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Nvidia to Acquire ARM Holdings from Softbank at a $40 Million Valuation

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The coronavirus pandemic has made this a precarious time for companies of all kinds. As a result, we have been seeing quite a few mergers and acquisitions in recent months. The newest addition to that group is the collaboration between Nvidia and Arm Holdings. Through a shock announcement on Sunday, Nvidia has agreed to buy smartphone chip-designer Arm Holdings, from Softbank at a valuation of $40 billion. Here’s a look at everything you need to know about this acquisition and the lead up to it.

Details Regarding the Deal

The companies announced via a report on Sunday that they were near closing the acquisition deal. The deal, which values Arm at $40 billion will include $21.5 billion via Nvidia stock, $12 billion in cash, with a $2 billion payable at the signing of the deal. In 2016, Softbank acquired Arm at a $31.4 billion valuation, making it one of the most expensive acquisitions ever. Arm Holdings is a known chip-design and manufacturing company that focuses on the design of chipsets for smartphones.  They are also involved in the making of Qualcomm and Apple chips, making them a popular choice within the industry. Furthermore, Apple has also expressed plans to shift its MAC computers from Intel to Arm chips, opening new avenues for the company.

Nvidia’s Plan for Arm

Nvidia is a giant in the field of AI and graphic card design and manufacture. They also have operations that help with the design and creation of self-driving vehicles and other autonomous applications. The company stated that it would retain Arm’s licensing model which is largely open in structure. Furthermore, Nvidia also said that they would continue to uphold Arm’s customer neutrality. Nvidia has been doing quite well for itself due to a boom in the usage and sales of video games due to the global pandemic. The company is aiming to launch a new desktop graphics card that will help PC gamers play more intensive games. As per the last earnings report, the company has projected a 46% growth in revenue for the third quarter of this year.

Nvidia Arm Logo
Image Source: nvidia.com

Past Acquisition

SoftBank’s acquisition of Arm was a result of them entering the Internet of Things space. The company viewed Arm Holdings as a valuable investment in this field due to its work on wireless connectivity and smart devices. Arm Holdings also works on intelligent chipsets that could possibly help with the development of everyday smart devices, such as refrigerators, other appliances, and cars. At the time of the acquisition, Masayoshi Son, who serves as the Chairman of Softbank, had hailed the move. He went as far as to say that Arm was a company he had always admired and that the acquisition means a lot to him.

Tough Time for Softbank

However, over the years, Softbank has had to deal with financial troubles. A couple of intensive investments, in companies like Uber and WeWork, has led to them losing money. Furthermore, the company’s shares lost value recently due to it holding stock in tech companies that had fared poorly in the market in September. While it is unclear precisely how much Softbank will make through the Nvidia acquisition, it might help them take a capital-intensive company off their hands. However, experts are concerned about whether Softbank will be able to make a lot of money on the sale due to it having invested quite a bit on Arm.

Softbank also requires cash to help the start-ups that it has picked up via the Vision Fund initiative. This move will provide some relief to start-ups that are facing hardships due to the lockdowns brought in by the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this year, it had also stated that it would sell about $21 billion worth of stock it holds in T-Mobile. The acquisition will see Arm working as an Nvidia division. The company will stay headquartered in the UK and follow the same licensing model and customer base. However, the deal might still face intense scrutiny with regard to regulations from the EU.

Microsoft has also signed on-board, making Arm-based Surfaces and using it on their Windows. Also, the two companies are not competitors per se as Nvidia does not do much of CPU design or mobile hardware manufacturing. Nvidia might be planning an entry into the next stage of AI computing with this acquisition. Reports are stating that Nvidia wants to invest in building a brand-new AI center for research in Cambridge. If this proves to be true, then the companies can align with each other enabling both to push ahead with regards to AI software develop

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NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz to Team Up to Create New Platform for Vehicles

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There’s some good news coming for auto enthusiasts and gaming enthusiasts alike. Reports have been coming out stating that Mercedes-Benz is planning on working with gaming legend Nvidia to create a state-of-the-art computing platform. This next-generation interface will help vehicles support everything from regular software updates to automated driving.  Here’s a look at what could be the next big revolution in the auto industry.

