The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…
You say "no 10x return", "reselling for tiny profit" and then "UK didn't care and didn't know what they had". What do you mean by that?
The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…
They should have thought about what could happen _before_ selling ARM. TBH seeing them crying is sad and pathetic.
Who is "them" in your scenario? The entire British public? They didn't get a say in the matter. It was a small group of politicians and business folk. And as always, they are not the ones crying now because they made bank in the deal, no doubt.
It's this short sighted argument. If Nvidia "destroys" Arm then they just end up flushing a billion dollars down the drain. ARM's is important because it's what everyone uses. Once Nvidia destroys it nobody will use it and therefore Nvidia will gain no leverage. If anything, once Nvidia buys ARM it will have to keep it alive.
> Hauser says the acquisition would allow Nvidia to swipe “the microprocessor crown from Intel”, and become the chip supplier for 95 per cent of mobile phones, 90 per cent of embedded controllers for the internet of things, as well as taking the PC and data centre markets.
Is it a possibility that an acquisition by Nvidia will be blocked due to anti-trust reasons? Who is the authority who has to decide on that? Is it the UK cause ARM is a UK company? Or Japan because SoftBank is the largest shareholder?
The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…
Would be curious on any Brits' opinions on if this (failure to support revolutionary technology) happens more there, and if so then why.
Recognize biases of hindsight, but it seems like private equity markets in Britain aren't interested in technology at the requisite scale.
There's an incredible historical tradition [1], but the majority tend to be either developed with the help of a (1) few angel investors (and the luck and smaller scale that entails) or (2) government contracts (and the politics that entails).
"However, Hauser fears that CFIUS regulation could be applied more broadly than this. “If the president decides Britain doesn’t deserve to have any more microprocessors, then he can decide that Britain isn’t allowed to use its own microprocessors,” he says, adding that “these decisions should be made in Downing Street, not in the White House”. " Don't worry mr. Hauser. The target of the US cornering of the chip marke…
Which is why I would have thought SoftBank selling ARM to Huawei would be an absolutely perfect strategic move.
It's this short sighted argument. If Nvidia "destroys" Arm then they just end up flushing a billion dollars down the drain. ARM's is important because it's what everyone uses. Once Nvidia destroys it nobody will use it and therefore Nvidia will gain no leverage. If anything, once Nvidia buys ARM it will have to keep it alive.
The best play would be to take the Intel approach: run ARM independently, and just build best-in-class integration with Nvidia GPUs / features.
Substantial anti-trust concerns are avoided, while building exactly the moat you want: no competitor can afford to compete with the level of integration investment.
It's this short sighted argument. If Nvidia "destroys" Arm then they just end up flushing a billion dollars down the drain. ARM's is important because it's what everyone uses. Once Nvidia destroys it nobody will use it and therefore Nvidia will gain no leverage. If anything, once Nvidia buys ARM it will have to keep it alive.
He was speaking hyperbolically.
Imagine if it were somehow possible for a company like IBM to acquire the rights to direct Linux development and licensure, including the right to just refuse to let other Linux distribution vendors have access to new kernel features, or to price gouge them over updates, in an effort to squash all competition. Linux would continue to exist, but plenty of people who love what Linux had been would be saying, not without reason, that IBM had destroyed Linux.
While the article talks about the possibility of the UK government blocking a sale to Nvidia, the situation with Brexit and the need to get trade deals with the US means it's really likely the government here would allow the sale to go ahead should the US government make it a condition of a deal. Brexit has screwed the UK.
A US trade deal is a symbolic and political victory but makes virtually no difference economically. I don’t think the UK government will calculate that prospect of one would outweigh losing ARM.
Chess-wise, it seems a bit of a skewer: lose ARM by sale, or lose ARM by RISC-V?
(Is it still true the UK-US trade deal is awaiting elections in the latter? EU-UK has certainly not been progressing.)
The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…
Would be curious on any Brits' opinions on if this (failure to support revolutionary technology) happens more there, and if so then why. Recognize biases of hindsight, but it seems like private equity markets in Britain aren't interested in technology at the requisite scale. There's an incredible historical tradition [1], but the majority tend to be either developed with the help of a (1) few angel investors (and the…
I've come to the conclusion that many of the powerful in the UK view the nation primarily as a means for personal gain of one kind of another, and have no particular attachment to the UK's history, culture, and people, indeed, many of them seem to view the English (in particular) with barely disguised contempt.