Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t • Hacker News Board

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#121

Post by laurencerowe » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

Zenst wrote: post #70

Apple license the instruction set and make their own designs, so the interest in all that overhead business, let alone the political fallout (too much power in one company and fuels the Apple TAX headline mantra that will just roll and roll) - Apple don't want that hassel. But many reasons Apple buying ARM is not a good fit for Apple. Nvidia may well be good fit and a better fit than Apple by far, though would it be…

> If I was Softbank, I'd go for IPO route as I do feel out of all the IPOs, this is a mature tech firm.

ARM is definitely mature, it originally IPO'd in 1998 and remained public until it was bought by SoftBank in 2016.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#122

Post by dangjc » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

ARM should just go public and IPO. Why do companies rely on acquisitions so much? Let the public buy into these successful tech companies instead of having the gains accrue to already rich tech companies or private equity funds.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#123

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #120

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM management has historically been anything but clueless, they must have their reasons for putting it on the market and yours is as good as any that I've seen. RISC-V is a serious threat to their business model. In a way this is good, CPUs and the surrounding IP should be a (free) commodity, just like operating systems and utilities.

I'm not a CPU designer but if I were I'm not sure I'd agree that CPUs and the associated IP should be free. I think we all benefit from the effort of those who push forward CPU design and they deserve to be paid for it. I'm with you if this means that CPUs should be a collaborative effort with shared overheads and common standards but ARM is pretty close to this already.

Sure, but this stuff is two decades old by now and really should be a commodity. Newer and innovative designs are welcome to some protection. But at this level the main questions are can I have a toolchain that is unencumbered and how much power does a particular design consume. In a way that is where the battlefield is, extracting as much computation as possible from a given energy budget.

Which led me to speculate the other day that mobile phones should be programmed in lower level languages for an immediate jump in battery life. Nothing my phone does requires gigahertz processors.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#124

Post by ithkuil » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #116

bsder wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's effectively MIPS warmed over. And MIPS never went anywhere because it never cracked the cellphone market (which is where the real volume is). When someone puts out a RISC-V phone, you've got a battle on your hands. Until then, you're fighting over table scraps.

I actually liked the MIPS architecture and used it for many years as my daily driver. True, it wasn't designed with mobile in mind, and ARM was a very good match there. But I don't see any reason why it could not be adapted to that.

Could you summarize the main architectural (not implementation) differences between arm and risc-v that apply to being a good/poor match for mobile in particular?

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#125

Post by stefan_ » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

saxonww wrote: post #61

humps wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD holds roughly 30 percent share of the CPU* and graphics card/GPU markets, that's far from insignificant and certainly not a "tiny fraction" or a "couple cards." * https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/09/24/am... https://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-and-nvidia-geforce-discrete-...

I think they also totally own the console space, don't they? The next-gen consoles from both Sony and Microsoft are based on custom AMD cpu/gpu combos.

The lowest bidder owns the console space. It's not a good business, it's a bit of cash flow.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#126

Post by starfallg » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #82

Nvidia's stock is in a massive bubble, so an all-stock transaction is a no brainer here. They will be getting ARM for free.

Softbank and Vision Fund aren't exactly looking for Nvidia shares though. They are looking for cold hard cash to plug the massive hole in the failing investments.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#127

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

ithkuil wrote: post #124

jacquesm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually liked the MIPS architecture and used it for many years as my daily driver. True, it wasn't designed with mobile in mind, and ARM was a very good match there. But I don't see any reason why it could not be adapted to that.

Could you summarize the main architectural (not implementation) differences between arm and risc-v that apply to being a good/poor match for mobile in particular?

I actually don't think there are any at the lowest level, it's mostly a matter of ARM being able to reduce power consumption by aggressively throttling down the clock rates and various advanced sleep modes. In principle you should be able to do this with any CPU, given a roughly equal transistor count power consumption should be close.

Obviously ARM is much further along in the practical implementation of these features.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#128

Post by tadfisher » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #119

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #57

I would never want to buy ARM if I were Apple. Here's why. Apple can design AND manufacture chips based on ARM architecture, essentially without any interference from ARM the company. Just pay a (relatively small) license fee and you're all set. The article says it well: > Arm’s licensing operation would fit poorly with Apple’s hardware-focused business model. > There may also be regulatory concerns about Apple ownin…

>True. As mentioned above, architecture success != economic success ARM is enormously economically successful, they're just not a manufacturer and thus not remotely a comparable business to the entirety of Intel, fabs and all. Apple has a perpetual license from ARM, so it doesn't matter who buys ARM, Apple is all set license wise. There is a risk that a new buyer might under-invest in the evolution of the architectur…

> Most of the really interesting RISC-V chips include proprietary enhancements.

100% of ARM chips on the market include proprietary enhancements. I don't think that has any bearing on the adoption of the core ISA, unless you can point to cases where a decision was made to avoid RISC-V over licensing an ISA extension.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#129

Post by klelatti » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #123

klelatti wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a CPU designer but if I were I'm not sure I'd agree that CPUs and the associated IP should be free. I think we all benefit from the effort of those who push forward CPU design and they deserve to be paid for it. I'm with you if this means that CPUs should be a collaborative effort with shared overheads and common standards but ARM is pretty close to this already.

Sure, but this stuff is two decades old by now and really should be a commodity. Newer and innovative designs are welcome to some protection. But at this level the main questions are can I have a toolchain that is unencumbered and how much power does a particular design consume. In a way that is where the battlefield is, extracting as much computation as possible from a given energy budget. Which led me to speculate…

The reason why I'm supportive of the ARM business model is that the fees are really not that significant (eg compared to x86) and actually I think it's good to support a firm with a primary focus of getting the most performance per watt from a mobile chip. A few dollars in licensing fees is really a small price to pay.

Re: Report: ARM is for sale and Nvidia’s interested, Apple isn’t

#130

Post by pankajdoharey » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #97

klelatti wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression (based on a talk with both Simon Seegars - ARM CEO - and Jeff Williams - Apple COO - onstage) is that the relationship is pretty close. You'd expect that ARM would be pretty responsive to the needs of one of its highest profile customers especially given the history and there is no reason why that would change with any sale.

That's the current story - where ARM is independent. If a competitor buys it and decide to not invest as much in ARM or keep things for themselves that's where this discussion plays off. I was saying it won't matter much for Apple but on the other hand Apple buying them would be a much worse outcome for the industry as a whole.

I think if someone anyone who buys a 32+ Billion dollar company would want to get returns from it, so surely they won't stop investing. The problem really is if it is someone like NVIDIA then they have this rent seeking behaviour. Which almost everyone is trying to run away from. For instance In the cloud NVIDIA shuns the usage of its commodity GPU's through the use of EULA and force you to buy there expensive and overpriced Cloud GPU solution. This kind of behaviour effectively puts NVIDIA in the category of Ransomware. So I am only concerned that Nvidia doesn't buy it. Anyone else is fine.