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Nvidia is reportedly in 'advanced talks' to buy ARM for more than $32 billion
SoftBank has been rumored to be exploring a sale of ARM — the British chip designer that powers nearly every major mobile processor from companies like Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, and Huawei — and now, it might have found a buyer. Nvidia is reportedly in "advanced talks" to buy ARM in a deal worth over $32 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Nvidia is said to be the only company that's involved in concrete discussions with SoftBank for the purchase at this time, and a deal could arrive "in the next few weeks," although nothing is finalized yet. If the deal does go through, it would be one of the largest deals ever in the computer chip business and would likely draw intense regulatory scrutiny.
Previously:
(2020-07-12) Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
(2020-07-11) Nvidia's Market Cap Rises Above Intel's
(2020-06-11) ARM Faces a Boardroom Revolt as it Seeks to Remove the CEO of Its Chinese Joint Venture
(2019-10-29) Fed Up Of Playing Whac-A-Mole With Network Of Softbank-Owned Patent Holders, Intel Goes To Court
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @01:34PM (5 children)
The Tegra 2 had some promise but it was quickly outclassed. I think what nVidia is seeing here is an opportunity to break into phones and whatever other integrated devices come next. AMD pretty much has the market cornered for high end GPUs in consoles today, but the Switch uses an nVidia ARM SoC. On phones where the CPU is more important than the GPU, nVidia hasn't really done anything.
Controlling ARM gives nVidia a fresh start on the next generation of phone CPUs, might help nVidia become the supplier for Apple when their GPU project inevitably fails, and maybe even gives them a chance to compete with AMD for the Playstation 6 a decade from now.
Softbank, of course, just wants the yuan. I'm happy to see ARM back under the control of a genuine 100% Western company.
Although I'm an AMD partisan in the desktop GPU wars, this deal is good for the industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @01:37PM (2 children)
Oops.
I thought Softbank was Chinese, not Japanese. So, uh, scratch that bit about bringing them back under control of a Western company. Nothing wrong with Japan.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @03:42PM (1 child)
Aren't Russians the bad guys this week? Yeah, pretty sure it's them or maybe some Middle Eastern desert country. The US is just itching for a war. Is there an election or something happening over there?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @04:41PM
Go home Putler, you are drunk of win on the dictatorship vote. It's been a month, so time to sober up.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 02 2020, @01:40PM
Samsung has partnered with AMD to put AMD RDNA graphics on future Exynos smartphone SoCs.
Samsung and AMD Partner up for Mobile GPUs [soylentnews.org]
AMD GPU for 2021 Samsung flagships impresses in first leak [sammobile.com]
Samsung Exynos 1000 with AMD Radeon GPU rumored to feature only in the Galaxy S21 Ultra, Exynos brand change being contemplated too [notebookcheck.net]
If they end up using RDNA2 or later, maybe Samsung smartphones will end up with real-time raytracing support.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by petecox on Sunday August 02 2020, @06:31PM
Nvidia lost momentum on phones due to a lack of an integrated 4G modem. And when it was clear the Android tablet market was going nowhere, they focused on niches such as cars and their line of Shield devices.
So I can't see Tegra returning to phones unless they partner with, say, MediaTek on 5G where the latter currently integrates PowerVR and Mali GPUs. But such partnerships don't require buying ARM.