The disaster that was WeWork could ruin ARM.
or:
The disaster that was WeWork could accelerate the adoption of an open-sourced, royalty-free ISA.
SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
81–90 of 268 posts
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#82I would have thought Apple was a better strategic fit for Arm and likely to be able to pay bigger bucks too.
Apple helped create ARM, as we know it, in 1990. They sold off their remaining stake around 2000 as they were beleaguered and needed the money. They chose not to buy in 2016, when SoftBank did.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#8325% 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 a…
Softbank acquired 4.9% of Nvidia for $4B in May 2017. They sold it in February 2019 for $3.6B (according to this https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/06/softbank-vision-fund-sells-n...). Another hilarious example of Softbank's market timing expertise.
Compared to other investments, an ARM sale of $40B would be a home run...
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#84On reflection I'm a bit surprised that a consortium hasn't emerged to offer more for Arm given the concerns expressed here: - $40bn isn't a lot in aggregate for the companies that are heavily invested in the Arm ecosystem (Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon etc) - maybe even Intel would take a small stake! - The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock. Would cash be more attractive? - Could probably partly fund th…
> The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock. This is SoftBank we're talking about. Do we really want to bring up inflated stock as one of their concerns? ;)
Yeah, this is a great idea. Apple and Google and Microsoft all have a vested interest in making this happen.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#85Along with cpu's ARM also makes mobile gpu ip (Mali), nvidia as well in their tegra. I would be surprised if this deal went through.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The theory is that clusters form around “anchor tenants”; Cambridge has the University (and its excellent CS departments), ARM and some others, and is close to he largest capital marketplaces in the world, grandiosely bundled into a so-called “silicon fen”. So school leavers can get jobs, network, start companies, develop other tech in a virtuous circle. Well that’s the theory; nobody has actually been able to reprod…
This is a bit of an aside, but it never ceases to amaze me how many would be tech hubs try variations of Silicon Valley in their (maybe informal?) branding. Silicon hills, Silicon fern.. (I knew a couple more but I’m forgetting atm). It’s not like it’s the name which made it what it is.
An area in London was also amusingly called Silicon Roundabout.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#87The important players like Samsung/Apple/Huawei are already ARM architecture license holders so they can do their own thing if they don't like the direction that NVidia is going in. A 128 bit version might be an issue in the future.
I could imagine we might see an architecture with 128 bit word sizes, but I doubt we'd see 128 bit pointers (aka a 128 bit address space) any time soon. Itd just be more annoying than anything. I personally have even written software where we do pointer path to get 32 bit indexes rather than storing full 64 bit pointers simply because of space constraints (like trying to fit a hot struct into a single cache line) Hav…
> but I doubt we'd see 128 bit pointers (aka a 128 bit address space) any time soon.
I can see 128-bit pointers being a thing: not because of 128-bits of address space, but for the ability to embed type information directly in the pointer - which could improve performance for dynamic-dispatch scenarios or runtime type-safety built-in to the hardware itself.
> Having a native uint128_t would make dealing with IPv6 addresses a lot nicer though :)
[We're already there](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34234407/is-there-hardwa...)
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#88I 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.
That doesn't preclude Apple owning it but operating it as an independent subsidiary.
Even if it wasn't a subsidiary Apple already operates some divisions and teams differently, such as its Webkit team (one of the few teams where employees are allowed to have Github.com user accounts...)
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#89I 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…
Why on earth would we want to converge on ARM? The first ARM architecture that was somewhat palatable was ARMv7, everything before that an unusable mess of different chips with vastly different capabilities. Their extensions are bad (read: subtly incompatible) late copies of what Intel and AMD are driving. Most of the innovation happens not at ARM, but their respective licensees. It took others inventing EFI to get some form of BIOS-equivalent for ARM, but even today the company gives the impression that they couldn't care less.
Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nope, now Nvidia is going to destroy that progress and set everything back another 5+ years. You're blaming Nvidia. You should be blaming SoftBank and Masayoshi Son: bunch of fucking hucksters misleading people and making bad investments. Now they need to sell ARM to fill some of the gaping void that has resulted. They couldn't care less who they sell to and what the outcome of that sale will be. I have nothing but…
> You're blaming Nvidia. You should be blaming SoftBank and Masayoshi Son: bunch of fucking hucksters misleading people and making bad investments. You shouldn't be blaming bad investors. They pay for their decisions with their, or more often somebody's else, money. Blame the collective ownership of means of production, which in form of public companies have dominated the Western world for the last 30+ years. When pe…
Have you, by chance, looked into any of Carol Sandford’s work?