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

Rroff said:
Thing with semiconductor fabrication there is much more to it than just seizing control of the facilities - if China overran Taiwan and took control of TSMC they'd probably still not have all the building blocks to do much more than scale up to 28nm planar production over several years and probably another decade after that before they were capable of running the whole end to end pipeline of producing 7nm, etc.

In a similar vein it is why Russia has such an interest in staging the ability to quickly ramp up to invade Japan even today (hence a lot of the dispute over the Kurils) as their domestic semiconductor capabilities lag behind and advanced electronics are crucial to some of their higher end hardware such as the S-400 and S-500 systems - but in reality even seizing those facilities doesn't guarantee they can actually produce stuff without all the people in place to run production and do all the design work, etc.
Click to expand...
You are correct I imagine.
Plus there are the other tools needed which are also imported.
But the fabs which are already fully operational could be used provided the staff cooperate!
It would be a massive kick in the teeth for the West though.
Can you imagine the price of Nvidia GPUs with AMD being unable to produce any?
Samsung would do well and Intel.
 
smilingcrow said:
You are correct I imagine.
Plus there are the other tools needed which are also imported.
But the fabs which are already fully operational could be used provided the staff cooperate!
It would be a massive kick in the teeth for the West though.
Can you imagine the price of Nvidia GPUs with AMD being unable to produce any?
Samsung would do well and Intel.
Click to expand...

I'd imagine the US, etc. have plans in place to sabotage production if those facilities looked like being overrun and not all the staff required to operate the facilities end to end are usually at the location itself. There is a massive amount of expertise involved in operating and producing this stuff - even if say 90% of the staff cooperated it would still take a long time to get production of new products, etc. up to speed and anything in production would likely be trashed by the disruption during take over.

Fortunately there is a lot of expertise and other facilities in the west which could be brought up to speed fairly quickly such as Texas Instruments and IBM, etc. while Russia domestically is still in the early 65nm era (20 years behind though they can likely catch up in less than 10 as they won't have to relearn all the same lessons) and China 28nm.
 
Rroff said:
Fortunately there is a lot of expertise and other facilities in the west which could be brought up to speed fairly quickly such as Texas Instruments and IBM, etc.
Click to expand...
IBM sold theirs fabs to GF.
GF pulled out of developing nodes beyond 12/14nm.
TI have nothing in the game as far as I'm aware!
Intel are still stuck on 14nm for almost everything apart from some mobile chips.
Even Intel are using TSMC for some GPU chips, that's how dependent the world is on them.
But if TSMC became China only there would likely be massive investment to enable the West to compete.
Samsung are already investing heavily to try and compete also.
 
smilingcrow said:
IBM sold theirs fabs to GF.
GF pulled out of developing nodes beyond 12/14nm.
TI have nothing in the game as far as I'm aware!
Intel are still stuck on 14nm for almost everything apart from some mobile chips.
Even Intel are using TSMC for some GPU chips, that's how dependent the world is on them.
But if TSMC became China only there would likely be massive investment to enable the West to compete.
Samsung are already investing heavily to try and compete also.
Click to expand...

The semiconductor market is a lot more diverse than you think.

China isn’t going to invade Taiwan for TSMC and if they did TSMC will operate from elsewhere.
 
jigger said:
As I said TSMC have been looking outside of Taiwan for some time.
Click to expand...
Apparently they have 11 fabs in Taiwan (+1 under construction) and only 2 outside (US + Singapore).

If they lost their fabs in Taiwan is virtually game over. Their ability to produce anything would be cratered.
 
If the vast majority of the companies assets are based in Taiwan and China and they were nationalised in effect by the Chinese then what is left?
A few second class fabs in other countries, maybe some funds in overseas subsidiaries as well as some staff!
The company would be dead to the world if the Chinese prohibited it working for other countries.
The best that could happen would be that some staff would work for Samsung or even Intel and help them get ahead.

This all seems highly unlikely but based on the last 5 years, the current tension with China, ARM/Nvidia, Trump etc it's hard to rule anything out.
The upside would be Apple being tied to ARM and TSMC so deeply.
 
FoxEye said:
Because each fab costs tens of billions (these days on the cutting edge node) and many years to build?

Why would losing 11 of your 13 fabs not be catastrophic?
Click to expand...

What makes you think they would be lost? They won’t slip down a couch.

As I keep saying this has been planned for. The semiconductor industry is a lot more diverse than it looks.
 
Rroff said:
Thing with semiconductor fabrication there is much more to it than just seizing control of the facilities - if China overran Taiwan and took control of TSMC they'd probably still not have all the building blocks to do much more than scale up to 28nm planar production over several years and probably another decade after that before they were capable of running the whole end to end pipeline of producing 7nm, etc.

In a similar vein it is why Russia has such an interest in staging the ability to quickly ramp up to invade Japan even today (hence a lot of the dispute over the Kurils) as their domestic semiconductor capabilities lag behind and advanced electronics are crucial to some of their higher end hardware such as the S-400 and S-500 systems - but in reality even seizing those facilities doesn't guarantee they can actually produce stuff without all the people in place to run production and do all the design work, etc.
Click to expand...


Considering China's superpower status, they'd of course illegally obtain the 7nm/5nm advanced 'blueprints', designs from the relevant companies before seizing control of the actual fabs. This would trigger WW3 though, so they're much more likely to just pour their income/resources into their own state run fabs.

Year on year they'll catch up - as they own so much US debt and are in a much better economic position. IMO at least :D
 
NVIDIA’s (NVDA) Acquisition of Arm Ltd. Hits Another Roadblock as UK’s CMA Flags Serious Competition Concerns

According to a statement released by UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the deal entails serious competition concerns:

"Should the deal go ahead, the CMA is concerned that the merged business would have the ability and incentive to harm the competitiveness of NVIDIA’s rivals by restricting access to Arm’s intellectual property (IP). Arm’s IP is used by companies that produce semiconductor chips and related products, in competition with NVIDIA.”

The CMA went on to note that the reduced competition could “stifle innovation across a number of markets, including data centers, gaming, the internet of things, and self-driving cars.”

While conceding that NVIDIA has offered a behavioral remedy to counter competition concerns, the CMA concluded that an in-depth phase 2 investigation is now warranted.

Readers should note that NVIDIA has to close the Arm acquisition deal by September 2022. Otherwise, Japan’s SoftBank Group, which currently owns Arm, will win the right to retain $1.25 billion as a breakup fee. Bear in mind that NVIDIA has already paid this amount to SoftBank as a down payment.

We had noted in a previous post that SoftBank might opt for an Arm IPO if the NVIDIA deal falls through. As per the details revealed by The Telegraph, the Japanese tech giant is mulling New York as the most likely venue for Arm’s public flotation:

“… sources close to the parties said that if delays and competition hurdles prove insurmountable, a stock market float remains under consideration. New York is viewed as the most likely venue, although one source said no formal process is underway.”

Meanwhile, NVIDIA is also facing hurdles in China, where Huawei Technologies Ltd. has reportedly raised concerns that its access to Arm’s IP might be hampered by the deal.

As a refresher, ARM designs silicon chips and licenses instruction sets that govern how chips communicate. Moreover, ARM’s intellectual property – including the company's Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) – is utilized by the likes of Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Huawei for their smartphone chips, thereby corresponding to a market coverage of around 90 percent.

NVIDIA’s (NVDA) Acquisition of Arm Ltd. Hits Another Roadblock as UK’s CMA Flags Serious Competition Concerns (wccftech.com)
 
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