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I hope correct timeline here: - 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 Appl…
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…
Can you describe what you mean by disaggregated? 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
The supply/value chain is broken up into little chunks with specialists focusing on a narrow activity eg chip design or fabrication or assembly or test etc. There are a few specialists like AD and TI that are still vertically integrated to some extent eg design and fabs, but that’s because they have specialty analog processes for things like opamps , references and so forth. However, a lot of their assembly and test is sub contracted out. For digital devices and companies like ARM, very few still run fabs (semiconductor speak for ‘fabrication plant’) - they leave that to giant fab only companies like TSMC, UMC et al. How this works is the fabs run standard processes and companies design products to be produced using those processes - so by standardising, costs are reduced. A fab process takes 2-3 yrs and a few hundred million $ to develop. Samsung and Intel still have fabs doing predominantly digital, but they have the scale and heft to afford the $1-2 billion every 7 yrs to invest in new plants. There are few others though ( mainly in memory).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but for security reasons? Seems to be the strongest/easiest route to go to justify blocking it. The whole national security angle and all. > then they should have objected when a Japanese company bought ARM as well I have to imagine this was a bit of sleeping at the wheel. I'm not sure though.
>Seems to be the strongest/easiest route to go to justify blocking it. The whole national security angle and all. What makes you think so? So Intel - US / TSMC - Taiwan can be considered as national security, but ARM not?
I hope that makes sense - at least where I was trying to go with that comment. Maybe it's incorrect or not well thought out but I'd at least like to make my point clear :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but for security reasons? Seems to be the strongest/easiest route to go to justify blocking it. The whole national security angle and all. > then they should have objected when a Japanese company bought ARM as well I have to imagine this was a bit of sleeping at the wheel. I'm not sure though.
Perhaps more that times have changed. We used to have a strong commitment to the neoliberal ideal of a separation between state and business. The experience of nationalisation had also not been good (think Austen and BT). That’s changed and we are now in the world of “entrepreneurial states” for better or worse.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
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…
If this was a sale to a PE firm I think your predictions would be more likely, but Nvidia seems really unlikely to be a “slash costs and sell it for parts” type of buyer.
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…
Can you describe what you mean by disaggregated? 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
e.g. TSMC <- ASML, and the raw materials providers
> Under the powers set out in the Enterprise Act 2002, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is able to intervene on national security grounds. > The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will prepare a report on the competition and national security aspects of the proposed transaction. So it's being framed as a national security threat, interesting.
This is actually a fairly common way to justify protectionist and interventionist policy. It's "think of the children" in a new disguise, really. But such is policy making. You have to justify your policy with what is popular, not with the truth. For example: lax covid restrictions justified because we can't be sure it'll work, vs. because we know that it'll hurt the economy.
Having access to the fastest chips is a matter of national security, at least for the US. The AI race (even if it's just faster NN processing) has massive implications for modern warfare and national security.
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…
If so, then it seems like the right thing to do would be to nationalize. If not, was it just a leadership decision for purposes of expanding the company?
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…
The thing I don't get about these acquisitions is, if ARM was this awesome design shop owning essentially all mobile chipsets and then some, why did they need the money? Were they going broke? If so, then it seems like the right thing to do would be to nationalize. If not, was it just a leadership decision for purposes of expanding the company?
It’s not the company that gets the money - it’s the owners. This transaction is about SoftBank’s balance sheet, not ARMs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sceptical about that - we don't own much technology IP and we're hugely reliant on the US already. I think it's a much more specific security issue.
Being dependent on the US turns out to be not a great strategic scenario in this decade. (Speaking as a Canadian who has watched 30 years of continental economic integration and heard lots of friendly talk since the campaign for the 1988 Free Trade Agreement but now back of the line waiting for vaccines imported from Europe because the US won't export to us and our domestic manufacturing was sold off decades ago beca…
That said, what Trump pulled with steel and aluminum is BS.