Nvidia CPU's? Nvidia is looking at a takeover bid for ARM

Grim5 · 23 Jul 2020 at 03:32

Reported in financial news today, insiders are reporting that Nvidia is currently in discussion to buy ARM

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ompany-arm-is-said-to-attract-nvidia-interest

Rroff · 23 Jul 2020 at 03:39

I can see this one twisted up in regulatory tape for a long time to come if nVidia's offer gets serious traction - they don't exactly have the best past when it comes to stuff like this.

I can see the strategy in it however - ARM is going to increasingly become a crucial player in the years to come.

eeek · 23 Jul 2020 at 09:40

If you think about it, who else would be willing to pay the price Softbank will insist on being paid.

Nvidia is probably the only game in town..

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 23 Jul 2020 at 09:50

Any customer trying to acquire Arm would trigger regulatory scrutiny. Other companies using its technology would likely oppose a deal and demand assurances that a new owner would continue to provide equal access to Arm’s instruction set. Such concerns resulted in a neutral company -- SoftBank -- buying Arm the last time it was for sale.

Nvidia is not known to play nice with competitors which is a problem,and if you read the article Apple would have been even more of a better fit,but again there is a concern that competitors would have a problem with this. The other problem is if ARM becomes US owned it is under US regulatory insight and export restrictions,so far more red tape in licensing designs. Long-term I can see countries moving away from ARM then if there is more red tape around licensing them. You can see this with X86,which is very limited in who can actually design CPUs around it.

I can see open source stuff such as RISC V starting to gain more traction. OFC our lot allowed ARM to become foreign owned,just like Imagination Technologies. Softbank is already going to keep some parts of ARM,so another UK based company is slowly being broken up into smaller and smaller pieces as it passed from one owner to another.

HACO · 23 Jul 2020 at 10:55

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Nvidia is not known to play nice with competitors which is a problem,and if you read the article Apple would have been even more of a better fit,but again there is a concern that competitors would have a problem with this. The other problem is if ARM becomes US owned it is under US regulatory insight and export restrictions,so far more red tape in licensing designs. Long-term I can see countries moving away from ARM then if there is more red tape around licensing them. You can see this with X86,which is very limited in who can actually design CPUs around it.

I can see open source stuff such as RISC V starting to gain more traction. OFC our lot allowed ARM to become foreign owned,just like Imagination Technologies. Softbank is already going to keep some parts of ARM,so another UK based company is slowly being broken up into smaller and smaller pieces as it passed from one owner to another.

Apple buying ARM would have been disastrous. Luckily they apparently are not interested due to the licensing requirements and regulatory concerns, at least according to Bloomberg.

100% agree that it was a horrible decision to let ARM be acquired by Softbank. The best outcome at this point is to put ARM back on LSE and make it once again an independent British company. If someone line Nvidia or Qualcomm ends up buying ARM, I can see it losing its appeal to many of its current customers. RISC-V isn't ready to compete yet but investments will increase to create a true open alternative to ARM and x86.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 23 Jul 2020 at 11:29

HACO said:
Apple buying ARM would have been disastrous. Luckily they apparently are not interested due to the licensing requirements and regulatory concerns, at least according to Bloomberg.

100% agree that it was a horrible decision to let ARM be acquired by Softbank. The best outcome at this point is to put ARM back on LSE and make it once again an independent British company. If someone line Nvidia or Qualcomm ends up buying ARM, I can see it losing its appeal to many of its current customers. RISC-V isn't ready to compete yet but investments will increase to create a true open alternative to ARM and x86.

It annoys me we keep doing this by allowing our important companies to get sold off,especially as world+dog gets to own and control all our own IP!

HACO · 23 Jul 2020 at 11:38

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
It annoys me we keep doing this by allowing our important companies to get sold off,especially as world+dog gets to own and control all our own IP!

I'm not even British and it annoys the hell out of me. A lot of iconic British brands that shaped up my idea of what British products are like have been sold off to foreign owners.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 23 Jul 2020 at 12:13

HACO said:
I'm not even British and it annoys the hell out of me. A lot of iconic British brands that shaped up my idea of what British products are like have been sold off to foreign owners.

ARM came out of pioneering work done at Cambridge University,and we have so many companie like that,which if we developed would make the UK more of a tech powerhouse. If South Korea and Taiwan can do this,why can't the UK which is a larger UK and wealthier country??

It has been happening for decades and the other end of the spectrum are local "investment firms" who buy companies,and eventually start selling off bits and pieces here and there(GKN is one of those firms which was bought up in a hostile takeover). Then you have Reaction Engines technology which is seeing more interest in the US and EU,than in the UK. So you know where that is going to end up.

Satchfanuk · 23 Jul 2020 at 17:55

So if Softbank bought Arm for $32B and now worth around $50B and Nvidia had to borrow $5B so they could buy Mellanox, how the hell would this 'takeover' be funded?

