Looks that way to us. It seems several EU countries are especially opposed according to some of our business partners in those countries, with multiple preparing to sue.
OTOH, taking it public could solve many of the concerns, but will likely create others.
Nvidia is making preparations to give up on Arm acquisition, says report - The Verge
Honestly, it never was going to be allowed. I get why Nvidia thought they could sneak in there and get it (it would be typical behaviour from them), but they took their hubris too far this time.
I had shared this before, but NVIDIA already has been closely evaluating RISC-V for many years now, and it now looks like they will be forced to leverage that contingency. In a post I made in May of last year on our old forum, I shared this presentation that reveals NVIDIA’s plans and how RISC-V fits into it. It looks like this is all happening and it may be all for the better now that a big player will be forced to hop on the RISC-V bandwagon.
I wouldn’t peg it as that early on in its development cycle, no, not by a longshot. It has been developed around widely even by the likes of NVIDIA in their R&D as early as the mid 2010s and quite possibly even earlier. This evidence among many shows NVIDIA like many other companies in the industry internally developing with RISC-V many years proceeding to today. In fact, here we can also see some early telltale signs of NVIDIA winding up for their 2020-2021 ARM acquisition which we are only now seeing play out and this is from all the way back in 2016 . Plus, when you see public presentations like this one, they are generally marked by years of development long preceding it, indicating NVIDIA had been kicking RISC-V’s tires earlier than 2016. Therefore, if NVIDIA’s ARM acquisition falls through, judging by this compelling evidence, it is quite logical that NVIDIA themselves would implement RISC-V as a fallback to ARM. So either way the tree falls when it comes to NVIDIA’s desired acquisition of ARM, forces industry-wide will be incentivized to implement RISC-V: either those not NVIDIA because of NVIDIA’s regulatory favor or NVIDIA and others because of NVIDIA’s regulatory disfavor. I strongly feel RISC-V is now all a matter of when , not if. Current estimates “predict that [RISC-V] is a couple of years away from its version of Arm’s iPhone moment.”
I believe their plan B is RISC-V if that falls through. I am actually secretly hoping the ARM acquisition fails so we get RISC-V as a third ISA, meaning more and better options in the mainstream.
I’m very much looking forward to real world product of that as well. The one possible dark cloud is I’ve heard speculation that on the legal side, Apple may be just waiting to sue any company that comes to market with chips due to alleged conflicts with patents they have on their own extensions to ARM.
How real that is remains to be seen, but we also know that Apple certainly is not hesitant with litigation.
It seems this is all but confirmed now as the mainstream press are reporting on it.
Patent issues aside, I still wonder if Nvidia could manage to get another architecture going business wise. They do incredibly well with their GPUs, but they spent a lot on their Arm endeavours and all they really have to show for it is supplying Nintendo (and it seems at a quite low price). Their tablets/media centres/streamers have done okay at best, and their automotive attempts don’t seem to have gained much traction.
But what’s the demerit of this acquisition? Is it business related? I thought it would help them integration of x86 and Arm architecture somehow. Not sure why I think so though.
For Nvidia and Softbank? Nothing.
For everyone else who uses Arm IP (apart from those with architectual licences like Apple, and maybe subscription and perpetual licencees): everything.
Not only is Nvidia a current Arm licencee and thus competitor to other licencees, they are notorious for trying to push out others. Their reputation is horrible.
Officially dead now, though the idea of spinning it off via an IPO creates a whole new set of possible issues.
NVIDIA officially abandons its plans to purchase ARM | Engadget
