The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is paying $6.5 billion for Ampere, specialized in ARM server processors. But what about Arm, which falls under the same group?
SoftBank adds Ampere to its empire. This is confirmed by both companies in separate press releases. The acquisition reportedly involves an amount of $6.5 billion. SoftBank is taking over shares from Oracle, among others, one of the main investors in Ampere. Through this acquisition, Ampere will be deployed under the same wings as Arm Holdings.
The More Cores, the Better
Arm is familiar with its newest ‘plus-plus’. Ampere builds data center server chips based on the ARM architecture. Although Ampere’s name may not sound as resonant as Intel, AMD, or Nvidia, the company has a solid foothold with many large tech companies. With Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Alibaba, and Tencent, among others, using the company’s chips for internal workloads or IaaS and SaaS services, Ampere can present an impressive client list.
Ampere’s specialization is chips with many cores. Last summer, it introduced the AmpereOne Aurora, bonus points for the marketing department, which can contain up to 512 CPU cores. This processor has helped persuade SoftBank to bring out the big money. “The future of artificial superintelligence requires groundbreaking computing power. Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son explains in the announcement.
What About Arm?
Son adds that Ampere will fit well into the SoftBank ecosystem. This also includes Arm, the company that SoftBank wanted to sell off for a large sum to Nvidia three years ago. Arm now sees one of its customers becoming a sister company. This can create an interesting dynamic, as Arm cherishes its own ambitions to develop server chips on ARM infrastructure, in which Meta has already shown interest.
Ampere would then simultaneously be a customer, sister, and competitor. How SoftBank will differentiate between both subsidiaries will become clear in the coming months. Combining the forces of Arm and Ampere could create a stronger ‘ARM front’ in the market, to further pressure the untouchable position of x86 in the server market.
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