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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

#271

Post by zimpenfish »

xdavidliu wrote: post #268
zimpenfish wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That's not the point: "I could care less" is grammatically correct, but the meaning is not what was intended.

The intended meaning is obvious. There's plenty of colloquial phrases which say one thing but mean another: "I could murder him", for example, doesn't literally mean that. That is how language works.

And, if you saying "there's beer in the cup" was understood by everyone as meaning "there's no more beer in the cup", professional linguists and dictionaries would be A-OK with that interpretation.

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

#272

Post by tasty_freeze »

asddubs wrote: post #120
tasty_freeze wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea, so I just searched and found there are 201 repositories in their github: https://github.com/NVIDIA

that's a pretty meaningless number without further context

The person I replied to said nvidia doesn't contribute much to open source. I pointed at their github repositories. If you care about the context, it is there, and there is no risk of me summarizing it unfairly.

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

#273

Post by kybernetikos »

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.

According to the article, at least Herman Hauser believes that ARM will likely do poorly under nVidias control. I think the idea is that nvidia is a particularly bad owner considering arm's buisness model (for a similar reason that having Nokia as the main Symbian participant was a bad idea), rather than that the UK would exert beneficial influence. Indeed, the suggestion is that the UK government invests as part of a group rather than takes a controlling interest.

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

#274

Post by als0 »

hakfoo wrote: post #152
stragies wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> True, but can you recall any moment in history, where market forces did not actually make producing "open" devices unprofitable? 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 la…

> IBM PC were very open platforms

What about the whole debacle around the IBM BIOS?

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

#275

Post by andoriyu »

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #66
karlshea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That situation was also following Nvidia spoiling one of Steve Jobs' announcements even further back, so there was already a bit of bad blood.

Good point, I had forgotten about that.

Which one was that?

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

#276

Post by 01100011 »

Danieru wrote: post #246
jaimex2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also in the Nintendo Switch :)

Only the older chip series they could not sell to tablet makers. The newer chips are too power hungry for mobile and are targeted at automotive where Nvidia has gotten traction. Nintendo better hope Nvidia has something new coming up in time for a next generation.

It might happen with a process shrink but that remains to be seen.

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

#277

Post by mekster »

JonathonW wrote: post #237
znpy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Intel makes both CPUs and GPUs. AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs. nVidia would make both CPUs and GPUs. What would be the difference? Actually, as long as there are a number of arm design licensees, the situation would be way better than it currently is for x86: beyond Intel and AMD there is basically no other player in that field (Via? Transmeta? are they even noticeable?).

nVidia already makes CPUs and GPUs (they make the CPU that goes into the Nintendo Switch, for example). Buying ARM doesn’t change much in that regard, except that they can save on licensing fees and it puts them in a position to disrupt competitors who also produce ARM processors.

Why would nVidia disrupt competitors?

They need to pay $30bn to buy ARM which means they want to maximize the return for that purchase, which would be selling more and not disrupt for competitors to look elsewhere.

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

#278

Post by atq2119 »

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…

Heck, every AMD processor has an ARM core on it to run some firmware. So even if you're running x86, you may also be running ARM.

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

#279

Post by hakfoo »

als0 wrote: post #274
hakfoo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True, but can you recall any moment in history, where market forces did not actually make producing "open" devices unprofitable? 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 la…

> IBM PC were very open platforms What about the whole debacle around the IBM BIOS?

I think they made a commented disassembly available officially, and there were definitely aftermarket books with blow-by-blow analysis.

You could argue it was imperfect (not exposing every feature it could, and having performance costs, sent a lot of software to bypass it and pound hardware registers directly, creating that weird world of early clones that would run MS-DOS but not 1-2-3 or Flight Simulator) but it doesn't seem like a hostile gesture to external developers.

Now it was definitely a legal hurdle if you wanted to make an outright clone, but by 1984 or so, Compaq and Phoenix had solved that problem.

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

#280

Post by imtringued »

znpy wrote: post #206
chongli wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Are you sure? Intel makes both CPUs and GPUs. AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs. nVidia would make both CPUs and GPUs. What would be the difference? Actually, as long as there are a number of arm design licensees, the situation would be way better than it currently is for x86: beyond Intel and AMD there is basically no other player in that field (Via? Transmeta? are they even noticeable?).

The difference is that Nvidia would be a customer and the owner of ARM at the same time. An Nvidia controlled ARM will primarily exist to make Nvidia happy at the expense of all other ARM customers.
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