#Nvidia, The New King Wants All The Chips

A potential deal for ARM "highlights the value of foundational intellectual property in chips. Owning all the IP for the silicon that powers huge data centres would give Nvidia a competitive advantage even Intel couldn't match."

Nvidia flexes its muscles as the new king of chips

With its attempt to buy SoftBank-owned Arm, the US firm is consolidating its position at the top of global chipmaking

August 21 2020

Nvidia, founded and led by Jensen Huang, reported blowout earnings this week © Rick Wilking/Reuters

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.

© Tyrone Siu/Reuters

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. 

Read The Whole article on the FT here:

https://www.ft.com/content/cd2dc1e5-06f6-4afb-86c7-0aac1d2f9e2d

 

Taiwan’s $TSMC Could Be About to Dethrone #Intel

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was created in 1987 to churn out chips for companies that lacked the money to build their own facilities. The approach was famously dismissed at the time by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. founder Jerry Sanders. "Real men have fabs," he quipped at a conference, using industry lingo for factories.

These days, ridicule has given way to envy as TSMC plants have risen to challenge Intel at the pinnacle of the $400 billion industry. 

What Intel investors really worry about is that the largest internet companies will start making their own chips. This week, Amazon.com Inc., the biggest cloud-computing company, announced its first in-house server processor. The Graviton is made by TSMC, and it supports a new version of an Amazon cloud service that's more than 40 percent cheaper than a similar offering powered by Intel chips, the company said.

#Techstocks - $XLK Trading against the upper trendline - After 5X rise from 2009, maybe it's time to say goodbye?

Attached is the long term chart of the Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK) US$ 54.77.

 

As can be seen XLK is trading against the upper long term trendline, an upward channel going back to 2010. Every time XLK traded at the upper line at least a correction started.

 

We also attached the long term Point & Figure chart, which shows the huge advance since last summer.

 

There are investors believing that trees can grow higher than airplanes can fly at high altitudes. We don't. This index is at a vertiginous high and most worrisome.

 

The lights have turned from green to yellow

(amber) and as per traffic lights, the next

colour is red! Reasonable investors must

say goodbye to technology stocks

 

What @Twitter Can Be. #LOWERCASE capital

Chris @Sacca's 8500 word piece on Twitter.  Here is an excerpt:

First, I want to apologize to those of you working in the sensationalist clickbait mines, but this post is not a hit piece. I never said it would be. I am not here to slam the company nor the team. I am not an activist investor. I am a proud Twitter shareholder and Twitter user. I want this company to succeed. I want the people who work at Twitter to win. I want this stock to be worth more. I own more of it than virtually anyone working at the company. So with that kind of skin in the game, I wrote:

“I am going to post a few things that I personally hope the Twitter team will accomplish.”

If at any point I do sound critical or impatient, it is because I believe Twitter can be so much more than it is today. I assume each one of you who owns Twitter shares, and every single one of you who works at the company would agree. Candidly, I have no doubt that Twitter users have 302 million monthly active opinions as to how the product could be
better.


Read the whole piece here: What Twitter Can Be. | LOWERCASE capital