SHANGHAI: Nvidia Corp's US$40 billion acquisition of chip designer Arm is set to catapult it into the fray of geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington, analysts and lawyers say.
However, while a handful of options exist such as other open source technologies RISC-V and MIPS, most can't currently compete with Arm's mature ecosystem, tech experts say.An executive from one Chinese startup said it had been looking at moving away from Arm for some time but considered it too much trouble. Now, he said, they plan to accelerate efforts.
China's government has also been pouring money into its domestic chip sector in hopes of fostering companies that can rival giants from the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Huawei's Hisilicon chip unit used Arm designs to build its Kirin chips before Washington's trade restrictions on the Chinese company crippled the division, while Unisoc, a chipmaker owned by China's state-backed tech conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup, counts on the company's blueprints.