Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm Oppose NVIDIA’s Acquisition of Arm

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm aren’t happy about NVIDIA’s decision to acquire leading British semiconductor and software design company Arm, as they believe that the deal will harm competition. The news comes from Bloomberg, which published a story noting that the trio of tech giants have already complained to antitrust regulators and urged them to intervene. One of these companies reportedly wants the deal killed entirely.



“The acquisition would give Nvidia control over a critical supplier that licenses essential chip technology to the likes of Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Amazon.com Inc. and China’s Huawei Technologies Co.,” Bloomberg explained.



“U.K.-based Arm is known as the Switzerland of the industry because it...

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[Uvilla]

Now they are worried?
I guess it's close to approval.
Those companies can piss in a pot and come up more money than Nvidia did.
Losers all, looking for the cheap way out via lawyering and trying regulatory capture to work in their favor and against Nvidia.
For one I hope Nvidia screws them out of billions in the next couple of decades. I don't like Nvidia either. Hate slimeball and filthy strategies even more.

 

[Brian_B]

I think it's more that they have the cash, but know if they tried to buy ARM they would hit no end of anti-trust problems. And they certainly don't really want nVidia to own it - an independant ARM, or at least as a smaller organization and not direct competition, is easier to bully around and/or ignore.

 

[LazyGamer]

Bit of both I think?

In business, it seems that all courses of action should be considered, and that this eventuality was probably foreseen by all parties. They still have to do their due diligence of course, so the dance must be danced, but as said it's unlikely that this will result in a different owner.

What may be likely is regulatory limitations and more regular scrutiny, which perhaps might mean that the consumer could win a little here too, simply because the dissenting parties would rather that than Nvidia take all the gains.

 

[Uvilla]

Well, ARM was looking to be purchased via the creation of a consortium... Surely cause of more money but still... Everyone said nah.
I think this is a wise business long term move by Nvidia. Though full of holes now (in terms of control/license) Nvidia will control the biggest? Instruction set in computing... It will just take some time to slowly enforce that control. Well screw Nvidia too but I think its a good move.

 

[Brian_B]

Well screw Nvidia too but I think its a good move.

I think it’s great for nVidia, just not so convinced it will be great for anyone else

 

[Nanobot]

This deal was unlikely to be approved in the first place. ****, the founder(s?) of ARM have been very vocal against it from the start. The UK would also be stupid to lose their only major tech company, but then again they voted for Brexit, so maybe they enjoy pain more than pleasure. China could also kill this deal, so it’ll be interesting to see if ARM becomes a geopolitical football in a game of geopolitical chicken.

 

[LazyGamer]

This deal was unlikely to be approved in the first place. ****, the founder(s?) of ARM have been very vocal against it from the start. The UK would also be stupid to lose their only major tech company, but then again they voted for Brexit, so maybe they enjoy pain more than pleasure. China could also kill this deal, so it’ll be interesting to see if ARM becomes a geopolitical football in a game of geopolitical chicken.

Well, the UK will be better off with a US tech giant taking over direction than letting ARM sit directionless and mired in politics.

Because ARM can be made irrelevant very, very quickly. It's an architecture that works, but there are many of those, and business cases can be made for them instead if ARM becomes unstable. And that revenue, those jobs, and that talent can easily disappear, whereas Nvidia is likely to invest in it more at least in the nearterm.

And one exceptional example would be RISCV. CPU design at a basic and functional level is so broadly well understood that the cost of designing something simple with free IP might be a better option for some corporations than licensing ARM or anything else. WD has already gone this route, and though they are a simple storage manufacturer, they're not small and CPU design isn't something that they're known for. So if they can do it, assume many other enterprises are balancing ARMs cost and future with just taping out their own RISCV logic in house and having it fabbed wherever wafer runs are available.

 

[Brian_B]

Apple had already been RISC prior to Intel, and they didn't go back - they went to ARM. I think that says something... Now, it's a been a few years since Apple was RISC, and I'm sure RISCV has a lot of evolution, but I'm certain Apple looked at it and they still went the way they went.

That, and there's a lot invested in ARM right now - all of that doesn't translate right over to RISCV without a lot more re-engineering.

So I wouldn't exactly say you can just jump from ARM right to RISCV in the event nVidia closes the ARM door or ARM shrivels up and dies.

 

[LazyGamer]

Apple had already been RISC prior to Intel, and they didn't go back - they went to ARM. I think that says something... Now, it's a been a few years since Apple was RISC, and I'm sure RISCV has a lot of evolution, but I'm certain Apple looked at it and they still went the way they went.

Well, IBMs Power RISC-based architecture isn't RISCV. Remember that 'RISC' is just an approach to CPU design; ARM is RISC too, for example.

And I don't think that Apple would go RISC V. They own the ARM IP they're using, they need no further license, and their designs are all their own as well. Of course, Apple's use of ARM does little to further or hamper ARM everywhere else. What is Apple's is Apple's. And aside from an ISA, Apple's ARM has very little in common with any other architecture out there. They have their own compilers, customized OS with custom kernels and custom frameworks and custom drivers and... well, Apple isn't a barometer, at least not a useful one, for ARM in the rest of the industry.

That, and there's a lot invested in ARM right now - all of that doesn't translate right over to RISCV without a lot more re-engineering.

Sure!

But there's also a lot invested in making software not dependent on the underlying hardware too. Which means that a RISC V CPU that runs Linux could be made to run just about anything with ease. It'd probably dog slow, but it would run.

So I wouldn't exactly say you can just jump from ARM right to RISCV in the event nVidia closes the ARM door or ARM shrivels up and dies.

I wouldn't either, and I apologize if I implied that

It's more that ARM isn't the only game in town for cheap CPUs. They're very good, and when well-tuned for a particular workload they are very, very effective, but for situations where the CPU doesn't have to be fast, it just has to work, Nvidia's influence could easily see ARM priced out of those markets. And in a era where high-end fab space is at an incredible premium, it makes sense for whoever is directing ARM to direct efforts toward the more profitable ventures, the same way Nvidia does with their GPUs.

Really, and this is absolutely off-topic except for the fab discussion, Intel's low-end GPU entry makes sense because they're getting built while AMD and Nvidia simply cannot waste fab allocations on lower-end parts. Not when high-end parts are going for today's supply-constrained, extreme-demand pricing.

 

[Armenius]

This deal was unlikely to be approved in the first place. ****, the founder(s?) of ARM have been very vocal against it from the start. The UK would also be stupid to lose their only major tech company, but then again they voted for Brexit, so maybe they enjoy pain more than pleasure. China could also kill this deal, so it’ll be interesting to see if ARM becomes a geopolitical football in a game of geopolitical chicken.

If the founders were so concerned about the company being bought out, then maybe they should not have sold out their own interest in the first place. In my opinion, they have no standing where this deal is concerned since they already hedged their bets years ago.

 

[Nanobot]

I don’t know their reasons for leaving and wasn’t suggesting they have standing. It was just an observation that the only entities that want the deal to go through appear to be SoftBank and Nvidia (and probably Nvidia shareholders).

 

[LazyGamer]

I don’t know their reasons for leaving and wasn’t suggesting they have standing. It was just an observation that the only entities that want the deal to go through appear to be SoftBank and Nvidia (and probably Nvidia shareholders).

It's all tactical, it seems to me.

The detractors are not really trying to stop the sale; they're trying to inhibit a competitor. Every which way possible. Something like getting the Feds to say, 'yeah, you can merge, if you agree to follow these conditions that your competitors are concerned about...'.