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SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

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Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#181

Post by user_7832 »

chasil wrote: post #159
pm90 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be real. ARM got a chance because it excelled in a very specific use case: low power. Unless RISC-V differentiates itself in a significant way, it won’t replace ARM.

ARM also addressed code density with Thumb, which required licensing Super-H IP. Then AArch64 was designed very late, but seems sufficient to have (currently) taken the prize for the top supercomputing architecture. There is architectural flexibility here, in addition to low power.

You seem to be knowledgeable about this, so I wanted to ask - is ARM more efficient (perf/watt) than Risk-V? (I know there are lots of factors like frequencies/voltages etc but keeping everything else constant)

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#183

Post by peanuty1 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #30

Soooo back on the LSE or? It was such a hot stock in 2014-15. Softbank kinda bought it at the peak. Still, Apple has proven ARM on the desktop is phenomenal, and Ampere has done the same in the datacenter. Both have swiftly made compiler support accelerate dramatically. I would love for my next desktop to be arm-based, and it would be great if it didn’t NEED to be a mac. Broad adoption of ARM would be a huge win for…

Softbank would be stupid to list on the LSE.

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#184

Post by chasil »

user_7832 wrote: post #181
chasil wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM also addressed code density with Thumb, which required licensing Super-H IP. Then AArch64 was designed very late, but seems sufficient to have (currently) taken the prize for the top supercomputing architecture. There is architectural flexibility here, in addition to low power.

You seem to be knowledgeable about this, so I wanted to ask - is ARM more efficient (perf/watt) than Risk-V? (I know there are lots of factors like frequencies/voltages etc but keeping everything else constant)

That is really a loaded question.

ARM bigLITTLE exists to address different efficiencies that are exploited in different runtime states. Is big better than LITTLE? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

If there is no definitive answer within the heterogenous cores of a single ARM implementation, then how can it be compared to RISC-V?

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#185

Post by ridgered4 »

rwmj wrote: post #89
chriszioutas wrote: post #79

if they IPO can Nvidia buy a ton of shares and indirectly buy Arm?

Not easily. Trying to gain a controlling stake in a public company triggers regulatory involvement. I'm still unclear why Nvidia would want to control Arm. If they wanted an architecture they could extend as they wished, they can use RISC-V (which they are already doing in a small way).

A lot of people are of the opinion they wanted to put the squeeze to everyone using ARM, but based on reading that doesn't really seem super feasible to me.

I think nvidia is worried about being shut out of the x86 space so there's nowhere to sell their products. So they had a long term play to guide ARM development as an alternative platform. I could see that platform being useful as a hedge, but also giving nvidia a better way of competing in consoles and if they were really successful maybe eventually turning Intel/AMDs x86 advantage into a weakness.

Back when Intel killed off all third party motherboard chipsets nvidia won a lawsuit against Intel where they forced Intel to ensure a pcie bus for GPUs on all their platforms. That provision expired a few years ago. If nvidia is smart (and I believe they are) they've never let go of that worry that APUs might shove them out of the market. Their best bet is to remain so much better than the competition they cannot be ignored, but it would be wise to have a backup plan.

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#186

Post by kmeisthax »

tjoff wrote: post #121
reilly3000 wrote: post #30

Soooo back on the LSE or? It was such a hot stock in 2014-15. Softbank kinda bought it at the peak. Still, Apple has proven ARM on the desktop is phenomenal, and Ampere has done the same in the datacenter. Both have swiftly made compiler support accelerate dramatically. I would love for my next desktop to be arm-based, and it would be great if it didn’t NEED to be a mac. Broad adoption of ARM would be a huge win for…

The thing that stands out about ARM is that the user has less control of the hardware. The manufacturers try and succeed in keeping an extremely closed ecosystem. Why would you want that? The Intel+AMD duopoly seems like nirvana compared to the Ampere and M1. In fact, Ampere and M1 are a hint of the most dystopian future of computing I can imagine.

Uh... M1 (at least when Mac-fused) isn't actually locked-down. You do have to jump through a few hoops to boot modified kernels[0], but it's a reasonable level of security for a chip primarily intended to go into laptops. There's an ongoing effort to reverse-engineer the M1 and port Linux to it[1], which has actually gone really well.

