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

bbc.com

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

#261

Post by panpanna »

vageli wrote: post #232
panpanna wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a merger of this scale all the big powers (US, EU, China, and I assume also UK now) have basically veto right. There are countless examples where country 1 has stopped a merger between a company from country 2 and one from country 3.

> In a merger of this scale all the big powers (US, EU, China, and I assume also UK now) have basically veto right. > There are countless examples where country 1 has stopped a merger between a company from country 2 and one from country 3. From what I've seen, the only method of enforcement for a third-party country is to ban the sale of goods in their respective markets following the merger (like GE/Honeywell in th…

Not sure how this is enforced. Generally the merger falls apart if there are any indications of this happening.

Don't forget that these are public companies and a stopped merger can affect their stock. Besides, major investors would eat the board alive if they put the company in such situation.

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

#262

Post by ksec »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #100
protomyth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume they had protected themselves before the SoftBank purchase. Also, it's odd that they refer to the new stuff as Apple Silicon.

>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.

>Apple supposedly pays intel more for their CPUs than other OEM to avoid having their sticker on Macs;

It would be more accurate to say Apple does not receive the Marketing Discount from Intel.

In reality i seriously doubt those discount dont materialise. Intel could have given the TB3 controller for free as part of the deal. Likely less than the Sticker Discount, but still a decent cost saving.

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

#263

Post by panpanna »

baybal2 wrote: post #227
pantalaimon wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want latest compiler work, and mainline GCC support? Go for ARM > Want to not to have to support your own Linux fork? Go for ARM But that's also true for MIPS.

I have not seen any activity from MIPS on GCC for years. Making a Linux port for a given MIPS based SoC is a known pain. They should've worked towards not requiring any hardcoded configuration for each SoC at all, like Linux on ARM does these days.

Do you mean the device tree?

I thought all major kernel archs were on device trees now...

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

#264

Post by sharken »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #192
sharken wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nvidia are worth more than Intel.

It is, although it's just in the last month: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-stock-beats-intel

In October 2019 the market cap was 226B vs 108B in favor of Intel. https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/10/ho...

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

#265

Post by baybal2 »

panpanna wrote: post #263
baybal2 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not seen any activity from MIPS on GCC for years. Making a Linux port for a given MIPS based SoC is a known pain. They should've worked towards not requiring any hardcoded configuration for each SoC at all, like Linux on ARM does these days.

Do you mean the device tree? I thought all major kernel archs were on device trees now...

Yes now, but last time I talked with people who dealt with them, people spoke of their new cores coming with "prehistoric kernels" on usb sticks.

So every vendor had to upstream their own soc in its own

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

#266

Post by armitron »

stragies wrote: post #153
feanaro wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What's stopping targeted attacks via custom modifications of ARM or x86 chips? 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.

> anybody with deep enough pockets to spare a few million

Which for all intents is ... governments.

So no real difference.

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

#267

Post by bobthepanda »

vageli wrote: post #234
nabla9 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust regulators power is determined by the size of the market, not the location of the company HQ. Antitrust regulators for big markets like the US, EU can effectively block mergers from any internationally operating company. Both AMD and Nvidia need access to EU - their customers certainly do.

> Antitrust regulators power is determined by the size of the market, not the location of the company HQ. > Antitrust regulators for big markets like the US, EU can effectively block mergers from any internationally operating company. Both AMD and Nvidia need access to EU - their customers certainly do. They could block the merger and if the companies decided to go ahead with it anyway, the EU would ban imports. But,…

> and if the companies decided to go ahead with it anyway

This has never happened, because the profit loss from both parties from losing access to a market with 400M+ people has always made investors blanche.

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

#268

Post by xdavidliu »

zimpenfish wrote: post #256
glangdale wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" make sense. If you emphasize the second word ("I could care less") and phrase it in a tentative tone of voice it conveys the meaning - i.e. it's possible that I could somehow care less, but it's a theoretical possibility only.

FWIW Professional Linguists think it's perfectly fine to say "I could care less" and that people who peeve about it are just pointless peevers who don't understand how language works.

That's not the point: "I could care less" is grammatically correct, but the meaning is not what was intended. If I had a cup and wanted to tell you there's no more beer in the cup, I wouldn't say "there's beer in the cup", even though the sentence "there's beer in the cup" would be accepted by professional linguists.

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

#270

Post by aspaceman »

valuearb wrote: post #245
klelatti wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not generally in favour of government picking winners but this is an exceptional case where keeping ARM independent really would 'benefit the whole'. The argument against Nvidia buying is that they are likely boost their own business at the expense of ARM and the wider ecosystem. It seems perfectly valid for the UK government to step in to protect its most successful technology firm.

Valid for what reason? There is no evidence ARM would be anymore successful under UK control then nVidias, in fact the opposite maybe true. The history of government owned businesses, esp. in UK is desultory.

Why does the business need to be successful once it’s government owned?
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