ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected? • Hacker News Board

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#81

Post by klelatti » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

Rexxar wrote: post #79

klelatti wrote: post #16

The irony in all this is that a government that says it wants to create a 'trillion dollar tech giant' has no idea what to do with the one world leading tech company that is based in the UK. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/09/11/cummings-p...

> Cummings suggested that a no-deal Brexit could allow the Government to offer state aid to the country’s most promising technology businesses The second level irony is that it's the UK that has always been the main opponent to every state subsidies while they were in European union.

Third level irony: UK tech sector wants freedom of movement across the EU and would rather not have state aid.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#82

Post by giancarlostoro » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

jannes wrote: post #73

giancarlostoro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I have wondered about and had no idea they basically had some sort of perpetual license. Is this normal for ARM to give out such a license? Or are all ARM licenses basically typically under those conditions? I know ARM mostly just licenses specs to their chips.

ARM is a joint venture that Apple started with Acorn and VLSI. Article from 1990: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-28-fi-4993-s...

Wow I had no idea, now a lot of things make more sense to me about why Apple is going the route they are. I honestly wish them nothing but success. Part of me hopes they license their own chips down the line. The Intel monopoly over desktop systems needs to end.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#83

Post by reader_mode » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #54

reader_mode wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but the US has plenty of advantages over EU and EU is quite bad in some regards as well (especially with regards to equality across the EU - US is usually grouped together but people seem to be talking west Europe and Scandinavian countries when discussing EU, meanwhile I just saw a report how in eastern Europe women are doing surrogate pregnancies as a paid gig because of their living conditions ... if you trav…

> meanwhile I just saw a report how in eastern Europe women are doing surrogate pregnancies as a paid gig because of their living conditions I agree that EU vs US discussions can be tedious, but surrogate pregnancies for cash happen in some US states too. https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/12/paying-gestational-carri...

It's not the fact that it can happen but that there are agencies and it's a growing business in the region shows you how bad it is

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#84

Post by detritus » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #78

petercooper wrote: post #58

I've been doing a lot of thinking out loud today about the UK's lamentable state with regards to its technology industry today without much disagreement in my back channels – perhaps HN will have more interesting things to say? It feels like the UK's failings in the technology space are entirely cultural. Looking back at the 70s and 80s when the UK punched above its weight in the microcomputer space, UK tech companie…

>It feels like the UK's failings in the technology space are entirely cultural. Yes, It is cultural. And I think It is more than what you described, Although I may be over generalising it a bit. If you look at the US, all of the large tech companies, or in fact any big companies, not just tech all have the same mentality. Rule the world. Whether that is Finance, Energy, Food, Tech. The home market US was merely a tes…

> Not to mention the Brits culturally aren't very good at marketing. Something the US is exceptionally good at.

Strange to hear this - I've always thought that the UK was particularly good at marketing, [English-speaking] world-leading, in fact. The creative aspect at least. Perhaps I'm conflating this with advertising.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#85

Post by scruffyherder » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

If arm wanted to stay in the uk they shouldn’t have sold themselves to the Japanese.

The UK has always lagged in tech as they still think it’s the 1800’s and their domestic island is enough as they ignored the world in the 80s with low effort 3rd party sourcing at best.

As usual the state TV and education could have dominated the English speaking world with BBC micros and education, but again they stayed on their tiny insignificant island.

This whole thing is nothing more than sellers re-remorse for selling ARM for next to nothing.

Go and do something new.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#86

Post by jecel » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

tus88 wrote: post #70

eyesee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has been designing their own CPU's for a decade, using the ARM ISA. Apple has a perpetual license to the ISA though, so they would not be a source of future revenue. Apple is also under no obligation to stick with ARM's roadmap for future products.

I know that, I meant their own new CPU with their own ISA. I am sure I read about that a while back.

Like the Scorpius (1989)?

https://archive.org/details/scorpius_architecture

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#87

Post by jariel » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #58

I've been doing a lot of thinking out loud today about the UK's lamentable state with regards to its technology industry today without much disagreement in my back channels – perhaps HN will have more interesting things to say? It feels like the UK's failings in the technology space are entirely cultural. Looking back at the 70s and 80s when the UK punched above its weight in the microcomputer space, UK tech companie…

This is a good insight.

But what you're pointing out is not just a 'UK thing' - it's a 'rest of the world thing'.

The US just has an incredible number of people, it seems, who like working. I think it's a combination of love of the craft, egoism/wanting to make a name (never enough, will 'strike it truly rich soon!'), an ingrained habit of work, a commitment to the cause (innovation as a vocation), low cost of living (dollars go far in the US, this might be an inequality problem, you can buy a huge home on the coast), critical masses (the US has large enough centres of excellence, there's a fraternity to it all, and variety), further career stages (semi-retire as investor - there's a lot to invest it), possibility for global impact (American innovations can go far and wide), and sometimes a sense of frugality - think Warren Buffet. Think of how many Bugattis there would be in the Valley, but you just don't see them in lieu of Teslas or Priuses back in the day. Different culture.

The UK probably does have far more intergenerational transfer than most places though.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#88

Post by jariel » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

detritus wrote: post #84

ksec wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It feels like the UK's failings in the technology space are entirely cultural. Yes, It is cultural. And I think It is more than what you described, Although I may be over generalising it a bit. If you look at the US, all of the large tech companies, or in fact any big companies, not just tech all have the same mentality. Rule the world. Whether that is Finance, Energy, Food, Tech. The home market US was merely a tes…

> Not to mention the Brits culturally aren't very good at marketing. Something the US is exceptionally good at. Strange to hear this - I've always thought that the UK was particularly good at marketing, [English-speaking] world-leading, in fact. The creative aspect at least. Perhaps I'm conflating this with advertising.

Good point on differentiating ads and marketing.

UK have some of the best 'communications culture' in the world, which lends to agency style stuff.

Marketing, particularly product marketing, is somewhat different. I would still say pretty good though.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#89

Post by jariel » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #22

I'm very confused. We sold this to the Japanese already!

SoftBank is a financial investor, bankers, so they can have influence, but it's more like having 'a single public investor' instead of a bunch of them.

NVIDIA is another ballgame entirely, it's a corporation in the space, meaning some kind of merger on some kind of scale.

Re: ARM: Can 'crown jewel' of UK technology be protected?

#90

Post by fluffything » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 6:36 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #25

fluffything wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nvidia has made no agreement to continue those guarantees. Hasn't Nvidia has actually increased those guarantees with everything they have agreed on for buying ARM?

Do you have a source for this?

The actual nvidia announcement linked in the original post? (https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for...)

I could quote the whole post, but to satisfy UK regulators, NVIDIA committed to:

> NVIDIA will expand Arm’s R&D presence in Cambridge, UK, by establishing a world-class AI research and education center, and building an Arm/NVIDIA-powered AI supercomputer for groundbreaking research

which is much more than Softbank ever did. And the list of things they commited to goes on, and probably will continue to increase as the US and China get their says on this.