in the long run, will be there a Nvidia graphics IP, with a binary blob..
Also ARM will be more closed, not a so open friendly environment like today started to be( even tough that ARM never helped a lot in this openness, but it also don't tried to unsure everything is closed..giving its costumers a lot of freedom.. freedom that in a lot of ways will disappear.. )

So Japan kicked in the but Europe and China( badly ), not to speak for other regional places..

[coder]

both them and Android need to support legacy apps which won't be easy if CPU instruction set changes (lots of native stuff even on Android).

Android NDK has long supported native compilation for multiple architectures, including x86 and multiple ARM ISAs and ABIs. It's no big deal for them to add another, though I'd assume they already added RISC V by now.