SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by klelatti » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #32

rvz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even though I've long followed Arm (I went to a presentation in Cambridge from Steve Furber about the Arm 1 in 1985ish even before the first commercial chips shipped) I'm a bit sceptical about how much value would ever be generated for the UK economy by Arm. The business model is about low margins and selling to everyone around the world so its hard to see how being next door to Arm (geographically) would be a big advantage.

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

#42

Post by klelatti » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

perardi wrote: post #39

spzb wrote: post #8

I 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.

Except they owned almost 50% of Arm in the 1990s and were very supportive of their business model.

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

#43

Post by jonplackett » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

What effect does this have on Apple and them basing their own chips on Arm?

Are the now so far down their own road of development that it doesn't really matter?

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

#44

Post by wdb » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #30

severine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!) Perhaps this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGT3zSGDN3k

It was - thank you. Not sure which part led me to think that Apple and Arm worked together though and it's a long presentation!

Maybe because it's a co-founder of ARM?

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

#45

Post by klelatti » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

my123 wrote: post #35

rvz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Using the ARM ISA for application processors.

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

#46

Post by season2episode3 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #21

gautamcgoel wrote: post #13

If this goes through, I expect Nvidia to become the new Intel - a humongous, anticompetitive chip monopoly. Today, people refer to Intel as Chipzilla; tomorrow Nvidia will carry that moniker.

> Today, people refer to Intel as Chipzilla; tomorrow Nvidia will carry that moniker.Today, people refer to Intel as Chipzilla; tomorrow Nvidia will carry that moniker. Intel will always be the "Chipzilla". nVidia won't replace them but, will join it as the "Chipkong". So we'll have two problems, not a single but, different one.

Duopolies everywhere.

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

#47

Post by bayindirh » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

season2episode3 wrote: post #46

bayindirh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, people refer to Intel as Chipzilla; tomorrow Nvidia will carry that moniker.Today, people refer to Intel as Chipzilla; tomorrow Nvidia will carry that moniker. Intel will always be the "Chipzilla". nVidia won't replace them but, will join it as the "Chipkong". So we'll have two problems, not a single but, different one.

Duopolies everywhere.

It won't be a duopoly because nVidia doesn't make x86 hardware. Even if they did, there would be three contenders (AMD, Intel, nVidia).

nVidia is becoming an AI/HPC behemoth. GPUs for Compute, ARM for feeding the GPUs, Infiniband for interconnect. All in a tightly integrated, closed package. This is a clear monopoly.

They're light years ahead in terms of GPU development and Debugging tools when compared to AMD. CUDA cornered AI/GPU computing it seems. Intel's interconnect foray has fizzled, like their Xeon Phi / Larabee efforts. So, nVidia has the interconnect (Infiniband) and compute part for now.

CPUs can be challenged and disrupted. It's a mature technology. AMD can catch nVidia in enterprise in medium term (hopefully), but Infiniband has no competitors for what it does. And no, 100G Ethernet is no match for 100G Infiniband (we use it a lot since DDR. It's an insane tech).

We're living in interesting times.

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

#48

Post by alvern » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

This makes sense. Most of the Jetson/Xavier/Nano boards already use a Carmel ARMv8 chip. I just hope this spurs more development in ARMv8. Currently the majority of ARM is ARMv7 (smartphones and Raspi).

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

#49

Post by llsf » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #18

25% more than they paid just 2 years ago?

Softbank bought ARM in 2016 and paid $32B ($35B of 2020 USD after 4 years of inflation).

And today they get $40B but partly in Nvidia stocks... Assuming that Softbank manages to sell immediately the Nvidia stock and get their $40B, it is more like 14%. In the same timeframe Nvidia stock went from $30 (Jan. 2016) to $480 (Friday) or x16.

Softbank would have a way better outcome if they had invested in Nvidia 4 years ago, than investing in ARM. The potential 14% they got over last 4 years, is not great.

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

#50

Post by wAYshzRtw » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #2

I think that concerns about this being the end of Arm are overdone - I expect that the UK government will get some assurances about maintaining the HQ in the UK etc and that Arm's business is sufficiently different to Nvidia's to make wholesale merger with Nvidia's existing operations counterproductive. However, I can't see how they will avoid enormous conflicts of interest between Nvidia and other competing Arm cust…

> However, I can't see how they will avoid enormous conflicts of interest between Nvidia and other competing Arm customers and that this will be to the detriment of everyone who makes and uses Arm based products (except Nvidia).

Yes, this. I see people talk about this but not enough imo. How on earth would Nvidia ever be allowed to purchase Arm? That's a massive conflict of interest. I know the rules don't really matter when we're talking about companies this large but this is so blatant, to me.