ARM co-founder has bad feeling about purchase by NVIDIA

ARM co-founder Tudor Brown believes the reason why SoftBank is considering a sale of ARM is because the Japanese firm over-invested in ARM. SoftBank tried to push diversification at ARM, but efforts to monetize the Internet of Things (IoT) market failed to take off. Brown also believes that SoftBank threw money on things that clearly weren't going to make money in the short term.

In recent days, rumors have intensified that NVIDIA may be the only party left that's interested in a full takeover of ARM. Brown, who served as ARM's chief technology officer, chief operating officer and president before calling time in 2012, believes an acquisition by NVIDIA would not be in the best interest of the ARM ecosystem.

Brown believes the only reason why NVIDIA (or any other tech company) would want to buy ARM is to give itself an unfair advantage. He laments that a sale to NVIDIA will upset the ARM ecosystem, because ARM's business model requires it to remain on good terms with its client base. NVIDIA owning ARM would shake up things as NVIDIA is in competition with other ARM clients.

Brown says Nvidia or any other semiconductor company owning Arm is “immediately going to upset that balance and make it very, very difficult for other companies to feel that they have equal access to the technology”.

Brown says he can’t imagine why a company would want to buy Arm if it wasn’t seeking to give itself an unfair advantage such as “early access” or to “deprive the other guys from having whatever innovations were to take place”.

Just like Hermann Hauser, another ARM co-founder, Brown believes the UK government should step in and help ARM to become an independent British company again.