
Nvidia has been spending a lot of money recently, thanks to pandemic-related shortages leading to record revenue for the famed GPU company. Not only is it trying to drop $40 billion to buy Arm Ltd., but a new report from an Israeli publication called Globes says the company is expanding its processor efforts in Israel, where Intel has had a home base for years. You don’t have to be a mathlete to figure this one out, as the company is looking to hire CPU engineers, and is doing so where Intel currently operates. In other words, the beep you hear in the distance is the Nvidia payment truck backing up to the loading dock at Intel’s Israeli headquarters.
the Newscast says Nvidia is looking to bolster its processor team in Israel, which already has 2,800 engineers, and it will do so by creating a new design and engineering group to help design Nvidia’s next-generation processors. In a statement, Nvidia CTO Michael Kagan said, “Israel, with its unique wealth of talent, is a key player in the global technology ecosystem, and we are excited to create a new CPU group here.” He further explained that the company’s efforts would be focused on “growing our local R&D activities both in this area and in our extensive work supporting the local ecosystem through unique programs for startups. and developers”. Interestingly, Kagan worked at Intel for 16 years before co-founding Israeli interconnect company Mellanox, which was bought by Nvidia in 2020 for $6.9 billion.

Nvidia’s first processor, named Grace, was announced in 2021. (Image: Nvidia)
Nvidia’s move clearly shows that it is serious about expanding its CPU business, which is semi-new territory for the GPU company. Although Nvidia has been building licensed ARM cores and its own custom microarchitecture for over a decade, it’s never had a presence in the kind of high-end markets the company is now thought to be focusing its efforts on. Nvidia’s plans are to support the data center CPU business, as opposed to building chips for gamers and home users that currently use Intel and AMD processors. In fact, Nvidia itself currently uses AMD Epyc processors in some of its data center products, with its DGX STATION A100 using an AMD 7742 EPYC chip to link four Nvidia A100 GPUs.
Nvidia has been working on its own processor for some time now and has announced its first Arm-based chip codenamed Grace in 2021. Grace is a processor designed for AI and HPC workloads, and Nvidia says it was created because those workloads require “a tight coupling of CPU and GPU.” The company noted in its release that with this “tight coupling”, a Grace processor-based system could be up to 10 times faster than its own DGX-based systems, which, as you recall, run on AMD x86 processors.
The news that Nvidia is stepping up its CPU efforts comes as its acquisition of Arm hangs in the balance, with the latest development being a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to stop what it calls “the largest fusion of semiconductor chips in history”. The FTC argues that buying Arm “would give the company both ‘the means and the incentive’ to stifle the development of various technologies.” Nvidia is also facing difficulties in the UK, where its chief digital security officer announced an intervention based on national security concerns. To put it bluntly, it doesn’t look good for Nvidia’s Arm acquisition at this point, but luckily the company has record revenue as a consolation prize.
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