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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

#141

Post by capableweb »

310260 wrote: post #72
tumblewit wrote: post #67

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…

I would say no if only because it's easier to find talent that understands ARM than it is to teach talent about the nuances of your own single-platform instruction set.

I think that argument would apply in a lot of places but most likely it wouldn't apply in Apple that are famous for their "not invented here" attitude across the company.

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

#142

Post by robert_foss »

tw04 wrote: post #138
smachiz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're thirsty, you buy from the person selling water. I don't think you'll find a lot of love lost between the OXMs and nvidia. I'm sure they would love more competitors in the space. We have people licensing Arm and building interesting CPUs (Ampere). I'm not sure that the NVIDIA acquisition would be good for the market or for Arm.

You haven't explained why Intel is entering the licensing business. If vendors have no desire to get their licensing from a company that competes in the space, there should be no demand for licensing from Intel, all of those OXMs should be going to ARM.

Nor have we seen any serious uptake of Intels licensing business. It's a paper launch.

Adding to that Intel didn't exactly pick this model as their first choice. The combination of a wafer production shortage and Intels CPUs underperforming is what drove Intel to this. It is neither Intels or most feasible clients first choice.

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

#143

Post by tw04 »

smachiz wrote: post #139
tw04 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't explained why Intel is entering the licensing business. If vendors have no desire to get their licensing from a company that competes in the space, there should be no demand for licensing from Intel, all of those OXMs should be going to ARM.

You haven't demonstrated that anyone /is/ entering into contracts with Intel. Intel has done lots of things that it turns out people didn't want to do (with them).

They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced (that I've seen) but we already know they were doing custom designs for Facebook/Amazon/MS so they would be logical first-takers.

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

#144

Post by adrian_b »

Vvector wrote: post #129
robert_foss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Qualcomm is a direct competitor of NVIDIA (e.g. for automotive and robotics) and an important ARM customer.

Until now the competing products of NVIDIA and Qualcomm differed in NVIDIA having worse CPUs and better GPUs and Qualcomm having better (ARM-designed) CPUs and worse GPUs.

I do not find it believable that in the future NVIDIA would ever provide Qualcomm with better CPUs than those of NVIDIA products.

Given NVIDIA's desire of dominating the datacenters, it is also hard to believe that they will give to all other companies who will attempt to design server CPUs new ARM cores at the same time when they will be available for the internal NVIDIA design teams.

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

#145

Post by Judgmentality »

tw04 wrote: post #143
smachiz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't demonstrated that anyone /is/ entering into contracts with Intel. Intel has done lots of things that it turns out people didn't want to do (with them).

They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced (that I've seen) but we already know they were doing custom designs for Facebook/Amazon/MS so they would be logical first-takers.

> They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced

I can't tell if you're saying you have insider information or you're just assuming they're getting customers with no evidence.

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

#146

Post by nottorp »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #80
nottorp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, good point. Can't trust those damn yankees. Trump did a brilliant job :)

You jest, but the the world is well-aware of the risk - and possible consequences - of the top US office being compromised - or at least being held by someone who doesn't act in NATO's interests - and it's a sobering thought.

I'm not joking. Every traditional US partner suddenly realized during the Trump administration that their relation can end without warning. Now they're doing damage control.

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

#147

Post by nottorp »

klelatti wrote: post #83
nottorp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually I don't think espionage primarily - more cyber defense against bad actors both state and private.

How about more basic things:

From now on, every ARM processor costs $40 per chip to license. Except, of course, those made by NVidia.

or

From now on, all improvements to the reference ARM architecture will only be available in NVidia chips for the first two years. Afterwards they'll be available for licensing at the current costs.

Those are monopoly issues. And now a national security issue:

From now on, $RANDOM_EUROPEAN_COUNTRY is under embargo wrt to US intellectual property. NVidia being an US company, that includes ARM reference designs. Basically what happened to Huawei with the OS, except now it includes the CPUs too.

And I could go on...

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

#148

Post by cbzbc »

hcho wrote: post #78
chrisseaton wrote: post #4

I guess governments are suddenly much more interested in keeping key industries on-shore. I believe HMG didn't do anything to stop Astra-Zeneca being sold out of the UK a few years ago, and it's just luck it didn't go through. They probably see the need now.

It has to be said the current HMG is radically different than the previous one.

Largely in tone only.

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

#149

Post by ksec »

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…

>is that 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.

Given that you were a semiconductor executive in a global MNC, may I ask, How?

Now correct me if I am wrong. The whole ARM business model was built on the foundation they dont and will not / could not squeeze you out once they dominate. They are British, not acting like some Giant Tech companies you have across the pond. You also get the option to buy perpetual ARM license in various form, including ISA and Design in case you are not comfortable. i.e There is very little they could do to pump up their value. Cutting Opex doesn't do that.

The whole business model is so well designed to the point it doesn't make sense not to sell to SoftBank when they put in that ridiculously high offer. (Purely from a Financial perspective)

As with the case of TSMC, both ARM and TSMC were not supposed to be in the spotlight. They are the backend enabler of the industry. And they want their customer to get the attention and focus, while they are doing the old boring work. All of that changed when Apple jumped into the picture.

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

#150

Post by AlphaSite »

caslon wrote: post #135
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…

ARM also gives the UK strategic leverage in any trade negotiations. Would we knowingly allow Rolls-Royce Jet Engines to be flogged off? No. Ditto ARM. Doesn't this/shouldn't this basically encourage countries like the United States to completely ignore intellectual property laws? If not, why not?

The US has more to loose by people ignoring IP laws imo.
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