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SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

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Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#11

Post by kitsunesoba »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9

Do Apple actually work with Arm currently or is all their Apple Silicon stuff completely on their own? I don’t actually understand the issue they have with Nvidia but they seem to have one.

As I understand it, Apple has a special perpetual license for the architecture thanks to it being one of the companies that founded ARM. This deal shouldn't have too much impact on Apple.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#15

Post by klelatti »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9

Do Apple actually work with Arm currently or is all their Apple Silicon stuff completely on their own? I don’t actually understand the issue they have with Nvidia but they seem to have one.

Saw a presentation a little while ago with Simon Segars of Arm and Jeff Williams of Apple (don't have the link but it was in honour of Morris Chang of TSMC and I think Jensen Huang hosted!) which seemed to imply that there was quite a close relationship. If nothing else I'd expect feedback from Apple to Arm about the evolution of the architecture.

If Apple was really unhappy about this and didn't want full ownership they could probably pull together a consortium to put together a rival bid. Doesn't look like it's happening though.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#16

Post by rvz »

BluSyn wrote: post #3

I think this is a very bad and short-sided deal. ARM is in such a great position currently. There's no reason to sell except that SoftBank is in desperate need of capital. On top of that, Nvidia is likely to be a terrible steward of the IP. Nvidia has a terrible track record of working with other companies, partners, and open source developers. ARM has become a de-facto standard in mobile space, and Nvidia will likel…

Unfortunately, you are correct. This is what Nvidia was looking for since out of the big 3 US semiconductor manufacturers, it doesn't have its own IP on CPUs. Now it will soon be able to control ARM to its advantage against the competition. This will indeed push the urgency for RISC-V to be worth looking at in the next few years to be used by hardware vendors soon. But it will be a long wait.

As for the UK now realizing SoftBank's expensive 'pass the parcel game' with ARM since 2016, I'd say you only appreciate something until it is gone. [0][1] In terms of technology, the UK simply didn't know what they had.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54122692

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24362846

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#20

Post by almost_usual »

nickff wrote: post #6
BluSyn wrote: post #3

I think this is a very bad and short-sided deal. ARM is in such a great position currently. There's no reason to sell except that SoftBank is in desperate need of capital. On top of that, Nvidia is likely to be a terrible steward of the IP. Nvidia has a terrible track record of working with other companies, partners, and open source developers. ARM has become a de-facto standard in mobile space, and Nvidia will likel…

So you think ARM should be spun-off rather than sold? It seems like Softbank is having some issues unrelated to ARM, and needs the money. I'm also not sure that Softbank ownership has contributed anything to ARM's success.

I’d think SoftBank’s ownership has probably resulted in more cash burn for ARM.
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