, who tracks China's chip sector at Shanghai-based consultancy Intralink, said that the acquisition, one of the largest semiconductor takeovers ever, will prompt many Chinese chipmakers to look for and develop alternatives to Arm, which is being sold by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp.
However, while a handful of options exist such as other open-source technologies RISC-V and MIPS, most cannot currently compete with Arm's mature ecosystem, tech experts said.
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.
Meanwhile, Arm's ownership by an American company also raises the possibility that Washington could place restrictions on its business in China, industry experts said.
(Jedoch:)
The chief executives of Nvidia and Arm told Reuters in an interview that Nvidia will retain Arm's United Kingdom headquarters - which exempt it from many US export control laws - and open licensing model.
The UK's government will scrutinise the deal, including what it might mean for the company's headquarters in England, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday.
Chinese companies including Alibaba and Huawei are members of the RISC-V foundation, an open-source project that originated at the University of California, Berkeley and which many experts see as a potential beneficiary of any retreat from Arm. China's government has also been pouring money into its domestic chip sector in hopes of fostering companies that can rival giants from the US, South Korea and Japan. Beijing helped close a 204 billion yuan ($28.9bn) fund last year to finance semiconductor companies, after raising a nearly 140 billion yuan ($20.6bn) fund in 2014.
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