I hate to wiz on anyone's chips but this just isn't happening

Rroff · 23 Jul 2020 at 18:01

Satchfanuk said:
So if Softbank bought Arm for $32B and now worth around $50B and Nvidia had to borrow $5B so they could buy Mellanox, how the hell would this 'takeover' be funded?

I hate to wiz on anyone's chips but this just isn't happening

It is fairly usual for big companies to borrow money to fund acquisitions - with a 250Bn market cap nVidia can easily do this.

Grimley · 23 Jul 2020 at 18:20

Almost everyone here knows that when AMD bought ATi all those years ago nearly bankrupted them. There are probably quite a lot of people in the tech industry that would like to see that happen to Nvidia if it did decide to buy ARM.

I wouldn't mind betting that this story will or has increased Nvidias share price temporarily & that someone somewhere has capitalised on that & made a bob or two.

Rroff · 23 Jul 2020 at 18:24

Grimley said:
Almost everyone here knows that when AMD bought ATi all those years ago nearly bankrupted them. There are probably quite a lot of people in the tech industry that would like to see that happen to Nvidia if it did decide to buy ARM.

Obviously unexpected things can happen but I can't really see that - ARM's future should be massive. It is possible a new player could come along and unseat them but very unlikely when a company is as established as ARM.

Grimley said:
I wouldn't mind betting that this story will or has increased Nvidias share price temporarily & that someone somewhere has capitalised on that & made a bob or two.

Most definitely.

HACO · 23 Jul 2020 at 19:20

Satchfanuk said:
So if Softbank bought Arm for $32B and now worth around $50B and Nvidia had to borrow $5B so they could buy Mellanox, how the hell would this 'takeover' be funded?

I hate to wiz on anyone's chips but this just isn't happening

They will buy it with their stocks (if they were to buy), i.e. they effectively merge with ARM. This way they don’t lose their cash, their stock will get diluted so it’s the shareholders that pay for it, not Nvidia’s balance sheet itself.

Rroff · 23 Jul 2020 at 19:23

HACO said:
They will buy it with their stocks (if they were to buy), i.e. they effectively merge with ARM. This way they don’t lose their cash, their stock will get diluted so it’s the shareholders that pay for it, not Nvidia’s balance sheet itself.

I was gonna add above whether the shareholders would be happy about it is another matter again.

HACO · 23 Jul 2020 at 19:28

Rroff said:
I was gonna add above whether the shareholders would be happy about it is another matter again.

I think it would be a tough sell. Unless they present a clear vision for their future (which I believe they can).

Satchfanuk · 23 Jul 2020 at 20:01

Samsung or Apple would buy ARM rather than let Nvidia buy it and screw over every smartphone maker

Jacky60 · 24 Jul 2020 at 09:48

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
ARM came out of pioneering work done at Cambridge University,and we have so many companie like that,which if we developed would make the UK more of a tech powerhouse. If South Korea and Taiwan can do this,why can't the UK which is a larger UK and wealthier country??

It has been happening for decades and the other end of the spectrum are local "investment firms" who buy companies,and eventually start selling off bits and pieces here and there(GKN is one of those firms which was bought up in a hostile takeover). Then you have Reaction Engines technology which is seeing more interest in the US and EU,than in the UK. So you know where that is going to end up.

Because we have an utterly incompetent ruling aristocracy interested only in enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. And we keep voting for them. Its a shame we can't keep these companies here as we do really well in Science and tech as well as biotech. Nvidia owning a CPU/processor does look like a good fit for them although I can't see it helping the UK economy much.

HACO · 24 Jul 2020 at 09:55

Jacky60 said:
Because we have an utterly incompetent ruling aristocracy interested only in enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. And we keep voting for them. Its a shame we can't keep these companies here as we do really well in Science and tech as well as biotech. Nvidia owning a CPU/processor does look like a good fit for them although I can't see it helping the UK economy much.

It's really a matter of short-term gains versus long term growth. Selling a major company to foreign owners returns a large influx of foreign cash into the UK (to the investors, and some of it to the economy). After this, there will be a gradual withdrawal of profits out of the UK. By that time these people aren't in power anymore, so they don't care and it will be someone else's problems. So they take the short-term gains.

pc-guy · 24 Jul 2020 at 13:18

Isn’t there rumour that Chinese will buy ARM from SoftBank to aid their own CPU development away from reliance on US silicon.

mall these are just rumours until anything substantial.

HACO · 24 Jul 2020 at 13:20

pc-guy said:
Isn’t there rumour that Chinese will buy ARM from SoftBank to aid their own CPU development away from reliance on US silicon.

mall these are just rumours until anything substantial.

Chances of that happening is zero. If China wants their own ISA, they're going to have to develop it themselves (like Russia has).