Nvidia started the acquisition of ARM for $40 billion back in September 2020, and hopes to finalise this deal by 2022 – much to the dismay of the UK government, who are now trying to intervene in the sale of the British semiconductor firm, according to a report from Videocardz.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the purchase will allow the green team to create the “world’s premier computing company for the age of AI”, helping Nvidia with its ventures in self-driving cars and server applications. Nvidia chips built using ARM architecture could also find their way into the gaming world in the not too distant future, if the acquisition is successful.
With the finish line so far in the distance and these new obstacles in the way, it’s unlikely we’ll see the best graphics card running on ARM any time soon, but an approved deal yields a lot of potential for portable gaming devices and future laptops. As it stands, the best gaming laptops still run on conventional x86 processors, which are bulkier and more power hungry, making them thick, heavy, hot, and noisy – which isn’t ideal for gaming on-the-go.
Apple’s new ARM-based MacBook Air, despite a fanless design, is still capable of running some of the best PC games, and wipes the floor in CPU benchmarks – even against the best gaming CPU.
If an Apple product of all things is already capable of pushing this kind of performance, then more ARM-based laptops designed with gaming in mind could be on their way in a few years time.