Nvidia attempts to alleviate Arm merger concerns in CMA response

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published responses from Nvidia and Arm that aim to alleviate concerns around their proposed merger.

Nvidia announced plans to acquire Cambridge-based Arm back in September 2020 in a deal worth $40 billion. As two of the biggest names in chip manufacturing, the deal naturally caught the attention of competition regulators around the world.

In November 2021, UK Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries decided to block the...

11 January 2022 | NVIDIA

Nvidia Canvas uses GauGAN2 AI model to achieve 4x resolution boost

Nvidia has updated its Canvas real-time painting tool with a new AI model based on GauGAN2 research to achieve a 4x resolution boost.

Canvas enables artists to turn simple brushstrokes into realistic landscapes filled with materials including water, grass, snow, mountains, and more. The idea is that concepts can be turned into final versions far quicker than ever before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKztRskmsig

The free software, which is still in beta, is the...

5 January 2022 | Applications

Oxford Union invites an AI to debate the ethics of its own existence

DNA Sequencing

The Oxford Union, the debating society of the University of Oxford, invited an artificial intelligence to debate the ethics surrounding its own existence earlier in December. The results? Troubling.

The AI in question was the Megatron Transformer, a supervised learning tool developed by the applied deep research team at NVIDIA, based on earlier work by Google.

Trained on real-world data, the Megatron has knowledge of the whole of Wikipedia, 63 million English news...

16 December 2021 | Artificial Intelligence

FTC steps in to block Nvidia’s $40B acquisition of Arm

America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has become the first regulator to sue to block Nvidia’s acquisition of British chip designer Arm.

Arm plays a critical role in the global technology supply chain with its designs used for edge AI chips and processors for smartphones, tablets, desktops, and servers.

It’s of little surprise that Nvidia wants to bring Arm under its wing and is willing to pay $40 billion (£29 billion) for it.

Global regulators,...

3 December 2021 | Legislation & Government

UK Digital Secretary orders ‘Phase Two’ probe into Nvidia-Arm merger

UK Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries has ordered a “Phase Two” probe into the proposed £29 billion merger between Nvidia and Arm.

The CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) has been investigating whether the deal is anti-competitive. In August, it declared the deal does indeed raise “serious competition concerns”.

Arm founder Hermann Hauser went further and suggested the merger would amount to “surrendering the UK’s most powerful trade weapon to the...

17 November 2021 | Legislation & Government

GTC 2021: Nvidia debuts accelerated computing libraries, partners with Google, IBM, and others to speed up quantum research

Nvidia has unveiled 65 new and updated software development kits at GTC 2021, alongside a partnership with industry leaders to speed up quantum research.

The company’s roster of accelerated computing kits now exceeds 150 and supports the almost three million developers in NVIDIA’s Developer Program.

Four of the major new SDKs are:

ReOpt – Automatically optimises logistical processes using advanced, parallel algorithms. This includes vehicle routes, warehouse...

9 November 2021 | Artificial Intelligence

EU launches antitrust probe into $40B Nvidia-Arm acquisition proposal

The European Commission is following the UK in launching its own antitrust probe into the proposed Nvidia-Arm acquisition.

Nvidia has put in a $40 billion offer to acquire Cambridge-based Arm, which designs a large proportion of the chips that end up in devices.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, when the acquisition was announced.

“In the years...

28 October 2021 | Legislation & Government

QuEST partners with NVIDIA to deliver next-gen AI solutions in Japan

QuEST has extended its partnership with NVIDIA to accelerate the digital transformation of Japanese businesses with next-gen AI solutions.

NVIDIA named QuEST an Elite Service Delivery Partner in the NVIDIA Partner Network (NPN) back in June.

Through NPN, QuEST has early access to NVIDIA platforms, software, solutions, workshops, and technology updates. The previous agreement only covered the USA but NVIDIA has now extended the collaboration to Japan.

Masataka...

26 October 2021 | Companies

Nvidia and Microsoft develop 530 billion parameter AI model, but it still suffers from bias

Nvidia and Microsoft have developed an incredible 530 billion parameter AI model, but it still suffers from bias.

The pair claim their Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation (MT-NLG) model is the "most powerful monolithic transformer language model trained to date".

For comparison, OpenAI’s much-lauded GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters.

The duo trained their impressive model on 15 datasets with a total of 339 billion tokens. Various sampling weights...

12 October 2021 | Companies

Nvidia-Arm merger in doubt as CMA has ‘serious’ concerns

The proposed merger between Nvidia and British chip technology giant Arm is looking increasingly doubtful as the CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) believes the deal “raises serious competition concerns”.

A $40 billion merger of two of the biggest names in chip manufacturing was always bound to catch the eye of regulators, especially when it’s received such vocal opposition from around the world.

Hermann Hauser, Founder of Arm, even suggested that...

23 August 2021 | Companies