41–50 of 184 posts
The antitrust implications of an ARM sale to any one of the tech giant is massive and may drag on for a while. It would be probably be quicker if Softbank floats ARM through an IPO.
Nvidia acquiring ARM wouldn't pose much of a problem because they can just point to AMD, which already offers CPU and GPU, so it would put the two companies on a more even footing in that regard.
How relevant is ARM in the long run if Apple is pursuing its own design / CPU architecture ("Apple Silicon") and the Chinese lead by Huawei are forced by US sanctions also to create their own design / architecture?
Or let me ask in different way: why use ARM if you control and build the whole stack from electronics to operating system to the software running on it? The core instruction set is from the 80es. Surely you can come up with some better today were you to design it from scratch?
Ya, but then you have to develop and support the entire ecosystem around just the instruction set. That means compilers, languages, runtimes, and more - which is not a trivial undertaking.
Perhaps Apple could pull it off, but it would take a very long time to get something entirely new stable enough, and performant enough, to compete with anything being offered today.
Plus, it's not Apple's focus and doesn't really benefit them much either. Nobody builds iOS apps in assembler - but they expect it to run fast. That takes a very well tuned compiler, and a very well refined CPU architecture.
can someone explain how ARM as a business works? My understanding is, they design the specification of the ARM assembly language, and the design of the hardware (not individual chip fab but like... abstractly, somehow?) But if they specify the design of the hardware, why would one chipmaker have faster/better CPUs if they are using the same spec as another chipmaker with slower/worse CPUs? What's the business model?…
Keep in mind that I am NOT well-informed about this and I may say some wrong things.
https://www.arm.com/why-arm/how-licensing-works
From what I understand, ARM will give you various different implementations of different ARM cores, depending on the licensing terms. My guess is that this includes:
- RTL optimized for simulation
- RTL optimized for synthesis, maybe with variants for FPGA vs ASIC
- Various lower-level implementations, complete with layout. Just a “block” that you drop onto your chip design. I imagine that these are something like “here’s a block that you can give to TSMC for their 16nm process”
can someone explain how ARM as a business works? My understanding is, they design the specification of the ARM assembly language, and the design of the hardware (not individual chip fab but like... abstractly, somehow?) But if they specify the design of the hardware, why would one chipmaker have faster/better CPUs if they are using the same spec as another chipmaker with slower/worse CPUs? What's the business model?…
> What's the business model? Do they get paid per ARM chip sold, or yearly for the rights to sell ARM chips, etc?
Either or both.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know exactly how compensation works, but they have basically two products: - The ARM ISA (the "specification") - A series of chip designs implementing such ISA (the Cortex series) Customers can either license the Cortex design to implement in their own silicon or license the ISA and design their own CPU (like Apple did). There isn't one single Cortex core, but many of them at different performance/price point…
Why exactly does one need to license an ISA? AMD doesn't license x86 from Intel, AFAIK. What's the IP that Apple would otherwise be infringing upon if they didn't license? The "ARM" trademark?
AMD and Intel license IA-32/AMD64 and extensions from eachother, and they have agreements which make this mutual licensing apply to basically any ISA extension. The original x86 patents are long since expired, but every year they add extensions and cross-license them to eachother.
Whoever controls that company can decide who's allowed to make processors that run consumer facing software (sure, RISC V might present a threat in the long term, but it's a good decade out).
Of course that would be a nightmare for every other licensee (which is why I'm hoping for the IPO), but the potential gain is immense, isn't it? Or are the licenses so nice they're safe regardless of who owns the company?
How relevant is ARM in the long run if Apple is pursuing its own design / CPU architecture ("Apple Silicon") and the Chinese lead by Huawei are forced by US sanctions also to create their own design / architecture?
Or let me ask in different way: why use ARM if you control and build the whole stack from electronics to operating system to the software running on it? The core instruction set is from the 80es. Surely you can come up with some better today were you to design it from scratch?
It isn't "mostly the same instructions but with 64-bit registers" the way 64-bit x86 is.
How can anyone not be interested in owning ARM? Whoever controls that company can decide who's allowed to make processors that run consumer facing software (sure, RISC V might present a threat in the long term , but it's a good decade out). Of course that would be a nightmare for every other licensee (which is why I'm hoping for the IPO), but the potential gain is immense, isn't it? Or are the licenses so nice they'r…
Just keep in mind that the major use case for ARM is embedded systems: washing machines, smart refrigerators, car electronics, barbecue thermometers, medical devices, lawn mowers, you get the idea. Mobile phone or computer companies would not be interested in dealing with that part of the business.