The effect of the sale of the British chip designer Arm to the United States based chip maker Nvidia will be assessed by the United Kingdom. This assessment will include commitments made by the companies of retaining the head office of the new merged company in Cambridge, Eastern England, said digital minister Caroline Dinenage said.
“We are currently working very hard to understand the full impact of this move and what potential impact it may have on the future, and from there we are able to consider what steps we may wish to take,” she told lawmakers early on Tuesday.
Nvidia, the largest chip maker of the US in terms of market capitalization, will be taking over Arm Ltd from SoftBank Group Corp in a deal worth $40 billion. The deal was instantly opposed by rivals of Nvidia from South Korea and China. This is because the reach of Arm as a supplier of designs and intellectual property for the semiconductor industry of the world is virtually unparalleled. The company has licensed its technology to the chip makers including Intel Corp, Qualcomm Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd., who are all competitors of Nvidia.
The commitments that have been made by SoftBank and Nvidia to maintain Arm as a successful British business will be considered by ministers “incredibly carefully”, Dinenage said, and added that discussions with the parties involved in the deal have already been held by the government.
She said that after considering the relevant information about the deal, the commitments made by the companies and the impact of the deal on the UK, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport will take a decision about whether the UK government should intervene in the deal.
In 2016, the leading British tech company Arm virtually lost its independence after it was acquired to the Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank in which the Japanese firm had promised to keep the headquarters of the company in Cambridge, England, as well as creating new jobs at the company.
Similar commitments have now been made by Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang.
The importance of Arm in the field of semiconductor chip industry of the world is immense. The top global tech companies of thee world including Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm and others use and make processors that are underpinned by Arm’s energy-efficient architecture. That has made the technology ubiquitous in smartphones as well as present in a host of other devices.
Arm follows a policy of open licensing and provides its technology to all companies that approaches it which has resulted in creation of huge ecosystem of devices - from smart phones to smart toasters, because of the more than 160 billion chips sold based on its technology.
After announcing the deal, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang and Arm Chief Executive Simon Segars had told Reuters in an interview that apart from retaining Arm’s headquarters in the UK, which will make it exempt from many US export control laws, the company will also continue with the open licensing model of the firm.
(Source:www.news18.com)
“We are currently working very hard to understand the full impact of this move and what potential impact it may have on the future, and from there we are able to consider what steps we may wish to take,” she told lawmakers early on Tuesday.
Nvidia, the largest chip maker of the US in terms of market capitalization, will be taking over Arm Ltd from SoftBank Group Corp in a deal worth $40 billion. The deal was instantly opposed by rivals of Nvidia from South Korea and China. This is because the reach of Arm as a supplier of designs and intellectual property for the semiconductor industry of the world is virtually unparalleled. The company has licensed its technology to the chip makers including Intel Corp, Qualcomm Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd., who are all competitors of Nvidia.
The commitments that have been made by SoftBank and Nvidia to maintain Arm as a successful British business will be considered by ministers “incredibly carefully”, Dinenage said, and added that discussions with the parties involved in the deal have already been held by the government.
She said that after considering the relevant information about the deal, the commitments made by the companies and the impact of the deal on the UK, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport will take a decision about whether the UK government should intervene in the deal.
In 2016, the leading British tech company Arm virtually lost its independence after it was acquired to the Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank in which the Japanese firm had promised to keep the headquarters of the company in Cambridge, England, as well as creating new jobs at the company.
Similar commitments have now been made by Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang.
The importance of Arm in the field of semiconductor chip industry of the world is immense. The top global tech companies of thee world including Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm and others use and make processors that are underpinned by Arm’s energy-efficient architecture. That has made the technology ubiquitous in smartphones as well as present in a host of other devices.
Arm follows a policy of open licensing and provides its technology to all companies that approaches it which has resulted in creation of huge ecosystem of devices - from smart phones to smart toasters, because of the more than 160 billion chips sold based on its technology.
After announcing the deal, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang and Arm Chief Executive Simon Segars had told Reuters in an interview that apart from retaining Arm’s headquarters in the UK, which will make it exempt from many US export control laws, the company will also continue with the open licensing model of the firm.
(Source:www.news18.com)
Homepage
Send to a friend
Printable version
Share
