The rumor has been around for a while, but it is almost set in stone now, according to The Guardian:
This could potentially destroy the Open Source nature of the ARM achitecture, depending on Nvidias goals with it.
But considering they are spending $40 Billion on this, they want it badly.
Any thoughts on this?
On to Manjaro-RISCV next?
Thereās not really any consumer RISC-V based SBCās yetā¦
But the SoCās does not compare to ARM at all. They are so underpowered in comparison.
True, but small beginnings and whatnot. I was hoping that Americaās trade embargo against Huawei would push Huawei into the RISCV market, but this doesnāt seem to have happened.
Regards ARM Holdings current/new stewardship, no-one seems to want to take ownership for any more than four years.
Also, we donāt yet know whether NVIDIA will be allowed to purchase ARM Holdings.
While that is true, I donāt see why they wouldnāt.
This could also be Nvidias first real investment into Open Source hardware.
Iām not sure NVIDIA knows the meaning of āopen sourceā.
I have a bad feeling thisā¦
At least itās not going else where.
there is this future one , ( from phoronix )
"And so the rumours were trueā¦
So Japan sells ARM to US,
For US companies this is not so bad, in a lot of ways it is better, unless for Intel, AMD and IBMā¦
I donāt know if Apple has something to loose her( since they change ARM Designs themself s),
But in the long term, ARM will strive for a CPU more close to the Data Center, so that they can also sell their Nvidia accelerators together, and in the long run, Apple may have to jump off the wagonā¦
Maybe in the Long Run could appear the possibility of the Mainstream market( Desktops and Laptopsā¦ )ā¦in this case maybe Apple will be interestedā¦
For Chinese companies, that are right now, almost blocked from ARM technology and communicationās too( specially from US Companiesā¦ which ARM is nowā¦ ), this means the end of Chinese chipmakers with ARM.
So, China as being pushing āalternative horsesā, for the case the rumours were true, and so RISCV will finally arrive, more than ever China will need itā¦
For Europe, is bad, because Japan was used to be neutral towards Europe, the US is not!
So I believe RISCV alternatives will also start to appear in the coming years, maybe initially as microcontrollers in Europeā¦
This is also bad for all the Companies that are right now, creating ARM chips for the Datacenter, will be there some uncertainty for them, and especially the ones only dealing with ARMā¦
In the mobile phones market, this is bad for the world, ARM will spy for NSA and others, and probably, If a alternative arrive( RISCV?? ), I will jump off tooā¦
For Linux, this is not good,
We start to have now Lima and Panfrost drivers for ARM devices and in the long run, will be there a Nvidia graphics IP, with a binary blobā¦
Also ARM will be more closed, not a so open friendly environment like today started to be( even tough that ARM never helped a lot in this openness, but it also donāt tried to unsure everything is closedā¦giving its costumers a lot of freedomā¦ freedom that in a lot of ways will disappearā¦ )
So Japan kicked in the but Europe and China( badly ), not to speak for other regional placesā¦ "
also this future 2
first check all license & linux on arm ( video mali included )
nVidia is very power hungry, ARM is not.
My personal and subjective opinion:
Did Linus say anything about it ? We all know that he doesnāt like NVIDIA.
Iāve heard that NVIDIA will respect Armās freedom and its independance but you donāt buy a company for 40 billion to leave it independent according to me. They want to take advantage of the leverage effect to enter the datacenter and server market and the time is good :
The new number one in the top500 (hpc) is Fugaku, which is powered by Fujitsuās 48-core A64FX SoC, becoming the first number one system on the list to be powered by ARM processors. But sooner or later they will look at the telephone and sbc market (they already have tegra cards for industrial market).
As already said, I think itās not a very good news for our āareaā.
Even if they did absolutely nothing ā¦ it would be a sound business move.
It seems a near-certainty that ARM will proliferate and become more and more common or even intrinsic to many sectors, not just mobile, in the coming years.
(anyone else heard the rumors of all new macbooks being ARM-based in the future?)
That said ā¦ its also rather far-fetched that nvidia would do nothing and/or that it would mean nothing.
So I would wager some anxiety, especially from an opensource perspective or that of dev projects that have invested into this with previous goals or understandings, is pretty reasonable.
This isnāt even rumors anymore. Apple confirmed in their 2020 Conference keynote, that they will be using their own in-house ARM based chips (named Apple Silicon) in all their devices, completely dropping all Intel based ones.
I have to disagree with you here. The Japanese company would keep ARM if doing nothing would net them more profit than selling ARM.
Different folks have different visions, different interestsā¦ and no one can see the future.
But also there are things to consider like legalisms and resources.
I guess I cant include things like āavailable licenses, funds, etcā in ādoing nothingā strictly speaking ā¦ but I was in my post.
For example ā¦ ARM may be able to be profitable if it could scale - but lacks the resources to do so. Nvidia sees this, and is wiling to invest given its reasoned assumption that will return profits in the future, regardless of the current situations viability.
Let alone things like, you know, owner/founders being happy to get paid.
Since when ARM is opensource ? 
ThĆ© arm architecture is not opensourceā¦ they sell it with different kind of licences to founder, chip manufacturer etc.
Are there any POWER SBCās in existence?
Edit: Did a small search. Answer appears to be ānoā at the moment.
Out of interest, I just stumbled upon news regarding the PicoRio. Maybe there will be a Manjaro-RISCV in the not too distant future.
To start with RISC-V we would have to bootstrap it ourselves, we would have to maintain all the packages ourselves, which would be a significant increase in our infrastructure cost and setup. 