Nvidia to buy Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion
SoftBank bought Arm for $31.4 billion in 2016, and the sale is seen as a move to raise much-needed cash as it has recently lost a significant amount of money in its high-profile investments in companies like WeWork and Uber.
www.cnbc.com
So that happened. This may be a pretty huge deal, since Nvidia now has owns the designs of the ARM processor chip, widely used in most mobile phones and tablets includings Apple's, as well as some dedicated gaming devices such as Nvidia's own Shield and as the CPU in the Nintendo Switch.
Basically, Nvidia now has a finger in both CPU's and GPU's, same as its main competitor AMD, something they've wanted for a long time now. Do they perhaps plan to start competing with AMD (and Intel) on the PC CPU front as well? It's known Apple will be moving their Macbooks from Intel to ARM architecture in the coming years and Microsoft did some experiments with ARM-based architecture to moderate success. Perhaps they're eyeing those lucrative console all-in-one chips that are now firmly in AMD's hands, but perhaps in next next gen hardware? Intel is supposedly working on graphics hardware, so will we be seeing a 3-way race in future?
Not that I'm applauding this. Nvidia claims they'll continue the open-license model as before, but a corporations word means nothing, and consolidation of tech into a handful of companies rarely ever ends up beneficial for the consumer.