“On national security grounds”...? Why would NVidia, a US corp, be more of a security problem than a Japanese one? If it’s just a matter of commercial overreliance on a single supplier, I find the “National security” bit to be somewhat specious.
Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
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Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#12Well someone woke up while sleeping at the wheel. My concern is that The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has no real business to be evaluating national security issues.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#13I've been struggling to understand why Nvidia's takeover of Arm might be a UK national security issue (the competition case is quite clear but separate).
I'm guessing though that Arm collaborates with UK intelligence agencies and that that collaboration might be jeopardised with the Nvidia takeover (in a way that it was not with the Softbank takeover). Does anyone have any further insights?
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#14They blatantly ought to have done this for the original sale. Better late than never, I suppose.
They were too scared of looking 'closed for business' in the middle of the disaster that was/is Brexit.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#15Does this infer that only a UK based company can buy them from now on? How would this affect their share price if they'd go public?
Surely that horse bolted when they sold to Softbank. I suspect they will try to argue that it has to be someone “outside the US” or otherwise protected from monopolistic actors.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#16They blatantly ought to have done this for the original sale. Better late than never, I suppose.
I understand objecting, but for security reasons?
A better argument would be that Nvidia gains serious power over companies who are currently ARM customer and Nvidia competitors.
Perhaps the UK want to be able to use ARM designs for domestic chips in the future, without being dependent on an American company, but yeah, then they should have objected when a Japanese company bought ARM as well.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#17“On national security grounds”...? Why would NVidia, a US corp, be more of a security problem than a Japanese one? If it’s just a matter of commercial overreliance on a single supplier, I find the “National security” bit to be somewhat specious.
Because the nature of this acquisition is completely different. SoftBank left Arm mostly alone; i.e. brand survived, all offices survived, etc. If this deal goes through, Arm will get fully integrated into Nvidia. There won't be an "Arm" anymore.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#18“On national security grounds”...? Why would NVidia, a US corp, be more of a security problem than a Japanese one? If it’s just a matter of commercial overreliance on a single supplier, I find the “National security” bit to be somewhat specious.
Because the nature of this acquisition is completely different. SoftBank left Arm mostly alone; i.e. brand survived, all offices survived, etc. If this deal goes through, Arm will get fully integrated into Nvidia. There won't be an "Arm" anymore.
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Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#19They blatantly ought to have done this for the original sale. Better late than never, I suppose.
I understand objecting, but for security reasons? A better argument would be that Nvidia gains serious power over companies who are currently ARM customer and Nvidia competitors. Perhaps the UK want to be able to use ARM designs for domestic chips in the future, without being dependent on an American company, but yeah, then they should have objected when a Japanese company bought ARM as well.
Not only that, but I'd be surprised if the military didn't make heavy use of Nvidia cards for ML workloads, CAD design or god knows what. I could definitely see a way to frame this as a security threat if either company were to stop selling to them.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#20“On national security grounds”...? Why would NVidia, a US corp, be more of a security problem than a Japanese one? If it’s just a matter of commercial overreliance on a single supplier, I find the “National security” bit to be somewhat specious.
See my other comment. Because Arm might be working with GCHQ and Arm / Nvidia might stop that and work with NSA - unlikely to be an issue when Softbank owned.