191–200 of 313 posts
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…
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…
I agree that this deal is good for Nvidia only and will hurt ARM CPU usage. 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, s…
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 ... could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice" Could they really do this? Start making incompatible designs? I would have thought that Apple's ARM architecture license would include terms to preclude incompatible forks.
For an ordinary licensee you might think so, but Apple may well have special terms, given that they co-founded ARM
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Also, it's odd that they refer to the new stuff as Apple Silicon. Apple supposedly pays intel more for their CPUs than other OEM to avoid having their sticker on Macs; So I don't see this as odd, it's usual Apple branding tactic and from the looks of it(ARM being under threat of sale) it seems to be a wise decision as an average Apple customer wouldn't mind if it switches the architecture for its silicon.
I don't think Intel stickers are mandetory. Some other OEM don't have them either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most cynical view would be that they could not reup licenses for competitors.
Wouldn't they be forced into RAND? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...
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…
Why don’t Apple buy ARM?
Any other real non US company can benefit from it except Chinese companies ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Apple also refuses to sign the kernel extension necessary for NVidia GPU drivers to run. NVidia had made a GPU driver for High Sierra, but literally a version later Apple locked down the kernel so that only signed drivers could be loaded. Anyone who was using Nvidia GPUs through, say, an external GPU box got screwed.
The Observer proposed an interesting solution last weekend: "The government could offer a foundational investment of, say, £3bn-£5bn and invite other investors — some industrial, some sovereign wealth funds, some commercial asset managers — to join it in a coalition to buy Arm and run it as an independent quoted company, serving the worldwide tech industry..." https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/10/0358216/should-t…
I feel like with the current political climate in the UK this solution is fairly unlikely to happen.
I can easily see the man now running the UK (Dominic Cummings) deciding to take a stake in ARM. Maybe other ARM customers would also be willing to take (non controlling) stakes to keep it away from Nvidia (Apple of course used to be a big shareholder).
The Observer proposed an interesting solution last weekend: "The government could offer a foundational investment of, say, £3bn-£5bn and invite other investors — some industrial, some sovereign wealth funds, some commercial asset managers — to join it in a coalition to buy Arm and run it as an independent quoted company, serving the worldwide tech industry..." https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/10/0358216/should-t…