Nvidia’s purchase of ARM is now official and is on track to cause a massive stir in the tech industry. With the transaction valued at over $40 Billion, it’s safe to say that this purchase will put Nvidia at the forefront of electronics in the foreseeable future.
To quote Jensen Huang, joining arms with ARM will put Nvidia en route to becoming the “leading computing company for the age of AI.” But with all that said, what can we expect to come out of this agreement? How will it affect the semiconductor landscape? And what innovations are to come moving forward?
The Tech World Is Changing
One thing’s for sure is that if the deal does follow through, then it will be considered one of the biggest tech deals ever in the semiconductor industry. Even from an investment and portfolio management point of view, combining the sheer market shares of these two giants is breathtaking.
Nvidia has always been known for its top-of-the-line GPUs that appeal to the gaming and professional markets, and even mobile device since the early ’90s. But who would’ve thought that we’d see the day Nvidia would expand and reach out for more?
#1 Nvidia Carving Its Way To The Top
And here we thought Nvidia’s brand new RTX 3000 series cards debuting Ampere architecture would be the company’s headlines for the coming days, but now it seems they won’t let us catch a breath. With the purchase of ARM and their flagship GPUs about to launch and hit the markets, Nvidia is carving its way to the top.
ARM dominates the mobile processing market. One of the first things you can notice is how Nvidia is trying to break through into the mainstream market and distancing itself from GPU-only production. Since ARM licenses the chips for big-name brands such as Foxconn and Qualcomm, this widens the opportunities available to the company.
“Uniting NVIDIA’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.”
Possible licensing issues? One major problem that could potentially arise is how Nvidia will manage the open licensing of ARM. And while Jensen Huang did promise in his letter to maintain the “open-licensing model and customer neutrality” of ARM, who’s to say that there won’t be caveats and bumps in the future?
#2 Possible Nvidia Processors?
While this is only an assumption, the prospect of seeing Nvidia processors in the future is not impossible and might be the path that Nvidia plans on taking. Theoretically speaking, if Nvidia were to combine their GPUs’ graphical power and ARM’s chipmaking into one powerful processor, this would inevitably put them above all their competitors and garner numerous investors’ support.
Intel is in Big Trouble:
Intel has already taken quite the beating from their processor line-up due to the domination of Ryzen-based chips. And with their latest chipsets and new architecture still in a backlog and stuck in 10 nm, there is plenty of catching up to do. However, now that Nvidia plans to enter the market and with Apple leaving Intel chips in favor of ARM chips, the future appears very bleak for Intel unless they have something massive laying in wait.
New Generation of Mobile Chips:
Most mobile processors can be traced back to the ARM architecture, as most of these companies use it as a standard and add their features afterward. However, the possible integration of Nvidia graphics into processors might level the playing field in the mobile chip market and attract consoles, TV’s, laptops, and smartphones into their market share.
#3 Dawn of The Age of Ai
Lastly, we cannot ignore what these two companies can offer in research and development to advance and innovate in emerging technologies. Jensen Huang said it best that, “NVIDIA will bring our world-leading AI technology to Arm’s ecosystem while expanding NVIDIA’s developer reach from 2 million to more than 15 million software programmers.”
With both companies’ competence and excellent track record, we are undoubtedly excited to see what Nvidia and ARM can offer in the coming years.
And So Much More
As of current, while the agreement is on its way, it is still in its infancy and might be subject to more changes down the line. And as other big-name companies catch the wind, they’ll be more inclined to strike their own deals to get their share of the pie. What’s certain is that there is a bright future awaiting us to see these teams work together and expect significant changes to come very soon.