Nvidia will keep ARM licensing “neutral,” wants to license GPU tech, too

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Nvidia has officially announced that it is buying ARM from SoftBank for $40 billion. The deal is one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time and will see Nvidia control the world's most popular CPU architecture.

Nvidia's press release oddly paints the deal as primarily about "AI," saying the deal "brings together NVIDIA's leading AI computing platform with ARM's vast ecosystem to create the premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence." Nvidia apparently sees GPU-accelerated AI as its next big growth sector, and the company currently sells embedded systems for self-driving cars and multi-GPU systems for workstations and servers, offering high-teraflop deep-learning performance. Somehow it thinks ARM will help with this.

What seems far more important, though, is how Nvidia will manage ARM's wide-ranging chip design and architecture-licensing business, which powers the majority of the world's electronic devices, especially those smaller than a laptop. Nvidia says that "as part of NVIDIA, ARM will continue to operate its open-licensing model while maintaining the global customer neutrality that has been foundational to its success." On a conference call following the deal, ARM CEO Simon Segars also reiterated, "We will maintain our neutral business model and will keep a level of independence."

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