After many months of speculation, Nvidia has officially confirmed that it is buying ARM processor developers for an incredible $ 40 billion. It is the largest business transaction in the field of semiconductor chips in history. What changes will this huge transaction bring to mobile phones and all the other electronics we use?
Nvidia is well known to all as a manufacturer of advanced graphics chips. The company has also become one of the leaders in the field of fast-growing chips for autonomous control and AI in the last ten years. ARM products can be found in almost all mobile phones in the world. Since the purchase of ARM, Nvidia promises to gain a unique position in the areas image recognition and AI. The company promises that in the future, billions of smart devices will be needed for the so-called internet of things, and this cannot be done without ARM technology.
What does ARM do and why is it so important?
We don’t see the ARM logo on billboards every day, but in reality almost no one can do without its technology. Whatever they are mobile phones, televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, watches or cars. ARM develops its processor architecture and designs Cortex processor cores, which you certainly know from mobile phones. He then licenses these technologies to other companies.
Billions of devices run on ARM products today. In the last ten years, the performance-to-power ratio of the ARM architecture has become so attractive that he began to flood even the once fearless Intel. Today, ARM is successfully growing, for example, in the area of servers. Apple again recently announced that Intel processors in its Macs will soon be available replace with their own ARM chips. Any change in the ownership structure of AMR is therefore a strategic and closely monitored issue. The question is whether, after purchasing Nvidia, ARM can remain an independent developer of the processor architecture. A company like Nvidia has extensive interests in the semiconductor business, and some ARM customers are undoubtedly its competitors.
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Jakub Kárník –
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The issue of ARM Holdings’ independence was last on the agenda in 2016, when the British chip designer SoftBank bought the British chip designer. This was a satisfactory result at the time, as Apple, for example, was also interested in AMR, and many feared what such a merger would bring. Nvidia must now prepare for the intense interest of regulators in the US, EU and Asia. The final decision can take up to two years.
What impact will this have on the mobile market?
Source: Nvidia
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