Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 313 posts

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

#121

Post by stingraycharles »

pmontra wrote: post #108
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think nVidia could run into some serious anti-trust issues if they tried to interfere with the ARM ecosystem. I seriously doubt it, Broadcom - Qualcomm sale was blocked because there were concerns that the former would inhibit the telecom technologies development of the latter, resulting in strategic disadvantage to U.S. But, in the case of supposed Nvidia-ARM sale I see the quite opposite i.e. huge strategic adva…

Wouldn't the EU antitrust look into that too or is this going to be out of their jurisdiction after Brexit?

I believe as long as ARM sells their hardware in the EU, they are able to look into antitrust issues.

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

#122

Post by stragies »

nojvek wrote: post #119

Could someone explain me what the huge deal about ARM is since they only licence but don’t actual fab the chips but intel, Apple and nvidia do. Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the other ?

RISC-V sounds like a good idea, but (imo) could lead to a situation, where all/many device manufacturers make custom processors based of the liberally licensed code-base. At first, this sounds great, "Yah, no more reliance on Intel/ARM/, no more ME/Trustzone". But then you realize, that although you, the user/buyer, can build/run some custom code on there, you'll never be able to tell for sure, if you did not get a version/series with a gimped HWRND, or other (security-reducing) goodies. Targeted attacks will become very easy for anybody, who can pressure companies/engineers into adding something for (a subset of) the customers, or can reroute/intercept device shipments to you.

ARM is a "known" situation. They have TrustZone, we know it exists, but buyers/end-users do not get full control of it (outside of some niche products, or dev-boards). That situation will not change. With ARM, get already got used to the idea, that you'll never "own" the machine, you are merely allowed to execute some code in a walled-off area of your Telescreen.

So, with RISC-V, you have even less assurance, that the processor IC really contains what you expect, and nothing more.

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

#123

Post by bobthepanda »

pmontra wrote: post #108
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think nVidia could run into some serious anti-trust issues if they tried to interfere with the ARM ecosystem. I seriously doubt it, Broadcom - Qualcomm sale was blocked because there were concerns that the former would inhibit the telecom technologies development of the latter, resulting in strategic disadvantage to U.S. But, in the case of supposed Nvidia-ARM sale I see the quite opposite i.e. huge strategic adva…

Wouldn't the EU antitrust look into that too or is this going to be out of their jurisdiction after Brexit?

Even if the EU did not have jurisdiction British authorities are not very keen on large mergers either.

British resistance caused American Pfizer to walk away from a potential merger with British AstraZeneca.

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

#124

Post by stingraycharles »

scarface74 wrote: post #62
robbiemitchell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's jibe :)

I know. That was the idea. It’s one of those mistakes that is like nails on a chalkboard for me.

Actually, thanks for doing this. As a non-native, frequent misspellings are incredibly annoying as it’s difficult to see which one’s correct.

Now I learned not one but two important correct spellings. Thanks!

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

#125

Post by progval »

nojvek wrote: post #119

Could someone explain me what the huge deal about ARM is since they only licence but don’t actual fab the chips but intel, Apple and nvidia do. Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the other ?

> since they only licence but don’t actual fab the chips

From the article: "It's one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody. The one saving grace about Softbank was that it wasn't a chip company, and retained ARM's neutrality. If it becomes part of Nvidia, most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia, and will of course then look for an alternative to ARM."

Implying NVidia's competitors who use ARM would fear losing their license.

> Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the other ?

They have technical differences, but TBH I don't know them and I'm not sure they matter. However, conceptually they have two big differences IMO : RISC-V is open (don't need to buy a license to use it) but ARM is way more mature and supported (RISC-V based computers are still very rare).

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

#127

Post by jraph »

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?

The Asus Zenfone 2, released 5 years ago, ran on x86 (Intel Atom) [1]. I know someone who was still using it this year Eventually switched but the phone still works. So, to the question:

> Is there a phone on the planet that doesn't run ARM?

Well, technically, yes ;-) This does not change anything to your point though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_ZenFone#Second_generation...

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

#128

Post by throwmemoney »

duskwuff wrote: post #113
axaxs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you the counts of systems using ARM on Linux(Android) vs ARM in everything else? It's not even close.

You're underestimating the number of ARM microcontrollers in deeply embedded devices. For example, most hard disks and SSDs have at least one ARM core -- and often several -- running the device. They're also quite common in peripherals, like keyboards and mice. The firmware for these devices is often either a realtime embedded OS (like FreeRTOS), or is entirely bespoke. It's virtually never open-source. Even if you'r…

Last I heard was hard disks and SSD manufacturers were moving away from ARM to RISC-V to save money on ARM license payments.

Source

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=swerv

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

#129

Post by Someone »

duskwuff wrote: post #113
axaxs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you the counts of systems using ARM on Linux(Android) vs ARM in everything else? It's not even close.

You're underestimating the number of ARM microcontrollers in deeply embedded devices. For example, most hard disks and SSDs have at least one ARM core -- and often several -- running the device. They're also quite common in peripherals, like keyboards and mice. The firmware for these devices is often either a realtime embedded OS (like FreeRTOS), or is entirely bespoke. It's virtually never open-source. Even if you'r…

Indeed. https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/record-numbers-arm-b...: “Arm silicon partners shipped a record 6.4 billion Arm-based chips in the fourth quarter of 2019”

Compare that with https://www.slashgear.com/the-2019-global-smartphone-sales-t..., which says about 1,5 billion smartphones were sold in the four quarters of 2019.

Also, Android, I think, by now is an edge case of open source. The kernel is, but there’s a thick proprietary layer on top of it without which it wouldn’t be Android.

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

#130

Post by stragies »

pjmlp wrote: post #110
xvilka wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be the end of Linux on ARM. They will choke platform with blobs until the inevitable death. NVIDIA and open-source is like matter and antimatter - they simply cannot coexist in the same place and time.

ARM is all about licensing and selling hardware IP, they will use Linux to the extent that it helps to sell their IP, just like most companies that actually pay for engineers to contribute some parts of their crown jewels to Linux, while leaving the rest for their own in-house distributions. Also in case you haven't noticed, the IoT domain where ARM thrives is getting full of BSD/MIT POSIX clones, guess why. ARM mbed…

Having an liberally licensed code-base with make it very easy for entities to publish a benign version on github, and then deploy an "enhanced" version on the real hardware, cryptographiclly signed, and not dumpable. They'll find something, that can support the argument, that not all functionality can be open-sourced, and that is why the published binary will never have the same checksum as something you have compiled from the public sources.
Post reply on HN