Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#21

Post by foota » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:28 AM UTC

QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #17

Seems like alarmist FUD to me. While I agree that having Arm owned by any one of its major customers creates some potential conflicts of interests, I think the notion that NVIDIA or any other company would start to drive licensees away with draconian terms/costs with some poor business planning pretty silly. The more interesting question to me is what would any single (major customer of Arm) company gain from owning…

The most cynical view would be that they could not reup licenses for competitors.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#22

Post by numakerg » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

mud_dauber wrote: post #14

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

"nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others": can you elaborate or mention an example? That aspect has escaped me thus far.

I recall the GeForce Partner Program raised some controversy, although I couldn't say whether or it was bad or good or why.

There's also the issue with them refusing to open source Linux drivers. Supposedly this is because they throttle workstation GPUs to create a market for higher-end versions while reducing the manufacturing diversity, but I haven't heard a definitive source for this.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#23

Post by chongli » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

I think nVidia could run into some serious anti-trust issues if they tried to interfere with the ARM ecosystem. There's far too much at stake here. Is there a phone on the planet that doesn't run ARM?

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#24

Post by AmericanChopper » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

mud_dauber wrote: post #14

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

"nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others": can you elaborate or mention an example? That aspect has escaped me thus far.

This sentiment comes entirely from their lack of open source drivers for Linux. It became pretty much a meme after a rant that Linus had about them in 2012.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#25

Post by xdavidliu » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

> Apple won't be phased

Nit: fazed, not phased.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#26

Post by bonzini » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

numakerg wrote: post #22

mud_dauber wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others": can you elaborate or mention an example? That aspect has escaped me thus far.

I recall the GeForce Partner Program raised some controversy, although I couldn't say whether or it was bad or good or why. There's also the issue with them refusing to open source Linux drivers. Supposedly this is because they throttle workstation GPUs to create a market for higher-end versions while reducing the manufacturing diversity, but I haven't heard a definitive source for this.

> they throttle workstation GPUs

Not sure about this, but they definitely prevent the loading of drivers for GeForce cards if they detect a hypervisor (Quadro cards work). Nvidia claims that it's a bug, and that they're not fixing it only because GeForce cards are not sold to be run in virtual machines. At the very least it's a dubious claim since for a short time there was an arms race as workarounds were figured out and the next version of the driver would detect them...

Of course it's market segmentation by obscurity so it only lasted a few weeks and it's trivial to work around, but still it's quite shady since there's absolutely no ill effect from the work around.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#27

Post by rl3 » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

foota wrote: post #20

mud_dauber wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others": can you elaborate or mention an example? That aspect has escaped me thus far.

CUDA is probably the biggest thing here, also I don't think they open source much.

>... also I don't think they open source much.

You could say that: https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#28

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #23

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

I think nVidia could run into some serious anti-trust issues if they tried to interfere with the ARM ecosystem. There's far too much at stake here. Is there a phone on the planet that doesn't run ARM?

[deleted]

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#29

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

mud_dauber wrote: post #14

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

"nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others": can you elaborate or mention an example? That aspect has escaped me thus far.

There was the apple gpu fiasco. Apple laptop GPUs were failing at an extraordinary rate in 2010-2011, and Apple were getting harangued in the media about it (which was justified). Apple eventually announced a program to cover replacement of the GPUs, but it was very delayed. I'm 100% convinced the delay was caused by Nvidia refusing to accept responsibility. When the program was released, in order to have the repair completed at no cost, your computer had to fail a very specific graphics diagnostic, and the failure would be linked to your serial number in Apple's repair CRM. At the time, no other apple repair program had this requirement — Don't get me wrong, it makes sense to use diagnostics to verify hardware issues, but they aren't the only tool you can use. I'm convinced Nvidia only would reimburse apple for computers that had a recorded failure of this specific test.

Since 2014, apple has almost exclusively used AMD graphics cards in computers that do have discrete GPUs, and I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest this was motivated with their terrible experience with Nvidia.

(I'm aware I'm not really backing this up with evidence, but I think the publicly available facts about the whole situation support this narrative)

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#30

Post by awalton » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

mud_dauber wrote: post #14

awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

"nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others": can you elaborate or mention an example? That aspect has escaped me thus far.

Google it maybe? Here's one example thread to pull at: why did Apple stop buying nVidia GPUs across their entire hardware line? EGLStreams is a recent pain in the ass. nVidia's infanticide of OpenCL with CUDA being another painful reminder that nVidia doesn't care about your software needs, just their own.

It's really not hard to find a company that nVidia's pissed off with its dealings.