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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

#91

Post by wmf »

jsheard wrote: post #55
alberth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Ampere essentially the only company making server grade ARM chips. And all the rest of ARM customers are making mobile/desktop. So Ampere is going after a completely different segment that the rest of ARM customers aren’t addressing.

They're the only company selling server grade ARM chips but others are rolling their own for internal use, such as Amazons Graviton line. That's Ampere's problem really, their biggest potential customers are so big that they can afford to cut out middlemen like Ampere.

Yeah, Ampere's only customers appear to be Oracle Cloud and some hobbyists. I was kind of expecting Oracle to buy them.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#92

Post by snotrockets »

radicalbyte wrote: post #23
riffraff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps you think this explains something but honestly it does not. I mean, yes, these people are ex-israeli army, but why would Google want to pay 32B for ex-IDF people? Surely there's more of them out there?

Israel have National Service so pretty much every working there is ex-Army.

This is a wild exaggeration - very few people are a good fit for serving in a military, and while the Israeli army ignores that, and drafts many it shouldn't (resulting in high suicide rates on one hand, and alleged war crimes on the other), it still only drafts ~69% of AMAB and 55% AFAB.

It does gives free technical education and experience for some recruits (not necessarily the top, and that experience isn't always teh best), but of course that affects tech employment - you'd see higher rates of service across tech employees, as that service gave them a jump start on their tech education.

That said, even if the Israeli military decides to draft a person, that person can stand up and refuse. It ain't "free" (may result in imprisonment,) but it's a choice that even if too few make, it is one, and making it is a strong signal about what kind of person they are.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#93

Post by snotrockets »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #73
DeathArrow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are from an intelligence agency, not just army.

Wouldn’t it be expected that those most capable with technology and software be routed to the intelligence agency, rather than the front lines or something?

Not if you know how militaries and intelligence agencies are run.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#95

Post by kcb »

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.

You can buy Nvidia Grace CPU only systems. Neoverse V2 is actually pretty solid.

https://www.supermicro.com/datasheet/datasheet-NVIDIA-MGX-1U...

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#97

Post by jsheard »

wmf wrote: post #91
jsheard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the only company selling server grade ARM chips but others are rolling their own for internal use, such as Amazons Graviton line. That's Ampere's problem really, their biggest potential customers are so big that they can afford to cut out middlemen like Ampere.

Yeah, Ampere's only customers appear to be Oracle Cloud and some hobbyists. I was kind of expecting Oracle to buy them.

Hetzner offers Ampere boxes too, but they're not exactly a hyperscaler.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#98

Post by indrora »

alberth wrote: post #53
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.

Isn’t Ampere essentially the only company making server grade ARM chips. And all the rest of ARM customers are making mobile/desktop. So Ampere is going after a completely different segment that the rest of ARM customers aren’t addressing.

Ampere is the only one with a license to make server-grade ARM chips.

There's a distinction that has to be made here.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#99

Post by indrora »

ahoka wrote: post #49
terinjokes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Great, I can still make the HMS Courage[0]

[0]https://www.igen.fr/accessoires/2015/11/non-la-magic-mouse-n...

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#100

Post by flakiness »

jawiggins wrote: post #82
siavosh wrote: post #76

Can someone knowledgeable explain SoftBank? Is it partly a Japanese sovereign fund...I've become less and less interested in its investments as it seems to simply act like a giant government money channel with questionable investments that don't seem to make sense from a typical VC/PE perspective. Ie is its ultimate goal not merely profit?

SoftBank was founded by Masayoshi Son. It was originally a tech company that resold software (imagine Steam but for desktop apps), but very quickly it morphed into something like a PE firm that would do continual leveraged buyouts of existing firms. They've bought companies that run conferences, tech magazines, one of their more formative M & A deals was to buy the Japanese Vodafone arm. Many of these deals actually…

And it's so un-Japanese.

See what the Japanese government (or old power in Japan) has been spending the money on recently:

- Honda-Nissan merger (failed) - Seven Eleven counter buyout https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/the-fight-for-7-eleven-i...

Masayoshi Son is in a different league, for good or bad.

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