News
According to a report from ijiwei, citing Reuters, Arm—the world’s largest semiconductor IP company under SoftBank—recently reportedly sought to acquire Alphawave, the world’s fourth-largest semiconductor IP company, in an effort to obtain technologies crucial to AI processors development.
However, sources also indicate that after holding preliminary talks with Alphawave, Arm has decided not to move forward with the acquisition. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has also been considering an acquisition of Alphawave, according to sources cited in another report from Reuters.
The report highlights that under UK takeover rules, Qualcomm must make a formal offer by April 29, or it will be deemed to have abandoned the acquisition.
SoftBank and Arm, as well as Qualcomm and Alphawave, have all declined to comment, according to the report.
Why SerDes Matters
Arm was reportedly interested in acquiring Alphawave to obtain its “SerDes” technology, which could strengthen Arm’s capabilities in AI chip development. As explained by Reuters, SerDes—short for serializer-deserializer—is a crucial technology that has given Broadcom a competitive edge, enabling it to win major AI chip clients like Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI.
SerDes technology enables the conversion between parallel and serial data, playing a key role in high-speed communication. As highlighted by Reuters, it directly impacts how quickly data can enter or exit a chip — a critical factor for AI, since applications like ChatGPT and other large-scale systems often rely on thousands of interconnected chips to function efficiently.
NVIDIA has also developed its own SerDes technology and has an intention to license it to other companies as part of its custom chip business, according to Reuters.
As noted by GuruFocus, Arm does not currently possess SerDes technology, and sources indicate that developing it would require a specialized team and a minimum of two years.
Meanwhile, the report points out that Alphawave has a joint venture in China named WiseWave, established in collaboration with Chinese investment firm Wise Road Capital. The latter was placed on the U.S. blacklist by American officials last year due to national security concerns—an issue that could further complicate any acquisition attempt by Arm or Qualcomm.
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(Photo credit: Arm)