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New Age for Driving

The German auto industry staple recently said that it plans to release vehicles supporting this platform in 2024. It believes that by 2024, all Benz vehicles will support and have this technology, creating a new dawn for the way we drive cars. The new system will work via Nvidia’s Orin technology, which works as a system-on-a-chip device. Furthermore, the San Jose-based tech company will also use its full Drive AGX stack to develop this platform. 

The Orin first came out in December of 2019 and featured top-of-the-line specifications in all respects. It also has the power and capacity to deliver a performance that exceeds 200 trillion functions every second. Furthermore, the chip does all this, while utilising less power or battery than any technology before it, making it incredibly efficient. The chip will help develop a new system software stack that enables drivers to do everything from assisted driving and Autopilot to efficient parking, such as using Tesla’s Smart Summon function.

Benz Takes The Tesla Route

The new software system will also help users enable over-the-air updates for the vehicle software system, much like what we see in smartphones nowadays. Benz has been in the back foot for a while, trying to play catch-up to a more tech-savvy Tesla. However, with this new project, the legendary automaker wants to come out as the new tech-enabled car manufacturer. Tesla has always been superior when it comes to releasing and shipping OTA updates for their fleet of cars. This has helped them stay on top of their game, with regular updates such as Autopilot and new sensor technology. Just like how Apple and Samsung come out with new updates that help repair and rejuvenate their smartphones, Tesla has been revamping its electric vehicles through their updates.

Other Features Of The System

The new Drive System from Nvidia allows the software to track a driver’s motion, blinking, head movements, eye position, and so on. This information can then be used to calculate whether the driver is too drowsy, tired, or incapable of driving with efficiency. Once the system does this analysis, it functions as per the preferences set by the manufacturer. The system can take over and assist the driver with controlling the vehicle, or even alert the driver using warnings built into the vehicle. These visual and audio warnings will help the driver focus on the road again, and snap out of their drowsy state. Furthermore, this system can also monitor the driver’s external surroundings and environment, helping to keep the driver aware of everything happening around them. For instance, if a driver forgets to look at a cyclist approaching from behind and attempts to open the door, the system sends out a warning. As per the preferences set, it can also physically stop the door from opening, helping prevent hassles and accidents.

Major Companies Join In

Benz isn’t the only other automaker to take the plunge and start promoting an OTA system. Soon after Tesla came out with their system, GM followed suit and introduced their own OTA system. Recently, Ford too, has been coming out with their software updates, which help improve their 2020 models. The newest automaker to join in seems to be Daimler, who is set to start rolling out their own software updates and upgrades. Ola Källenius, who serves as Daimler’s CEO, stated that new upgrades would come into their cloud. Users will have the option to download such updates to improve their driving experience. The news that came out yesterday followed another critical update stating that BMW and Daimler were concluding their partnership. The legendary German automakers had announced a plan in 2019, to spend over $1 billion to improve their vehicle’s technological aspect.

The deal with BMW apparently fell through because Daimler wanted to upgrade their Mercedes vehicles quickly. The partnership with Nvidia serves as a much faster solution for the German automaker. However, we will have to see how the system designed by Nvidia turns out. When most companies are taking a probabilistic AI approach, Nvidia is focusing on neural network-enabled software. Whatever happens with the full stack system, it is quite clear that this partnership ushers in a new and exciting age for the auto industry.

GeForce RTX Super

Nvidia Launches the Super GeForce RTX GPUs; Better Performance at Same Price

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Nvidia, the American technology company, is all set to launch the ‘super’ version of its gaming-focused graphics cards, GeForce RTX 2060, 2070, and 2080. The company will be bringing the RTX 2060 Super, 2070 Super, and 2080 Super, today, as an addition to its RTX graphic lineup, which according to Nvidia, are faster and better at the performance.

The much-awaited set of graphics cards from Nvidia have already been the topic of discussion, and the rumours have already been making the rounds about the features of these new desktop cards.

