Nvidia agrees to buy Arm in a huge deal - but will it be approved?

Legendary British chip designer ARM is being bought by Nvidia subject to government and regulatory approval.

The latter company designs chips based around the former's technology in addition to its hugely successful graphics business and other efforts in autonomous vehicles and more. 

Arm has grown from tiny roots of the Advanced RISC Machine processor inside 1980s BBC and Acorn machines into one of the biggest technology companies in the world, still based in Cambridge, UK.

Its technology - which it licenses to other manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm - is used in around 95 percent of smartphones and tablets and increasingly will be used in PCs as Apple launches its own processors for the Mac and also in Windows PCs using Qualcomm processors. 

Having been owned been Japan's SoftBank for the last four years after being public, Nvidia has pounced in a deal worth $40 billion. Whether it will be approved is a subject for debate. And of course, there is potential for Arm's technology to be more permanently withheld from Chinese companies as part of the US-China trade war. 

Nvdia says it is committed to keeping Arm's business in the UK which makes sense given the amount of technical expertise in and around the company's Cambridge base. However, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out over time with the end of the Brexit transition period on the horizon.

However, ARM founder Hermann Hauser suggested on today's Today programme on Radio 4 that the move was "an absolute disaster for Cambridge, the UK and Europe"

"If hundreds of UK companies that incorporate ARM [tech] in their products want to sell it and export it anywhere in the world including China - which is a major market - the decision on whether they will be allowed to export it will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street.".

However, Nvidia is understandably more bullish and positive: "Arm’s headquarters will remain in Cambridge and continue to be a cornerstone of the U.K. technology ecosystem. Nvdia will retain the name and strong brand identity of Arm" said Nvdia's founder and CEO Jensen Huang in a statement. "Arm gives us the critical mass to invest in the UK We will build a world-class AI research center in Cambridge."

"Simon Segars, its CEO, and the people of Arm have built a great company that has shaped the computer industry and nearly every technology market in the world."

"Uniting Nvdia's AI computing with the vast reach of Arm’s CPU, we will engage the giant AI opportunity ahead and advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars, robotics, 5G, and IoT."

"Arm’s business model is brilliant. We will maintain its open-licensing model and customer neutrality, serving customers in any industry, across the world, and further expand Arm’s IP licensing portfolio with Nvdia's world-leading GPU and AI technology."

Interestingly, SoftBank previously owned a stake in Nvidia which it sold in 2019. 

from Pocket-lint