There's also plenty of ARM hardware out there that really doesn't bother with lockdowns. Raspberry Pi, for example, will happily boot whatever you put on the SD card[2]. There's also plenty of other dev boards and chips that are similarly not locked-down. The reason why people think of ARM as "more locked-down" is because it's more often used in locked-down hardware, but there's no architectural requirement for it to be this way.

The real big problem with ARM is that every chip is very different from one another. SoC designers have a habit of reassigning addresses and IDs on every new chip, with no thought towards backwards compatibility. So even if an ARM chip has no technical protection against third-party operating systems, any Linux kernel you build is unlikely to boot unless the SoC vendor has bothered to upstream support for it. Ironically, Apple is one of the few ARM vendors that actually does maintain backwards compatibility where feasible.

[0] The first admin account is granted possession of a local signing key that lets that user sign kernels. This means that you need to be able to log into that account under macOS in order to install Linux - evil maids need not apply.

[1] Legend has it that if you say "M1" three times in a HackerNews comment, you'll summon the primary developer of Asahi Linux.

[2] You do have to provide a GPU boot blob; no clue if there's a project to reimplement that.

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#187

Post by floatboth »

user_7832 wrote: post #181
chasil wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM also addressed code density with Thumb, which required licensing Super-H IP. Then AArch64 was designed very late, but seems sufficient to have (currently) taken the prize for the top supercomputing architecture. There is architectural flexibility here, in addition to low power.

You seem to be knowledgeable about this, so I wanted to ask - is ARM more efficient (perf/watt) than Risk-V? (I know there are lots of factors like frequencies/voltages etc but keeping everything else constant)

The ISA doesn't have that much influence on efficiency (other than, like, x86's insane-length encoding requiring spending more power on decoding).

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#188

Post by justin66 »

Kliment wrote: post #105
NortySpock wrote: post #9

Why will ARM succeed where MIPS faded into obscurity? (Well, relative obscurity. I see they are still used in media devices and cheap routers.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Technologies

ARM has already succeeded. There is no "will" here. Most microcontrollers in the world are ARM. Most application processors in the world are ARM. It spans from the cheapest to the highest-performing parts. Nearly every smartphone in the world is ARM.

In the embedded arena, Arm (the instruction set) would appear to be pretty replaceable. Arm and MIPS competed for the same business, Arm and RISC-V can do the same. There is nothing magical about any of them.

Arm (the corporation) can make some money for themselves by coming up with increasingly cool Arm cores to sell (a mission Nvidia could have aided immediately and with high impact, but... nevermind) but the instruction set itself is not especially important anymore. There's a lot less path-dependency for companies in the embedded arena than there is among, for example, desktop computer companies.

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#189

Post by stjohnswarts »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #160
samwillis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanted to see where your brilliant phrase "Riscy Silver Bullet" was from so had a google, I think you are trying to start a trend ;-) > ksec 67 days ago > The unwritten rule of HN: > You do not criticise The Rusted Holy Grail and the Riscy Silver Bullet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29422032

Those RISC-V supporters are so annoying. They never seem to understand the difference between an open-source instruction set , versus an open-source chip which anyone can synthesize, versus closed-source drivers for an open-source instruction set which contains closed-source additional instructions. RISC-V literally has no "openness" advantage over ARM other than that there's no licensing fee. Apple could make a RISC…

Yeah as a rust user and believer even I cringe at some rust crusaders, I've seen the same for RISC V as well :(

Re: SoftBank's Sale of Arm to Nvidia Collapses, Arm to IPO

#190

Post by dannyw »

jakey_bakey wrote: post #66
BluSyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SoftBank is desperate for capital due to recent bad bets. ARM is one of the most valuable assets they have. As for ARM itself, this probably isn't the best path forward, and neither option would even be considered if it weren't for SoftBank's current predicament.

It's weird, according to the FT they only want the capital to finance share buybacks. So, basically, they want to prop up their share price.

yes, that is the core premise of a company.
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