GeForce RTX Super
Image Source: techradar.com

The reports suggest that the GeForce RTX 2060 Super and the GeForce RTX 2070 Super will render 15 per cent faster performance than their counterpart, whereas the GeForce RTX 2080 Super is a high-end graphics card version, which will exhibit 20 to 25 per cent faster performance than RTX 2080 (non-super version). The GeForce RTX 2070 is now supporting additional CUDA cores, i.e., a total of 2560, at the higher base and boost clocks (1605MHz and 1770MHz, respectively). On the other hand, RTX 2060 Super at the higher base and boost clock, i.e. 1470MHz and 1650MHz, respectively, is supporting a total of 2176 CUDA cores. The high-end RTX 2080 Super will be coming with an additional 128 CUDA cores.

The three graphics cards have also been revamped, in the terms of memory, with a wider 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface and an additional 2GB of GDDR6 memory making it a total of 8GB memory.

“Dubbed the ‘graphics holy grail,’ real-time ray tracing brings cinematic quality lighting effects to interactive experiences for the first-time. The world’s most advanced GPU architecture, Turing fuses next-generation shaders with real-time ray tracing and all-new AI capabilities. Turing’s hybrid graphics capability represents the biggest generational leap ever in gaming GPUs, delivering up to 6x more performance than previous 10 Series Pascal GPUs”, the global head of marketing for the GeForce business at Nvidia, Matt Wuebbling, stated in a blog post.

The company has revealed that it will be shipping the GeForce RTX 2060 Super and the GeForce RTX 2070 Super starting from July 9, whereas the RTX 2080 will be dropped by the end of this month. The prices of all the three cards have been kept similar to their current versions. That means, the RTX 2060 Super will be available for $399, the price of the RTX 2060 is $499, and the RTX 2080 will be sold for $699.

Nvidia and Arm Collabs to Build Energy-efficient Supercomputers

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Continuing with the collaborations with Arm, a British semiconductor design company, now Nvidia is again working together with the company to support the processors built by the former. Nvidia announced the news at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) going on in Frankfurt, Germany, saying that the partnership will be able to build supercomputers which will “exascale” on performance.

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According to Nvidia, the two companies are working towards developing the energy-efficient supercomputers that will be carrying out at least a quintillion (a billion) floating point, i.e. Flops, computations per second. Noticeably, one flop is equal to the multiplication of two 15-digit numbers.

Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang, while announcing the news at the event, said, “As traditional compute scaling has ended, the world’s supercomputers have become power constrained. Our support for Arm, which designs the world’s most energy-efficient CPU architecture, is a giant step forward that builds on initiatives Nvidia is driving to provide the HPC industry with a more power-efficient future”.

The company will be extending its support for Arm with its high-performance computing and AI-focused software by 2020. The other services that the company will be offering Arm, includes software development kits, profilers, CUDA-X libraries, PGI compilers with OpenACC support, and graphics-accelerated frameworks, etc.

The partnership between the two companies will help Arm to expand its business and build trust among the investors, as no computer architecture from the company will be without the support of Nvidia. Though it is not the first time that the two are working together, previously, the two had joined hands for Nvidia’s AGX platform that incorporated Arm-based chips and also Nvidia’s Deep Learning Accelerator (NVIDIA).

On the other hand, with this partnership, Nvidia will be getting access to the most energy-efficient chip designs, specially built for mobile devices. According to Nvidia, the energy saving products are the next big thing that is going to be the most important in the coming future.

Nvidia Unveiled its New $99 AI Computer for Everyone

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Every person is aware of the fact that AI and machine learning is the next big thing. Slowly, the two technologies are making their way in the real world. On the same league, Nvidia has unveiled the $99 AI computer Jetson Nano along with a developer kit of the Nano, for the developers, makers, and researchers, in its GTC conference held on Monday.

nvidia-jetson-nano
Image Source: zdnet.com

The company has already introduced its Jetson embedded graphics platform and the Jetson Nano Developer kit is the extension of the same. The Nvidia’s Jetson line up works towards providing products to help makers, developers and the students, in the projects based on robotics, AI and autonomous machine applications.

