Hardly any product overlapping in Nvidia's acquisition of Arm
Date: 16/09/2020
Graphics and supercomputing chip focused Nvidia decided to buy embedded processor IP vendor Arm. This purchase can create good growth opportunities for the combined biz with no stepping on the product growth of both the company’s well established product portfolios. Can Nvidia continue to offer Arm's IP to its competitors (if any) even after acquisition? One thing is clear, Nvidia can sell Arm IP based products instead of Ips with Nvidia SoC product development strengths and brand, and continue to sell its Arm' IP to other SoC designers.
With huge cache of processor Ips, the mix and match will work out very well for emerging AI processor market. What is missing is FPGA Ips in their IP database. Intel (with Altera) and AMD ( With Xilinx!) both will have that programmable/configurable silicon strength against Nvidia-Arm combine. What threatens all these big processor vendors is emergence of open processor IP RISC-V and more may expected to follow.
Nvidia to pay a total of US$ $40 Billion to Arm, whose main investor is Japan based SoftBank, who is going to hold some stake in Nvidia after the completion of acquisition.
“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “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."
“NVIDIA is the perfect partner for Arm,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp.
On the geopolitical impact, Hermann Hauser, co-founder of ARM written a letter to UK Parliament's foreign affairs committee saying "This will give Nvidia a dominant position in all processor segments and create another US technology monopoly."
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N
