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Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

arstechnica.com

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Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#151

Post by dralley »

stefan_ wrote: post #125
saxonww wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they also totally own the console space, don't they? The next-gen consoles from both Sony and Microsoft are based on custom AMD cpu/gpu combos.

The lowest bidder owns the console space. It's not a good business, it's a bit of cash flow.

Disclaimer that I really know nothing about these kinds of deals.

I understand that has historically been the case, but AMD is in a pretty good negotiating position right now, being effectively the only company that can provide what they bring to the table.

* a SoC with integrated CPU and GPU

* with high performance and decent power consumption

* and great synergy with the desktop x86 platform, in terms of developer knowledge, available tooling, and ISA compatibility with older games

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD is making a decent respectable margin this time around. And if not, what they most certainly did get, was a bunch of free R&D money for developing ray-tracing technology for the consoles, which they can now leverage through their entire portfolio.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#152

Post by BbzzbB »

starfallg wrote: post #126
H8crilA wrote: post #82

Nvidia's stock is in a massive bubble, so an all-stock transaction is a no brainer here. They will be getting ARM for free.

Softbank and Vision Fund aren't exactly looking for Nvidia shares though. They are looking for cold hard cash to plug the massive hole in the failing investments.

I think Son is looking for the next big thing, probably something about shared workspaces.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#153

Post by jpalomaki »

solarkraft wrote: post #46

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…

$32 billion price tag might be a turn-off for many.

Getting a new home from non-neutral buyer might cause licensees to start looking for alternatives.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#154

Post by fluffything »

blinkingled wrote: post #92
fluffything wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So long as whoever is buying ARM is legally mandated to provide licenses Why would they? With Intel, AMD, IBM with PowerPC, etc. CPU ISAs are not a monopoly. Whoever buys ARM might want to do that to start cranking up licensing fees, and might not give a damn if this results in customer loses.

If you have a perpetual license like Apple and many others do - that's a mandate to honor it forever.

The question is at which price. Those mandates _never_ fix the price. At best, they might restrict how often ARM is allowed to raise it, and maybe even by how much, but that would be it.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#155

Post by pjmlp »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #143
klelatti wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the point though that a lot of the enthusiasm around RISC-V is that it's 'free' and that's no longer the case if you're using a proprietary extension. Plus you're looking at much greater possible fragmentation than can happen with ARM?

The big difference is RISC-V has been designed to handle that situation from the start. That's why the ISA is modular.

There's is no modularity when my code requires a specific RISC-V model from vendor X.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#156

Post by pjmlp »

bfuclusion wrote: post #147
klelatti wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not an ARM issue is it? PI has strange boot by GPU but issue is SoC implementation I think not CPU architecture.

Right, it's not CPU arch, but there's a much higher chance of having the entire thing open arch if the CPU is. I expect the probability of reaching a de-facto "standard" SoC to be much higher in RISC-V and I'll take the pain of being the early adopter.

Most likely that board would be using RISC-V extensions, so no juice.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#158

Post by pankajdoharey »

klelatti wrote: post #139
pankajdoharey wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So What Stops Apple from hiring the ARM Team and design the next generation of big.LITTLE independent of ARM, without actually purchasing ARM the company?

If reports are correct they did hire some of the Imagination GPU design team. So they probably could but whilst the relationship is good the best of all worlds is a strong ARM team plus a strong team in-house.

Actually Apple benefits if the ARM Core team isn't very good, the rest of the industry would suffer if Mali GPU's dont get upgrades. Already they are behind iPhones, a poor team at ARM Ensures competition doesn't catchup. But all this might change should NVIDIA buys it and adds their own GPUS to the SOC.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#159

Post by pankajdoharey »

wahern wrote: post #145
pankajdoharey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if someone anyone who buys a 32+ Billion dollar company would want to get returns from it, so surely they won't stop investing. The problem really is if it is someone like NVIDIA then they have this rent seeking behaviour. Which almost everyone is trying to run away from. For instance In the cloud NVIDIA shuns the usage of its commodity GPU's through the use of EULA and force you to buy there expensive and ov…

> Anyone else is fine. Even Qualcomm?

Well Yeah forgot about them, Qualcomm too has this rent seeking behaviour with their Modems where they ask for a share of the profits from the phones. Maybe someone from the industry who doesn't rent seek.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#160

Post by Qwertious »

klelatti wrote: post #129
jacquesm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this stuff is two decades old by now and really should be a commodity. Newer and innovative designs are welcome to some protection. But at this level the main questions are can I have a toolchain that is unencumbered and how much power does a particular design consume. In a way that is where the battlefield is, extracting as much computation as possible from a given energy budget. Which led me to speculate…

The reason why I'm supportive of the ARM business model is that the fees are really not that significant (eg compared to x86) and actually I think it's good to support a firm with a primary focus of getting the most performance per watt from a mobile chip. A few dollars in licensing fees is really a small price to pay.

I think there's "X should be free", and then there's "there should be a free implementation of X you have the option of using". The former is up for debate, but I doubt many people would disagree with the latter.
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