With its attempt to buy SoftBank-owned Arm, the US firm is consolidating its position at the top of global chipmaking
There was a stark study in contrasts at the top of the chip industry this week. Nvidia, which recently overtook Intel to become the world's most valuable chipmaker, reported blowout earnings. Jensen Huang, its founder and chief executive, used the moment to lay out his vision for what comes next.
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Over the past 21 years, the Californian company has taken its graphical processing units, or GPUs, from their original market in gaming PCs to data centres, where their parallel processing capabilities have made them the main engines for the data-intensive task of training AI systems. With its attempt to buy Arm, the SoftBank-owned chip design firm, it is now trying to consolidate that position, while also getting its first toehold in some of the biggest current and future markets for silicon.
Data centres, according to Mr Huang, are the new "computing unit"...Nvidia already has the GPUs and networking technology to fulfil much of this: what it lacks is a base in CPUs, or central processing units, the core of Intel's business.
A deal would leave Nvidia in the position of not only selling its own silicon, but also licensing foundational IP that other companies — some of them Nvidia's competitors — need to create their own chips.
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The pursuit of Arm may be motivated mainly by Nvidia's ambitions in data centres, but it also opens up a broader landscape.
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https://www.ft.com/content/cd2dc1e5-06f6-4afb-86c7-0aac1d2f9e2d
