SoftBank buys server-grade Arm silicon designer Ampere Computing

Japanese tech investment house SoftBank Group has announced its intention to acquire Ampere Computing, the chip design firm that makes server-grade silicon based on the Arm architecture.

SoftBank (SBG) is paying $6.5 billion for the privilege. Ampere's major investors - Oracle and Carlyle - are selling their stakes.

Ampere specializes in manycore CPUs like the "Ultra" model it launched in 2023 with between 96 and 192 of 'em inside, all compatible with the Armv8.6+ architecture and version 5 of the Server Base System Architecture - but also customized with tweaks of Ampere's own devising.

Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba and Tencent are all users of Ampere silicon, either for their own workloads or powering IaaS and SaaS offerings.

Why stop at 196 cores? Ampere isn't! In 2024 it announced the AmpereOne Aurora which will reach 512 cores.

That monster chip is designed to handle AI workloads, and that appears to be what interested SoftBank as the Japanese company said buying Ampere will advance its "strategic vision and commitment to driving innovation in AI and compute."

In Ampere's announcement of the deal, SBG CEO and Chairman Masayoshi Son is quoted as saying "The future of Artificial Super Intelligence requires breakthrough computing power. Ampere's expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States."

Ampere founder and CEO Renée J. James declared himself "excited to join SoftBank Group and partner with its portfolio of leading technology companies.

SoftBank's announcement also mentions Ampere working with other SBG companies.

"Ampere is expected to collaborate with the broader SBG ecosystem, including group companies, investees, and business partners," it states, before adding: "Through this strategic alignment following the Transaction, Ampere's expertise in developing and taping out ARM-based chips can be integrated, complementing design strengths of Arm Holdings."

Those mentions of collaboration across SBG raises the tantalizing prospect that group businesses could adopt Ampere processors. Some of those businesses - like Korean/Japanese web giant LY Corp - operate at hyperscale. SoftBank also runs a telco in Japan, while its Vision Fund investment limb has stakes in TikTok operator ByteDance, numerous large-scale e-commerce players, plus enterprise tech outfits and AI upstarts.

If SBG can steer its companies towards Ampere, a lot of workloads could shift from x86.

We don't know what this all means for Arm's aspirations to create its own server processors, which reportedly saw Meta sign up as a customer. Maybe SoftBank will find a way to run two server processor businesses, or focus Arm on direct sales of custom jobs and let Ampere sell commodity kit. ®