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SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

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Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#111

Post by arvinsim »

BluSyn wrote: post #3

I think this is a very bad and short-sided deal. ARM is in such a great position currently. There's no reason to sell except that SoftBank is in desperate need of capital. On top of that, Nvidia is likely to be a terrible steward of the IP. Nvidia has a terrible track record of working with other companies, partners, and open source developers. ARM has become a de-facto standard in mobile space, and Nvidia will likel…

> While long-term this might end up being great for RISC-V, it's going to cause a huge fracture in software stacks at the exact WORST time. Finally we're starting seeing huge convergence on ARM in Mobile/Desktop/Server space. One ISA to rule them all! Nope, now Nvidia is going to destroy that progress and set everything back another 5+ years.

As someone who is not that well versed in hardware, can someone explain to me why it would be good to converge towards ARM? Why there is disdain for x86?

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#112

Post by cptskippy »

ethbr0 wrote: post #68
rvz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, you are correct. This is what Nvidia was looking for since out of the big 3 US semiconductor manufacturers, it doesn't have its own IP on CPUs. Now it will soon be able to control ARM to its advantage against the competition. This will indeed push the urgency for RISC-V to be worth looking at in the next few years to be used by hardware vendors soon. But it will be a long wait. As for the UK now realiz…

> This is what Nvidia was looking for since out of the big 3 US semiconductor manufacturers, it doesn't have its own IP on CPUs. Now it will soon be able to control ARM to its advantage against the competition. In all fairness, consider the market from Nvidia's perspective: they've spent a few decades being a stone's throw from Intel eating them. They started as one of many add-on card manufacturers and have turned i…

I don't remember it being all that cutthroat tbh. 3dfx was arguably the only game in down and ATi was it's whipping boy. Matrox was over in the corner saying "look nah two monitors at once!"

3dfx stumbled right as nVidia dropped the GeForce and blew everything away.

ATi became nVidia's whipping boy and Matrox just added the ability to drive more monitors.

I mean aside from not knowing if Matrox is still around, not much has changed from what I can see.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#114

Post by stjohnswarts »

arvinsim wrote: post #111
BluSyn wrote: post #3

I think this is a very bad and short-sided deal. ARM is in such a great position currently. There's no reason to sell except that SoftBank is in desperate need of capital. On top of that, Nvidia is likely to be a terrible steward of the IP. Nvidia has a terrible track record of working with other companies, partners, and open source developers. ARM has become a de-facto standard in mobile space, and Nvidia will likel…

> While long-term this might end up being great for RISC-V, it's going to cause a huge fracture in software stacks at the exact WORST time. Finally we're starting seeing huge convergence on ARM in Mobile/Desktop/Server space. One ISA to rule them all! Nope, now Nvidia is going to destroy that progress and set everything back another 5+ years. As someone who is not that well versed in hardware, can someone explain to…

There is plenty disdain for both. However ARM is (was?) gaining mindshare and starting to take even more marketshare and mindshare from Intel. Intel is a bit on the ropes right now because they can't keep up with TSMC on miniaturization and other chip technologies. I think it's popular to be against the 800lb gorilla. This deal is likely really bad for the platform as Nvidia doesn't have the greatest history for being a "nice" player in the tech world either. I think the primary fear is they will stop licensing the ARM IP to other companies and claim it solely for themselves in hopes of going even more head to head with Intel across the entire spectrum of chip technology.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#115

Post by Moto7451 »

arvinsim wrote: post #111
BluSyn wrote: post #3

I think this is a very bad and short-sided deal. ARM is in such a great position currently. There's no reason to sell except that SoftBank is in desperate need of capital. On top of that, Nvidia is likely to be a terrible steward of the IP. Nvidia has a terrible track record of working with other companies, partners, and open source developers. ARM has become a de-facto standard in mobile space, and Nvidia will likel…

> While long-term this might end up being great for RISC-V, it's going to cause a huge fracture in software stacks at the exact WORST time. Finally we're starting seeing huge convergence on ARM in Mobile/Desktop/Server space. One ISA to rule them all! Nope, now Nvidia is going to destroy that progress and set everything back another 5+ years. As someone who is not that well versed in hardware, can someone explain to…

I’m sure there are people who have legitimate issues with x86 and its extensions. I’m not one of them.

