'SoftBank is in advanced talks with US chip company Nvidia to sell Arm -- with a price in the region of 32 billion euros reportedly being thrown around. But Nvidia's purchase of the Cambridge-based chip designer would not only strike a blow to the UK's technological sovereignty, but would result in the destruction of Arm itself, Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser has claimed. Nvidia recently overtook Intel as the most valuable microprocessor company in the world, and its great wealth right now provides it a unique opportunity, says Hauser. "They are the semiconductor company that can buy Arm to destroy it -- and it is very much in its interest to destroy Arm because they [would] gain a lot more than the 40 billion that they pay for it," he claims. Hauser says the acquisition would allow Nvidia to swipe "the microprocessor crown from Intel", and become the chip supplier for 95 per cent of mobile phones, 90 per cent of embedded controllers for the internet of things, as well as taking the PC and data centre markets. Hauser says that an Arm acquisition is a means for Nvidia to become the dominant microprocessor company in the world, "at the same time as they can prevent their main competitors" from making use of further Arm developments. Instead, competitors would need to "scramble" to create their own architecture, handing Nvidia the edge. Up until now, Arm's business model is acting as the "Switzerland of the semiconductor industry" -- maintaining relations with many customers around the world. "Most of them of course, are competitors of Nvidia," says Hauser. Japanese technology investment firm SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016, but ensured the company's continued neutrality. ' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/20/09/03/2019200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/