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Nvidia Quietly Prepares To Abandon $40 Billion Arm Bid (bloomberg.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Artem S. Tashkinov writes: Nvidia is quietly preparing to abandon its purchase of Arm from SoftBank Group Corp after making little to no progress in winning approval for the $40 billion chip deal, according to people familiar with the matter. Nvidia has told partners that it doesn't expect the transaction to close, according to one person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. SoftBank, meanwhile, is stepping up preparations for an Arm initial public offering as an alternative to the Nvidia takeover, another person said.

The purchase -- poised to become the biggest semiconductor deal in history when it was announced in September 2020 -- has drawn a fierce backlash from regulators and the chip industry, including Arm's own customers. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to stop the transaction in December, arguing that Nvidia would become too powerful if it gained control over Arm's chip designs. The acquisition also faces resistance in China, where authorities are inclined to block the takeover if it wins approvals elsewhere, according to one person. But they don't expect it to get that far.
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Nvidia Quietly Prepares To Abandon $40 Billion Arm Bid More

Nvidia Quietly Prepares To Abandon $40 Billion Arm Bid

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  • Good news (Score:3)

    by hatchet ( 528688 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @10:19AM (#62205809) Homepage
    Hopefully this means NVIDIA will focus on risc-v instead. This will be good for everyone.

    • Re:Good news (Score:5, Interesting)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @10:32AM (#62205845) Homepage Journal

      RISC-V is architecturally kind of shit for high performance use. It will be years before anything serious lands in the data center, let alone attempt to make it on TOP500.

      ARM64 threw off the shackles of power miserliness and is finally viable in these markets. Frankly RISC-V has a focus on embedded and ASIC designs and the architects have so far been unwilling to compete with ARM and Intel/AMD and IBM in the areas of high performance computing.

      • Well what if nVidia puts the $40 billion into making that happen? They could pay the world’s top 20 CPU architects $1 billion each to focus a year or two on making it happen. And the other $20 billion can be put into other expenses.

        • It's not a money and development thing. You have to change hearts and minds of RISC-V International for them to make something that is distinctly different than what they currently want to make. It would be simpler to take over SPARC or MIPS or some other IP than for a single large company to attempt to strongarm an international committee. Nasty tactics with RISC-V would be less well received than trying to buy ARM.

          Ultimately all of this signals that most of the world does not want an American company owni

        • Hahaha, oh yea, Nvidia doing something for the greater public good, that's rich!

      • I like RISCV, it's still very early on, but I will be interested in how it gets captured by businesses when it becomes relevant and then transformed into something it wasn't destined to be by major players effectively destroying it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      Nvidia plus Arm seemed like way too much consolidation to me.

      • And regulators agree with you. For probably very different reasons completely unrelated to your gut feeling or sense of fairness.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Klaxton ( 609696 )

          "Opponents of the ideal argue that the merger could allow Nvidia to limit — or even block entirely — its rivals’ access to Arm’s technology." Entirely possible, and maybe even likely seeing as how not much could be done to stop them after the acquisition.

          As for the 'regulators'; "the acquisition was a “direct threat to our security of supply and sovereignty in the UK and Europe”.

          Which is a little odd since "Arm is currently owned by Japanese conglomerate Softbank".

          https:/ [cityam.com]

          • i guess i gotta dig up some old papers about the risks of regional monopoly with processors, what a pain... right now i don't see the problem. but i'm not looking for one either nor am i looking for regional monopoly risks...

          • Some key differences for you and I versus regulators and politicians is that we probably don't personally benefit either way. And we aren't likely interested in using regulation as a means of establishing political influence within our chosen political party.

            I don't really take either side at face value in high profile business deals, I always suspect there is a lot more unsaid than said.

            Long-term I think business school students will have to study this. And while I do want to put the brakes on corporate co

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dagarath ( 33684 )

        nvidia is already an arm licensee, there's nothing stopping them from exploiting the platform from that direction.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Klaxton ( 609696 )

          Arm designs and licenses technology. If Nvidia were to own Arm, they could restrict or allocate licenses as they please, possibly to the detriment of their competitors such as Intel, Apple, Samsung, AMD, Broadcom, etc.

    • It will be good for the Chinese, which base their national CPU development on RISC-V architecture. I see no advantage in helping the Chinese military or Chinese hackers.

  • Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. If Softbank handles ARM in anyway, it's basically a Monkey's Paw arrangement. Hell, things might have been better off if Nvidia won the bid.

    • Re:Softbank? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @11:09AM (#62205957) Journal

      Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. If Softbank handles ARM in anyway, it's basically a Monkey's Paw arrangement. Hell, things might have been better off if Nvidia won the bid.

      Where have you been for the last few years? Softbank has owned ARM Holdings since 2016.

      Although technology-focused, Softbank is basically a hedge fund: their aim is to buy and sell companies to make money. This has meant ARM has largely been left to its own devices, because it's fantastically profitable as-is. Softbank wants to offload it now, because the ROI looks really good now.

      Being owned and a part of NVIDIA would have been quite different, because NVIDIA is a technology company, and many of its competitors are ARM customers. Also, because NVIDIA has its own technology focuses, innovation at ARM may have stagnated or lost focus, or just been subsumed into the whole.

      ARM going public in an IPO is another case, too. There are perils associated with it: strong incentives to deliver short term profit and growth at the expense of long-term innovation, because "shareholder value". There are technology companies that manage the balance fine, but history is littered with the desiccated husks of once proud technology companies that have been hollowed out by finance-focused upper management.

  • So they can go back to making school computers.

  • Good (Score:3)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @11:34AM (#62206033)

    The microprocessor industry is saved. An ARM acquisition would have cut off microprocessor customers eventually.

  • If Nvidia acquired ARM suddenly all licensee's of ARM would be shut out and nvidia would then start to target intel with data centers and then eventually desktop using their GPU's as leverage
    • I do not think that it would "suddenly" affect licensees as licenses with ARM would not magically disappear. Licenses on current designs would not be affected. Generally in the US, a business must honor existing contracts concerning an entity they buy. Future designs could be affected but that that is also contingent on the license. Architectural licenses that Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, and MS have are broader in scope to use ARM technology.

    • Quote: "If Nvidia acquired ARM suddenly all licensee's of ARM would be shut out ..."

      False, unless you can provide an internal document where it says so. Mainly false because when you buy a company, you ALSO buy its contracts.

      Quote: " ... and nvidia would then start to target intel with data centers ..."

      Obviously. ARM has publish his FIRST data center CPU last year of 2021. Is Intel SO AFRAID to have competition? Because I would call that data centers are AS OF TODAY, Intel monopolies.

      Quote: "... and then ev

      • Intelâ(TM)s GPUâ(TM)s are not competitive, nvidia would bundle ARM with its GPU and not offer anything standalone to force adoption, maybe I shouldnâ(TM)t use the word suddenly as people will take it literally, but nvidia would lock out licenses as soon as possible by charging them outrageously
  • The Complete ARM technology portfolio includung upcoming designs have been completely stolen by the Chinese. Buying ARM doesn't make sense anymore given that all it's IP is already available from cheaper Chinese suppliers. Search Google for: The Semiconductor Heist Of The Century Way to go ARM! I WILL NOT BE INVESTING IN THE ARM IPO & NEITHER SHOULD YOU! Pass this message on.

  • Mega corp acquisitions never benefit the consumers

  • Have you noticed that the price of 10$ RPI Zero W 2 has gone up to 70-80$ in Alibaba.com? Shortage of chips....hmm....That's what happens when you counterfeit code inside virtual world.... Can't do chips any more.... Less piss ehm?

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