AMD's $35 billion Xilinx acquisition finally went through after waiting since October 2020. (Image Credit: Timothy Dykes/Unsplash)
In October 2020, AMD announced plans to acquire Xilinx, a fabless semiconductor company, for $35 billion, the largest in AMD's history. Now, the deal has finally closed after it received regulatory approval in China on January 27th.
Xilinx generally develops programmable semiconductors like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). These chips have varying applications in the industrial sector and can contribute to AMD's expansion into developing new chip types while accelerating growth into new markets. The chips are also widely used in data centers with AMD's CPUs and GPUs. This can, in turn, provide more solutions for existing clients based on AMDs business growth.
Similar to AMD, Xilinx doesn't manufacture any of its chips. So that also means AMD won't return to its old model, where the company manufactured its CPUs and GPUs. Instead, the acquisition gives AMD more fight in its competition with Intel, which acquired Altera, Xilinx's biggest FPGA competitor, in 2015.
Nvidia's acquisition of Arm didn't go through as planned due to regulatory challenges. (Image Credit: Mizter_X94/pixabay)
Earlier this month, Nvidia's $40 billion Arm acquisition fell apart due to "significant regulatory challenges." As a result, Nvidia is expected to pay $1.25 billion to SoftBank for the unsuccessful transaction. Announced in September 2020, the acquisition would have been the largest in the industry, allowing Nvidia to take over Arm.
The deal has been under review since its announcement. Of course, during that time, Huang publically defended the deal constantly and even admitted that it might take longer to go through. The US, UK, and EU regulators started worrying about what might happen if Nvidia took over Arm. Also, the FTC sued to prevent the deal from going through.
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