What I believe most people are concerned with are low power high performance devices. ARM owns that space. It would be at the very least disruptive to have ARM platforms die.

On the high end Intel CPUs in servers are very expensive. Many people on HN have expressed hope that cheap ARM cores become good enough and drive down the cost of both on-prem and cloud servers.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#116

Post by stjohnswarts »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9

Do Apple actually work with Arm currently or is all their Apple Silicon stuff completely on their own? I don’t actually understand the issue they have with Nvidia but they seem to have one.

Apple has a perpetual license to ARM tech. There's nothing Nvidia can do to them.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#117

Post by manquer »

jb775 wrote: post #104
llsf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Softbank bought ARM in 2016 and paid $32B ($35B of 2020 USD after 4 years of inflation). And today they get $40B but partly in Nvidia stocks... Assuming that Softbank manages to sell immediately the Nvidia stock and get their $40B, it is more like 14%. In the same timeframe Nvidia stock went from $30 (Jan. 2016) to $480 (Friday) or x16. Softbank would have a way better outcome if they had invested in Nvidia 4 years a…

Hindsight is 20/20 in regards to the Nvidia stock gains. $5-$8 billion profit plus whatever they managed to extract in-between is a pretty astounding investment.

Perhaps the how much of nvidia stock gains are 20/20 .

It was never in doubt that nvidia was going to grow massively. 3-4 years back cryptocurrency mining made it next to impossible to actually buy a gpu. Machine learning was always going to keep growing massively. Cuda had cornered the market . AMD GPU is far behind .

Similarly AMD's growth is never in doubt after ryzen launched , there is nothing on intel's next 3-5 years that is going to be remotely competitive. They can only compete by the sheer force of their sales . AMD will only keep growing next 5 years, by how much depends on how well they can execute their own sales.

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#118

Post by stjohnswarts »

wmf wrote: post #36
spzb wrote: post #8

I would have thought Apple was a better strategic fit for Arm and likely to be able to pay bigger bucks too.

People are speculating that Nvidia might end Arm core licensing, but Apple would definitely shut it down. Apple's culture is totally incompatible with Arm's business model.

What how would Apple shutdown what Nvidia is doing? If they buy ARM they can stop selling licenses for it if they like. Of course they have to honor any prior contracts with other customers but when those run out, adios. Apple has their own license to use ARM architecture/ISA as long as they like, so what Nvidia does when they own ARM is really no concern to the fruit company

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#119

Post by stjohnswarts »

mantap wrote: post #10
spzb wrote: post #8

I would have thought Apple was a better strategic fit for Arm and likely to be able to pay bigger bucks too.

I don't think Apple would be allowed to buy ARM, there would be serious competition implications.

And you think a company like like Nvidia (another hardware company) owning the same tech doesn't have precisely the same competition implications?

Re: SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia for $40B

#120

Post by manquer »

valuearb wrote: post #99
spzb wrote: post #8

I would have thought Apple was a better strategic fit for Arm and likely to be able to pay bigger bucks too.

There is no strategic fit for ARM at Apple. They have a perpetual license already and design their own chips. They don’t need the customer and antitrust headaches to pay over 10x revenues for the ARM licensing business.

I am not sure any antitrust concerns would remotely be applicable in the case of an apple buy.there is no overlap of ARM biz to apple. Same as google or MS buying phone manufacturers and shutting down/selling parts they don't like.

Apple could shutdown the licensing just to keep competitors behind, if they did that it would set back all their android competitors by 5-10 years atleast and potentially fragment the chip market . Maintaining the iphone chip dominance is definitely worth 40B .

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