In 2015, the company came with the Jetson TX1 “Supercomputer-on-Module” which provided brains to the robots, drones, and self-driving vehicles. It was the first step for the company in the field of AI and machine learning. After TX1, the company had launched TX2 embedded with a 256-core Pascal GPU and a Jetson AGX Xavier embedded with a 512-core Nvidia Volta GPU. All the three Nvidia’s AI products were high-end products.

But the Jetson Nano is an affordable and tiny $99 computer optimized for AI and machine learning, embedded with 128 CUDA core GPU. The Jetson Nano is based on the Maxwell architecture and offers 472 GFLOPs and is powered by a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A57-based CPU and a 4GB RAM. The computer also possesses a video processor, which is able to handle up to 4K 30fps encode or 4K 60fps decode. It also has got support for the Gigabit Ethernet, microSD storage, I/O for cameras, and other ports and interfaces, including USB-C.

The Nano kit is a plug and plays DIY kit, which also supports a few AI frameworks including TensorFlow, PyTorch, Caffe, Keras, and MXNet.

Although the Jetson Nano is not as powerful as Nvidia’s previous models, the new Jetson Nano, being cheaper, may help many hobbyists and students with their DIY projects. The company is also offering the production-ready kits for $129, for some specific companies and people who want to build their own AI devices.

The company has also introduced a $250 autonomous robotics kit named JetBot at the event. The JetBot is specially designed to build a self-driving robot.

Jensen Huang : The CEO & Co-founder of Nvidia

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An American entrepreneur and a businessman, Jensen Huang is the CEO and co-founder of the graphics-processor company Nvidia. Huang is an all-rounder, who as a child was placed third in junior doubles at the U.S Open and at the same time, was deeply in love with his books. He is a fan of tattoos and his love for cars as well as speed, encouraged him to buy a Ferrari 430, a Ferrari 599 and a Swedish Koenigsegg CCX. Huang is never afraid of failures and believes that it is ‘Okay to Fail’, to achieve your goals.

Early Life

Jensen Huang was born on 17 February 1963, in Tainan City, Taiwan. After some time, his family moved to Oneida, Kentucky, and then to Oregon. His family, along with his elder brother, sent him to live with their relatives, in the United States, when he was just 10 years old. There, the two joined the Baptist School, a school for troubled students. After a few years, both of them were back in Oregon, to reunite with their parents. Huang completed his high school education from the Aloha High School, outside Portland.

In 1984, Huang entered the Oregon State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He further joined Stanford University, to complete a master’s degree in the same, in 1992.

Founding Nvidia

After completing his education, Huang started working at LSI Logic as the Director of the company. He then, joined Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., as the microprocessor designer.

jen-hsun-huang
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Huang knew that graphics is the future of computers and gaming will be the most revenue generating field in the future. In April 1993, along with his partners, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, Huang co-founded Nvidia, a software and semiconductor maker company, with a capital of $40,000.

Huang was appointed as the CEO of the company, Curtis Priem as the Chief Technical Officer and Chris as the Senior Vice President for Engineering and Operations. Chris worked at the same position for ten long years, and in 2003, he took retirement from his post.

Nvidia deals mainly in four markets including gaming, professional visualization, data centres and auto. The company has also started working in the field of artificial intelligence.

The company received $20 million of venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and others. In 2018, the company recorded a 40.6% increase in the revenue of the company, with the earnings of US$3.047 billion.

Personal Life

Huang is married to Lori Huang, who was once his Lab partner in College. The couple has two children with their marriage.

Huang is also into Philanthropy and donated US$30 million to build the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center to his alma mater Stanford University.

Ernst & Young named him the Entrepreneur of the Year in High Technology, in 1999. In 2003, he was presented with the Dr Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award. In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from Oregon State University. Huang was named among the world’s top 50 influencers, in the in the inaugural EDGE 50, in 2018.