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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

#171

Post by willtim »

bartread wrote: post #61
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…

> 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…

Well Brexit caused the pound to plummet and supposedly made ARM tempting. I find it ironic that the current UK Brexiteer government talk constantly about soveignty and control, yet were quite happy to allow this sale.

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

#172

Post by ksec »

adrian_b wrote: post #167
stefan_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I agree with what you said, but there is a reason for wanting to converge on ARM. There exists no good alternative. ARMv8.2 or newer is a very well designed ISA, while RISC-V is a very bad ISA and I would hate to be forced to use it. OpenPOWER is a far better ISA than RISC-V, but unfortunately most developers do not have any experience with POWER and they have the wrong belief that POWER is some antique ISA while RIS…

I wish I could upvote your comment a thousand times!

Thoughts on OpenPOWER vs ARM v8.2 in terms of ISA?

And for those who may be interested in OpenPOWER, https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt

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

#173

Post by claudeganon »

petre wrote: post #164
stefan_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I just wonder what implications is the Arm sale to Nvidia going to have on Apple, who is switching their MacOS hardware from Intel to Arm.

Hopefully MacBooks will be able to have GPUs that aren’t pitiful and outdated?

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

#174

Post by QuixoticQuibit »

cwhiz wrote: post #78
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…

It seems a little dramatic to think Nvidia would spend $40 billion just to run ARM into the ground.

People here have an axe to grind against Nvidia it seems. Somehow seen as Intel but for GPUs despite being highly innovative and continuously so.

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

#175

Post by adrian_b »

Animats wrote: post #51
MangoCoffee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ARM is in such a great position currently. There's no reason to sell except that SoftBank is in desperate need of capital. Softbank needs cash. sells ARM. not a good reason?

Softbank has to prop up Uber and WeWork with something. I dunno, would you rather have ARM technology owned by a US company or by a front for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund?

Unfortunately, after the last years any non-US citizen would rather have ARM technology owned by a Saudi fund or by any other non-US entity.

When you choose to include ARM technology in some of your products, then you will spend a lot of time and money for the implementation and you will need a long term availability of that technology, to be able to recover you costs and to give you time to switch to another technology, if desired.

Now any long-term commitment for providing any US-owned technology can no longer be believed, because precedents show that such commitments can be unilaterally canceled at any time, without an early enough warning.

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

#176

Post by QuixoticQuibit »

techdragon wrote: post #121
valuearb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia isn’t likely to invest $40B and then do anything to damage ARMs licensing efforts. They are likely to look to find synergies so ARM can incorporate Nvidia technologies and Nvidia can better utilize ARM technologies.

That sounds like a great strategy to announce and do for a year or two... before changing course to “maximise value” by merging operations, jacking up licensing costs, making nvidia gpus part of the arm ISA, etc...

Does Nvidia have a history of doing this?

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

#177

Post by londons_explore »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #141
mgh2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will happen with Apple Silicon?

Why would you expect anything to happen? Apple has obviously already negotiated and signed the licensing deal.

Inability to resign a V2 deal might lead to "Apple ARM" diverging from "Everyone Else's Arm".

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

#178

Post by ksec »

petre wrote: post #164
stefan_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I just wonder what implications is the Arm sale to Nvidia going to have on Apple, who is switching their MacOS hardware from Intel to Arm.

Apple owns a perpetual ARMv8.2 license. And since they work closely with ARM on ARMv9 they might already have a license for that as well.

Basically doesn't concern Apple at all.

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

#179

Post by navidr »

01100011 wrote: post #64
jayd16 wrote: post #12

Well... on the bright side I like what Tegras have been able to achieve. The Shields and the Switch are neat machines. Maybe we'll see some more ARM designs that can compete with Apple.

No, everything Nvidia is evil. We're supposed to be hating on them, right? Can I get my upvotes for perpetuating the hive mind now? Seriously. I'm excited to see ARM owned by a hardware centric company. That said, I really don't expect this to have much impact in the near term. Licenses are already in place. China will probably spin competing chips based on their own ISA before too long(5-10 years). I'm frankly inter…

I am really interested to see how China is going to react. Can Trump administration put some kind of sanction on ARM license.

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

#180

Post by antpls »

nl wrote: post #155
cptskippy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember it being all that cutthroat tbh. 3dfx was arguably the only game in down and ATi was it's whipping boy. Matrox was over in the corner saying "look nah two monitors at once!" 3dfx stumbled right as nVidia dropped the GeForce and blew everything away. ATi became nVidia's whipping boy and Matrox just added the ability to drive more monitors. I mean aside from not knowing if Matrox is still around, not m…

Yeah there's a lot more fights NVidia has had. They spent a lot of time and money first building motherboard chipsets[1] with on-board GPUs for AMD CPUs only to have CMD buy ATI. Then they started a program to build their own x86 CPU[2] which Intel sued them over[3]. There was a counter suite, and the EU settlement around the same time and Intel ended up paying NVidia $1.5B3[3] which was often read a win for NVidia.…

Note that Tesla does not use NVIDIA anymore.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-takes-aim-at-teslas-cus...

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