ARM is a company that builds British processors and the accompanying concept is a “blank” approach; This means that they do not have their own factories where they make their own chips but are produced by third parties, but unlike what happened with NVIDIA and AMD producing their chips on Samsung and TSMC to sell to third parties, ARM does not make one product but does license. of its construction in the form of files.
These files are written in hardware definition language such as Verilog or VHDL, which explains how logical gates make the processor connected and how they relate to the language reminiscent of programming languages of older software. .
What sets ARM apart is that those files licensed to third parties can be expanded and customized by the customer, and this allows some companies to use ARM moditions designed to build their own “processors” at relatively low cost. as if they had to do it right away.
Dependence on ARM is Huawei
In the case of Huawei they have their own HiSilicon component that enables their processors to use ARM technology, and recently introduced PCs instead of based on the ISA x86 process based on ARM.
Now with the acquisition of ARM by NVIDIA the situation has completely changed and there is a risk that NVIDIA has decided to completely abolish its technology licensing policy to match that of NVIDIA, where the design is closed lime and edge and chips from Giving you a negative view, is the same and that tomorrow someone bought Linux and decided to change the license and stop being a GPL in order to have a more restrictive license or just become a closed source.
For this reason, it is possible that NVIDIA may have decided to refrain from licensing a good technology component that allows these processors to be processed, which is not only the CPU but also all the concepts around it and are absolutely essential to building the SoC.
The political situation makes the purchase of ARM from NVIDIA difficult
The trade war between the United States and China has ended up ruining the hardware world, largely because of Huawei’s veto by Trump’s trade department, which has led to the loss of the US market and all its means, resulting in the loss of a market large enough to deprive them of production. eTSMC.
Rumors from China are that Huawei will pressure government officials to regulate the market in that country, ensuring that the implementation of its ARM-based projects will not be harmed if the law is finally approved. acquisition by NVIDIA, because it should be assumed that NVIDIA could be completely and could not be challenged by Huawei or any of its licensors and given a trade war between the two nations, it is possible that Huawei sees it as a future situation.
So far both Huawei and NVIDIA have declined to comment on the rumors, but if you think about it don’t cool down, you’ll see that it makes sense.