Regardless of the consequences of selling to Nvidia…that’s not a great exit, is it? They bought ARM for $32 billion, and they are getting $40 billion for it? With all the money sloshing around in the debt markets, I figured they’d get a bit more.
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
#32I 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 realiz…
The techies here including myself did, it was a deal the government should have looked into.
It was a crown jewel of a company, hard to imagine the French government letting it slide or the US government letting a intel be sold to a foreign company.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think you’re thinking of PowerPC? To my knowledge, Apple was not involved in any founding of ARM (the company or the ISA). ARM history, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History Edit: I guess you could quibble about ‘founding’, but really I’m wrong, and my own link proves it! ———— Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. – Arm6 In the late 1980s, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology started wo…
Plus Apple was a large shareholder (about 45% I think) in Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. The sale of that stake in the late 1990s raised a lot of cash (over $1bn) for Apple when it really needed it.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think you’re thinking of PowerPC? To my knowledge, Apple was not involved in any founding of ARM (the company or the ISA). ARM history, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History Edit: I guess you could quibble about ‘founding’, but really I’m wrong, and my own link proves it! ———— Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. – Arm6 In the late 1980s, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology started wo…
> Apple used the Arm6-based Arm610 as the basis for their Apple Newton PDA
The ironies of history: one of Apple's most infamous failures ended up being the foundation of their later success.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#35I 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 realiz…
> it doesn't have its own IP on CPUs
NVIDIA does design their own CPU cores.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#36I would have thought Apple was a better strategic fit for Arm and likely to be able to pay bigger bucks too.
People are speculating that Nvidia might end Arm core licensing, but Apple would definitely shut it down. Apple's culture is totally incompatible with Arm's business model.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you’re thinking of PowerPC? To my knowledge, Apple was not involved in any founding of ARM (the company or the ISA). ARM history, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History Edit: I guess you could quibble about ‘founding’, but really I’m wrong, and my own link proves it! ———— Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. – Arm6 In the late 1980s, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology started wo…
> Apple used the Arm6-based Arm610 as the basis for their Apple Newton PDA The ironies of history: one of Apple's most infamous failures ended up being the foundation of their later success.
Including how much JavaScript kind of resembles NewtonScript.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#38Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#39I would have thought Apple was a better strategic fit for Arm and likely to be able to pay bigger bucks too.
Besides the screaming anti-trust issues they’d run into, that’s not really Apple’s business model, is it? Selling IP to other companies? I get they would want to control their own ISA, but I can almost imagine them creating their own, versus buying ARM and then being forced to maintain existing licenses.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#40I 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.
The issue is with the well-being of the tech ecosystem and less with SoftBank or ARM's well-being as a business. SoftBank may not have contributed to ARM's success, but their neutrality allows ARM to license their IP without the kind of self-dealing you would get if Nvidia owns it. Further, Nvidia has a poor track record in global citizenship.
The net result is that the overall ecosystem is going towards a degenerative state, rather than fostering innovation and diversity in tech.