FTC steps in to block Nvidia’s $40B acquisition of Arm

America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has become the first regulator to sue to block Nvidia’s acquisition of British chip designer Arm.

Arm plays a critical role in the global technology supply chain with its designs used for edge AI chips and processors for smartphones, tablets, desktops, and servers.

It’s of little surprise that Nvidia wants to bring Arm under its wing and is willing to pay $40 billion (£29 billion) for it.

Global regulators,...

3 December 2021 | Legislation & Government

UK Digital Secretary orders ‘Phase Two’ probe into Nvidia-Arm merger

UK Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries has ordered a “Phase Two” probe into the proposed £29 billion merger between Nvidia and Arm.

The CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) has been investigating whether the deal is anti-competitive. In August, it declared the deal does indeed raise “serious competition concerns”.

Arm founder Hermann Hauser went further and suggested the merger would amount to “surrendering the UK’s most powerful trade weapon to the...

17 November 2021 | Legislation & Government

EU launches antitrust probe into $40B Nvidia-Arm acquisition proposal

The European Commission is following the UK in launching its own antitrust probe into the proposed Nvidia-Arm acquisition.

Nvidia has put in a $40 billion offer to acquire Cambridge-based Arm, which designs a large proportion of the chips that end up in devices.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, when the acquisition was announced.

“In the years...

28 October 2021 | Legislation & Government

Nvidia-Arm merger in doubt as CMA has ‘serious’ concerns

The proposed merger between Nvidia and British chip technology giant Arm is looking increasingly doubtful as the CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) believes the deal “raises serious competition concerns”.

A $40 billion merger of two of the biggest names in chip manufacturing was always bound to catch the eye of regulators, especially when it’s received such vocal opposition from around the world.

Hermann Hauser, Founder of Arm, even suggested that...

23 August 2021 | Companies

UK considers blocking Nvidia’s $40B acquisition of Arm

Bloomberg reports the UK is considering blocking Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm over national security concerns.

Over 160 billion chips have been made for various devices based on designs from Arm. In recent years, the company has added AI accelerator chips to its lineup for neural network processing.

In the wake of the proposed acquisition, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said:

“ARM is an incredible company and it employs some of the greatest engineering...

4 August 2021 | Companies

MLCommons releases latest MLPerf Training benchmark results

Open engineering consortium MLCommons has released its latest MLPerf Training community benchmark results.

MLPerf Training is a full system benchmark that tests machine learning models, software, and hardware.

The results are split into two divisions: closed and open. Closed submissions are better for comparing like-for-like performance as they use the same reference model to ensure a level playing field. Open submissions, meanwhile, allow participants to submit a...

30 June 2021 | Google

Musk’s claim that Tesla is the best AI chip designer is tested

Elon Musk’s claim that Tesla is the best AI chip designer in the world has been put to the test against other innovations.

“How could it be that Tesla, who has never designed a chip before – would design the best chip in the world?” Musk boasted in 2019. 

Select Car Leasing tested Tesla’s full self-driving microchip, which is developed by Samsung, against 12 other innovations:

Against some of mankind’s greatest innovations, Tesla’s chip...

18 May 2021 | Machine Learning

IBM aims to boost AI hardware performance with new Composer tool

IBM’s new AI Hardware Composer tool aims to boost the performance of analog AI hardware.

The tool is being released on the second anniversary of the IBM Research AI Hardware Center. IBM’s pioneering centre launched in 2019 with the aim of improving AI hardware compute efficiency by 2.5 times every year for a decade.

(Credit: IBM)

AI Hardware Composer claims to help both novice and experienced developers to create neural networks and tune analog devices to build...

15 April 2021 | Machine Learning

Chinese AI chipmaker Horizon endeavours to raise $700M to rival NVIDIA

AI chipmaker Horizon Robotics is seeking to raise $700 million in a new funding round.

Horizon is often seen as potentially becoming China’s equivalent of NVIDIA. The company is founded by Dr Kai Yu, a prominent industry figure with quite the credentials.

Yu led Baidu’s AI Research lab for three years, founded the Baidu Institute of Deep Learning, and launched the company’s autonomous driving business unit.

Furthermore, Yu has taught at Stanford...

22 December 2020 | Robotics

Sony has a new ‘AI robotics’ drone division called Airpeak

Sony’s latest division, Airpeak, is described as being “in the field of AI robotics” and will focus on next-generation drones.

Despite incidents of reckless flying, drones unlock huge opportunities. We regularly see beautiful photography and videography shot using drones—but, of course, they can do so much more.

Sony has built a stellar reputation in media capture. The company builds great cameras – both for itself and sensors it supplies to other manufacturers...

10 November 2020 | Robotics