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SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

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Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#41

Post by alephnerd »

DeathArrow wrote: post #12

And Google just spent five times that to acquire a cyber security startup with 1000 customers. Is hardware so much less valuable?

> Is hardware so much less valuable?

Margins and TAM.

Those 1000+ customers at Wiz have 7-8 figure TCV deals (I have personally seen a couple of those contracts), and have pipeline in multiple industry verticals - Tech, Telecom, ONG, Healthcare, Finance, Insurance, etc

An embedded and telco oriented firm like Ampere has weaker margins as they have to manufacture hardware, which drastically reduces the amount of money available.

It's also a smaller and more consolidated market with a weaker TAM.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#42

Post by twoodfin »

bayindirh wrote: post #6
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Well, I guess it was either them or Oracle, given previous acquisition rumours.

Given Oracle's tendency to use pillows on processor architectures and bury them at night, Softbank is possibly the better of two evils? Jokes aside, I don't believe Oracle would evolve the A1s beyond what they need, and stagnate them for years instead.

I’d love for someone more informed to provide some insider detail, but by appearances Oracle really, really tried to make SPARC a differentiator for them after the Sun acquisition.

They were shipping new systems (M8) based on a consistent in-house evolution of SPARC almost 8 years after the acquisition, a veritable eternity in tech time.

Eventually the market just said, no, we want x64 and a path to Cloud.

One wonders if they’d kept at it for a few more years whether they’d have needed to bid for Altera at all, given the gaps opened up by Intel’s struggles.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#43

Post by pjc50 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #8
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

Ampere is still the only people making a decent purchaseable ARM server. Not loving the idea of there being a bunch of new debt hovering over them now.

What about https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack#

SEVEN AND A HALF THOUSAND DOLLARS? No wonder we do all our Mac CI work on Mac minis.

Macs remain completely horrendous to remote-administer.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#44

Post by SecretDreams »

klelatti wrote: post #5

So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access to confidential information on Arm's customers' businesses (plans, volumes etc). Hmmm.

Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services?

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#45

Post by klelatti »

SecretDreams wrote: post #44
klelatti wrote: post #5

So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access to confidential information on Arm's customers' businesses (plans, volumes etc). Hmmm.

Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services?

Somewhat but not competing with its customers has been a central part of Arm's proposition for three decades, for good reason. There are at least a lot of competitors for Nvidia's design. Your options if you want to build a server core are a lot more limited.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#46

Post by znpy »

bayindirh wrote: post #29
znpy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have fun when that cheese grater hangs in the datacenter and you have to physically go in there to push a button, connect a display, a keyboard and a mouse to do troubleshooting, because apple in their infinite wisdom has decided that a rackable mac should not have ipmi.

Why not use JetKVM [0], and a remotely switchable datacenter PDU? [0]: https://jetkvm.com/

you certainly could... but when you're spending mac-pro money you might as well get a machine with built-in ipmi.

it's not that you can't -- it's just inefficient: you're spending more money for less features.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#48

Post by re-thc »

SecretDreams wrote: post #44
klelatti wrote: post #5

So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access to confidential information on Arm's customers' businesses (plans, volumes etc). Hmmm.

Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services?

> Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services?

Different in that ARM only 'designed'. It's more like a framework / library / tool (a very feature complete 1).

The Nvidia case is more similar to having a self-install and then a cloud hosted version of the same software.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#49

Post by ahoka »

terinjokes wrote: post #34
jjtheblunt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack#

No BMC, severally limiting remote management, so operations teams responsible for physical servers don't want to touch it. JetKVM is a remote KVM, not remote management. It does not have the same integration into the internals of a server.

But it comes with a ... checks notes ... magic mouse!
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