Nvidia Buys ARM for 40 Billion Dollars

 

The Verge broke news today that Nvidia has agreed to buy ARM for 40 million billion dollars thus confirming one of my worst fears in the silicon world. I already did a deep dive with the possibilities of what could happen if somebody buys ARM (https://bentechcode.blogspot.com/2020/07/no-one-should-buy-arm.html) and I reached the conclusion that no one should buy ARM; but with this breaking news my stance has slightly changed.  

 
 

 
 

I want to recite some of the points that I made in that past article quick and then react and fix them with the current information I have now. 

So, what is the worst-case scenario? I would say the worst-case scenario is having a power-hungry company buy ARM to have a stake in the Tech world, not to improve on the company. That company could reign in terror revoking licenses for petty reasons and making other companies go the way of the Huawei when it comes to making chipsets. Being partial, cutting deals with the highest bidder, and just shady behavior could throw a monkey wrench in the industry. Of course, antitrust panels would help solve the problem, but delays could spell ruin for one company and success for another.  -BenTechCoder, No one should buy ARM

 
 

 
So, the possibility for this dystopian, dysfunctional, and depressing future is still very real. Now, I know Nvidia is a very trustworthy and established company so it's very unlikely that something like I said in the past could ever happen, unless Nvidia wanted to destroy itself and its reputation. This year is 2020 a year like no other where multiple companies in multiple industries have just gone to war with each other with battles such as Epic games vs Apple, Microsoft vs Amazon, and so many others just prove that tensions are running high. The company with the most power can dictate those wars and although you would never hear this in the news threats are made all the time as exposed in various antitrust meetings.  

 
 

So, I would not put it above anybody, not google, not apple, and dare I say it, not Microsoft either to have unruly behavior. Nvidia is known to care only about their GPU in laptops, demanding that everything else revolve around it. It's not sinister and sometimes actually helps the manufacturer but it's for that reason that Apple and Nvidia have had spats in the past, its why Nvidia has never worked with Apple. I'm worried the same might happen with ARM chipsets.  

 
 

Of course, this is extremely unlikely because unlike its GPU business Nvidia will not be in the lead with how ARM core currently is. In fact, they'll be trailing Apple; so, unlike their GPU's they are not dominant out of the gate. Nvidia can command respect and power in the PC business because of their dominance in the GPU business offering the absolute best you can buy but with ARM it's different. Nvidia knows how many depend on ARM and with the recent focus and heat with anti-trust. Any wrongdoing or unfairness can land Nvidia under scrutiny instantly and in a severe case (i.e. revoking ARM licensees from Apple) taking the company away from them. I'm sure I trust Nvidia not to mess this up short term, it's the Long-Term that scares me. 

 
 

 
 

Slowly over time Nvidia can change ARM chip designs to help them instead of others. Again, allow me to quote myself: 

 

"Jerry mentions how over time Nvidia will shape designs to help them, not the industry. Those small tweaks can have big effects on the industry as a whole and the controversy that would come with someone like Nvidia owning ARM just isn't worth it. The paralyzing point is that Nvidia makes its own ARM chipsets, if you make your own chipsets and control the instruction set your priming yourself up to be a dominant player in the industry. That situation is extremely controversial because a daring move like buying ARM could catapult Nvidia and leave everyone else behind. Not just Nvidia any company that is in the same position could face the same consequences; just imagine if Qualcomm bought ARM. Yeah, ouch. If anyone must own ARM is should be a non-partial 3rd party that could balance personal interest and the goodwill of the industry, anything short could lead to disaster."

I agree completely, no matter if you only make server-side chipsets it still does not matter. If you make chips your liable to bend the design for you because you can. I hope that they make a new line of chip designs for their stuff and leave the regular stuff alone they should be fine. I want to outline that there are some benefits to Nvidia buying ARM, better GPU's for example, if Nvidia can apply some of their expertise from their desktop GPU's better Mali GPU's could be on the way. 

Overall, I want to make sure everyone knows that you don't really need to panic, Nvidia is trustworthy and I think they'll do fine, I just know that it won't ever be the same.