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Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

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Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#121

Post by toyg »

michaelt wrote: post #89
bserge wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that how it would be? So, like AMD and ATi? Damn, that's kind of sad.

Who can say? 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.

I reckon all Western countries have gone through some sort of experience of this. Corporations will do the deal, reap the rewards, and next week or next year they’ll just do as they please - because the concept of honour is too human to be expected of an artificial construct.

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#122

Post by Symmetry »

the_duke wrote: post #71

An interesting side aspect, assuming this is final: Before the Arm acquisition materialized, Nvidia was quite present in the RISC-V space. All current Nvidia cards have at least one RISC-V chip on it. So while their intended high performance use cases are not feasible yet, this could lead to Nvidia focusing on RISC-V again the medium term, which would definitely be beneficial. Of course Nvidia can still pursue ARM ba…

I don't think it's a matter of one or the other but rather using different ISAs for different things. All the RISC-V use by NVidia seems to have been in microcontrollers and all the recent ARM use has been in application cores.

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#123

Post by tw04 »

tokyojoe wrote: post #52

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…

> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up.

That's a very real concern with Softbank (and why I questioned why regulators were allowing the acquisition in the first place). I don't think you can be any further from the mark implying that's Nvidia's plan. Nvidia wants ARM to flourish, they would have no interest in killing it or selling it off once acquired. They already use ARM tech in their Tegra CPUs, and in the "Smart" NICs they acquired with Mellanox. Additionally they pre-announced a datacenter focused ARM chip just last week.

They would have absolutely nothing to gain and a ton to lose if they were to kill off ARM or gut the technical talent.

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#125

Post by cmrdporcupine »

outside1234 wrote: post #100
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, ok, but if you are going to go that route you also have to note that the US pays for your national defense as well to be balanced. That said, what Trump pulled with steel and aluminum is BS.

National defense so we can defend ourselves from opponents that the US created, or act as an imperial arm for American interests?

Seem to recall some very agitated US commentators bashing Canada when we chose not to enter the second war in Iraq. How's that working out for you, BTW?

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#126

Post by alexhutcheson »

my123 wrote: post #110
alexhutcheson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems surprising to assert that Nvidia would slash R&D after the acquisition, considering Nvidia’s demonstrated willingness to spend enormous amounts of money on R&D, even for speculative and risky products. For example, they funded the Project Denver/Carmel team for almost a decade, even though the resulting microarchitectures didn’t seem to have gained significant commercial traction. If this was a sale to a PE…

And are still funding that CPU design team, which is designing some upcoming products.

Didn’t realize that - awesome to know. Looking forward to seeing their future announcements.

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#127

Post by Hiopl »

outside1234 wrote: post #100
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, ok, but if you are going to go that route you also have to note that the US pays for your national defense as well to be balanced. That said, what Trump pulled with steel and aluminum is BS.

And it's time we all stopped being that dependent on the US, considering how unreliable and untrustworthy they are.

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#128

Post by robert_foss »

tw04 wrote: post #123
tokyojoe wrote: post #52

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…

> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up. That's a very real concern with Softbank (and why I questioned why regulators were allowing the acquisition in the first place). I don't think you can be any further from the mark implying that's Nvidia's plan. Nvidia wants ARM to flourish, they would have no interest in kil…

ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider.

The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way.

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#129

Post by Vvector »

robert_foss wrote: post #128
tw04 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up. That's a very real concern with Softbank (and why I questioned why regulators were allowing the acquisition in the first place). I don't think you can be any further from the mark implying that's Nvidia's plan. Nvidia wants ARM to flourish, they would have no interest in kil…

ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider. The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way.

The companies that directly compete with Nvidia (AMD & Intel) are not ARM customers. ARM's biggest customers are mobile phones, which could benefit from an Nvidia GPU

Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention

#130

Post by tokyojoe »

robert_foss wrote: post #128
tw04 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up. That's a very real concern with Softbank (and why I questioned why regulators were allowing the acquisition in the first place). I don't think you can be any further from the mark implying that's Nvidia's plan. Nvidia wants ARM to flourish, they would have no interest in kil…

ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider. The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way.

Power consumption is a key application requirement for mobile. I don’t know that GPU’s are designed to run on the smell of an oil rag which the ARM processor cores do.
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