Sale the Japanese company SoftBank of the British chip maker NVIDIA Arm, according to most observers, will raise big questions from the antitrust authorities. After all, NVIDIA could get its hands on control over the entire mobile processor industry. Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser considers the deal a disaster, but the head of NVIDIA, of course, says otherwise.
In the smartphone market today, there is practically no choice, except for the Arm architecture – in fact, it is a monopoly. Of course it is caused concern many mobile processor developers, some of whom immediately started thinking about alternatives.
“As with Mellanox, NVIDIA и arm completely complement each other, – explained Mr. Huang. – NVIDIA does not design processors; we do not have a processor instruction set. NVIDIA does not license intellectual property to semiconductor companies, and in this sense we are not competitors. And we have significant intentions to expand the list of licensed intellectual property. Also, unlike Arm, NVIDIA not present on the cell phone market. Thus, the two companies complement each other very much. “
“Customers will benefit, too, and regulators will understand: our intent is to combine the engineering and technical, R&D capabilities of both companies so that we can accelerate technology development for the huge Arm ecosystem.», – concluded the head of NVIDIA.
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Arm’s current CEO, Simon Segars, also predictably agrees with this position: “We’re in business to provide technology to any company interested in making chips. This is the value of Arm, and it would obviously be extremely disruptive to change our business model. “.
Jen-Hsun Huang said the NVIDIA-Arm partnership will be used to accelerate the development of server processors such as the Amazon Gravitron, the 64-bit Arm processor that Amazon uses in its own EC2 data centers; or Jetson processors from NVIDIA itself for automotive and other electronics. And the Fujitsu Fugaka supercomputer, built on Arm chips, is the most powerful in the world, Huang added.
Will competitors agree with the opinion of NVIDIA’s permanent leader? Will the Ministry of Justice or the European Union approve the deal? Even if everything goes according to plan, the deal will be finalized not earlier than in a year – Mr. Huang said he was ready for such a deadline or even longer. Potential NVIDIA licensees will have plenty of time to weigh everything or challenge the deal in court.
Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said during a phone call with analysts, “You know we have had a fair amount of experience with the Mellanox takeover lately. And I can tell you about the discussions regarding regulation – this is logical, because we are talking about protecting the competitive environment in the markets».
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