151–160 of 313 posts
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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.
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RISC-V allows companies to make closed systems, but it also allows them to make open systems, which wasn't viable before. Most people will keep using closed systems because they don't care about computer architecture, but us hackers will finally have a chance at having a (small) portion of the market. A small industry of open hardware.
> RISC-V allows companies to make closed systems, but it also allows them to make open systems True, but can you recall any moment in history, where market forces did not actually make producing "open" devices unprofitable? So, (imo) in theory, you are right, but in practice, (successful) companies will use the technology to create "even more closed" system, and worse: Make systems, where the user can't even tell, if…
I'd say that the early era of personal computers proved it. The Apple II and IBM PC were very open platforms-- thoroughly documented, developer friendly and made with very few parts you couldn't buy out of your favourite electronics distributor catalogue.
They were riotous successes in large part because the open platform meant they didn't have to guess or corral the entire market. Remember that most of the killer apps of the era (VisiCalc, WordPerfect, dBase, 1-2-3, etc.) were third party, and it was largely aftermarket firms selling "six-in-one" cards, Sound Blasters, and Hercules graphics cards that patched the gaping holes in the PC's hardware design.
Conversely, look at a machine like the TI-99/4 series: while on paper a decent machine for the time, it was as "closed" as a machine of the era could be: an unusually limited built-in development platform, and many of the desirable upgrades involved buying a very expensive expansion chassis.
It's interesting to consider what the business tradeoffs of today's walled garden model are. Apple could choose to do a "pure hardware" play, or emulate the early 1980s IBM, where they offered some popular software via their own product line as a trusted source. The result would probably be a marginally larger total addressable market, as it would bring some customers and developers to the platform who needed something that could never clear the App Store before. But would the growth in market size compensate for the reduction in the average cut they can command from the market?
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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 v…
> 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…
Nothing, if you have power over the manufacturers. (Usually governments)
But now, with RISC-V, anybody with deep enough pockets to spare a few million can create fake silicon, where you'd need an electron microscope to prove, that you got an "enhanced by TAO" chip.
He's absolutely right. Unless there is a 100% firewall between ARM and Nvidia then Nvidia will influence ARM to move in directions that help Nvidia's wider business and not the ARM ecosystem as a whole - and that will adversely affect everyone who uses an ARM CPU - and that's basically everyone. I don't believe that such a firewall is possible in any event. Who will enforce it? For those who are saying that it's grea…
Nvidia is right now not in the same league as Intel/Apple, but having the most successful consumer and corporate GPU business along with control of Arm architecture CPUs puts them in the same league in my opinion. That kind of dominance is never good for consumers.
Having worked for a company that was acquired and became a daughter company, such a setup is not enough of a firewall.
Slowly, the acquiring company will modify internal systems and internal processes until there is not much left of the original company. And many key employees will leave as they don't identify with the way things are being done.
I would like to think that acquisitions can be a good thing, but that's not the case in my experience.
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Wouldnt there be IP that Apple needs if they go their own way There was something about how qualcomm Bundles ip licensing with hardware purchases
Apple just spent a billion dollars buying Intel's wireless modem business. If there's still a hardware reliance on Qualcomm, it's certainly coming to a quick end.
Although I still for the life of me can't understand why Miyoshi son is holding on to wework and selling ARM.
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Meh, 'I could care less'. ...I can barely bring myself to type and submit that...
I’m (half-)British and I consider “ could care less ” a hideous American corruption. Recently I successfully argued my case with an American friend, not coincidentally a physicist, by analogy to zero-point energy.
"Dear America..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
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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...
There were a few MIPS Android phones too.
Then they just disappeared. Either MIPS screwed up or ARM did something really smart. My money is on the former...