Making sense of Nvidia/Arm, TikTok/Oracle, plus more tech news you need to know

Your Tech News Digest via the DGiT Daily Tech Newsletter for Monday, September 14, 2020.

1. NVIDIA buys Arm

NVIDIA announced on Sunday evening that it would acquire Arm and its vast computer ecosystem for $ 40 billion in stock and cash. The conclusion of this contract will take 18 months.

It’s dubbed the most important semiconductor acquisition of all time, and the details from NVIDIA’s press release:

The following are the deal highlights as per the press release:

• Nvidia pays Arm’s owner SoftBank $ 21.5 billion in inventory, $ 12 billion in cash. SoftBank will keep 10% of the new unit.
• Arm will continue to be registered and headquartered in Cambridge, UK, where “a new global center of excellence for AI research will be established on Arm’s Cambridge campus”.
• Nvidia will continue Arm’s open licensing model while maintaining its global customer neutrality.

What it could mean:

• NVIDIA, the leading GPU maker heavily reliant on AI and self-driving cars, is now getting access to CPU design and mobile hardware, with Qualcomm and Samsung taking a close look.
• Cloud computing is increasingly examining ARM CPUs for their energy efficiency and lower costs.
• On the smartphone side, NVIDIA gets a chunk of almost every phone sale and a way into Apple’s Mac ecosystem after years of ditching its GPUs.

Is it approved?

• It is believed that control by regulators will be difficult. There’s a real antitrust aspect here where Arm’s independence is critical to what made it important.
• Arm’s customers alone will rebel (Reuters), although the focus is on neutral deals.
• In a useful post on Forbes, analyst Patrick Moorhead noted that I “wholeheartedly believe that NVIDIA’s competitors are hard to contradict regional regulators.”

• Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Arm, said the takeover was an “absolute disaster” for Britain and Europe and called on the British government to intervene. (One of Hauser’s last tweets in 2016 said the same thing: “ARM is the proudest accomplishment of my life. The proposed sale to SoftBank is a sad day for me and for technology in the UK.”)

The bottom line, how this affects you and me, the consumers, will not affect you for some time. A single hardware architecture that is more strongly integrated from IoT to smartphones to supercomputers makes software easier and is a real alternative to x86.

2. Oracle hosts TikTok?

Wall Street Journal and Reuters sources say TikTok will be “sold” to Oracle overnight after Microsoft announced that ByteDance has rejected its offer.

But Oracle isn’t actually buying the company, rather it is hosting its US operations.

What is that supposed to mean?

• Carry it with me The agreement to appease both the White House and the Chinese government is not an easy one and the situation still seems fluid.
• The latest on Reuters: “ByteDance stopped selling TikTok in the US on Sunday to partner with Oracle Corp …”
• “As part of the proposal, Oracle will be ByteDance’s technology partner and take over the administration of TikTok’s US user data. Oracle is also negotiating a stake in TikTok’s US operations. “
• This is very different from a sale and sounds more like a hosting arrangement. Much to clear here; It is also not clear whether TikTok US will be a different operation than TikTok global / EU / Asia.
• Microsoft’s 80-word announcement on its official blog did not go into details, but referred to the issues of “security, privacy, online safety and combating disinformation”.
• The statement ended with the words: “We look forward to seeing how the service develops in these important areas.”
• Or in other words: good luck and all the best!
• Oracle has yet to comment and confirm the deal.

The currently prevailing opinion? Nice job Microsoft!

• Tim Culpan, Bloomberg Opinion Technology Columnist, said in his article, “Congratulations to Microsoft Corp.”
• “Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer, dodges a bullet … What Nadella’s team initially offered around $ 25 billion was ultimately much less than expected and will go down as one of the most disastrous examples in history of government intervention in corporate history . “
• In fact, it’s not clear what Oracle is getting here.
• Many believe that TikTok’s technology and algorithm that people use to scroll through videos that captivate them is far more valuable than its user base.

3. Samsung announces likely Galaxy S20 FE launch event: All information here! (Android Authority).

4. US Customs proudly confiscates OnePlus Buds, mistaking them for fake Apple AirPods (Android Authority).

5. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 Review: The Only Folding Phone You Can Buy (Android Authority).

6. The LG Wing will be announced in a live stream in a few hours: 10am ET (YouTube)

7. Sony Announces PS5 Event for Wednesday September 16 at 10 a.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT (The Verge).

8. IKEA works with ASUS ROG on “affordable” gaming furniture: Not a word about what exactly, but difficult to get past chairs and desks (Engadget).

9. Review: Knife Help – The mail-in knife sharpening service is a great convenience, but the quality of its work is questionable (wired).

10. Zipline and Walmart launch drone deliveries of health and wellness products (The Verge).

11. Japan will send an 8K camera to Mars: the red planet in detail (Engadget).

12. Elon Musk says Starship’s SN8 prototype will have a nose cone and attempt a 60,000-foot return flight (TechCrunch).

13. SpaceX’s dark satellites are still too bright for astronomers (Scientificamerican.com)

14. Big, big question: “ELI5: Why does the moon look big to our eyes, but when we take a picture, is it really small?” (R / EXPLAINLEFIVE).

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