81–90 of 217 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were too scared of looking 'closed for business' in the middle of the disaster that was/is Brexit.
Brexit only fully happened a few months ago, so it is hardly related to this. Any considerations w.r.t. looking 'open for business' would certainly still apply. But sure, make everything about Brexit, why not.
I've been struggling to understand why Nvidia's takeover of Arm might be a UK national security issue (the competition case is quite clear but separate). I'm guessing though that Arm collaborates with UK intelligence agencies and that that collaboration might be jeopardised with the Nvidia takeover (in a way that it was not with the Softbank takeover). Does anyone have any further insights?
You think espionnage, I think a key IP asset. ARM is a piece of infrastructure now, and dangerous in the hands of NVidia for other reasons than spying. Mostly economical. And yes, that's also national security.
Is it possible that Apple is calling their chips Apple Silicon for reasons other than marketing? Since Apple now plans to design and manufacture chips for all their products it’s also possible Apple comes up with an ARM compatible instruction set rather than ARM instruction set to avoid any issues with ARM being part of such takeovers. Just a wild theory since no one has yet (probably legal reasons) done a deep dive…
They blatantly ought to have done this for the original sale. Better late than never, I suppose.
On the face of it the difference with Softbank is that Nvidia is a big semiconductors player and thus that this acquisition can have a material impact on competition in the industry and the UK, which was not the case with Softbank.
In addition, since the UK is now "properly independent" the government is probably keen to show it by doing what the US and EU competition regulators do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were too scared of looking 'closed for business' in the middle of the disaster that was/is Brexit.
Brexit only fully happened a few months ago, so it is hardly related to this. Any considerations w.r.t. looking 'open for business' would certainly still apply. But sure, make everything about Brexit, why not.
Among articles from the time, https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/07/18/arm-softb..., complete with government spin.
It's hard not to make something about Brexit, when the government explicitly chose to make the thing about Brexit. The Softbank deal was disastrous for UK tech, and if the government really was interested in national security grounds (which is what they're claiming this time around), it would have intervened in that deal. NVIDIA isn't likely much more of a risk from a national security perspective than SoftBank. But it had to sell Brexit, and a massive foreign investment in a UK company was an opportunity for spin too enticing to give up.
The semiconductor supply chain is now almost completely disaggregated ie everyone specialises in just a small part of the value chain. ARM’s speciality is in CPU design and it has carved out for itself the enviable position of being the defacto standard for mobile applications - almost every single phone on the planet has ARM processor(s) running it. And their products are in dozens of other end applications segments…
From what I can tell, there seems to be increasing consolidation in the industry:
* AMD -- Xilinx -- ATI
* Nvidia -- ARM -- Mellanox
* Intel -- Altera -- Habana/Nervana -- Mobileye
They blatantly ought to have done this for the original sale. Better late than never, I suppose.
The horse has literally bolted. Shutting the door now does literally nothing other than show you cocked up by not locking it in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the nature of this acquisition is completely different. SoftBank left Arm mostly alone; i.e. brand survived, all offices survived, etc. If this deal goes through, Arm will get fully integrated into Nvidia. There won't be an "Arm" anymore.
Is that how it would be? So, like AMD and ATi? Damn, that's kind of sad.
But the British government has experience, from the Kraft purchase of Cadbury, that even if the buyers promise to keep jobs in the UK and product quality high, once the deal goes through they can renege on those promises instantly with no negative consequences.
- EU drops plans to license ARM and start to obviously fail to buid their own arch - Softbank announces it want to get rid of ARM - Nvidia want, UK agree - Apple announces M1 - Nvidia announces Grace - LG drop making phones - China announces cpu independence - UK oh noes, our treasure ! - suddenly "own" arch is good ? LOL
If it is just money for Nvidia deal need to be preserved.
But Apple and Nvidia are Intel killers now and noone saw potential in ARM ? More likely ARM wanted to ditch UK. Or rather top managers was talking with US buyers earlier... Like Altavista execs moved to Google after headshotting own company.
Anyway, whatever - let just x86 die. And pleas, pleas kill MS Windows too !! There is astonishing amount of money behind this madness. Not to mention "spyware" element in both.