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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
121–130 of 784 posts
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#122They need to block this deal. A real clean case.
Who needs to block it? And why is it a clean case?
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#123HN being hyperbolic and anti-NVIDIA as usual. I think this is a great thing. Finally a competitor to the AMD-Intel x86 duopoly. I imagine the focus will first be on improving ARM’s data center offerings but eventually I’m hoping to see consumer-facing parts available sometime as well.
I think the biggest concern is NVIDIA's stance against OSS.
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#124This is awful . Out of all the big tech companies, Nvidia is probably least friendly to open source and cross-platform comparability. It seems to me that their goal is to monopolize AI hardware over the next 20 years, the same way Intel effectively monopolized cloud hardware over the last 20. Expect to see less choice in the chip market and more and more propietary software frameworks like CUDA. A sad day for CS and…
NVIDIA’s hardware works on x86, PowerPC, and ARM platforms.
Many of their AI libraries/tools are in fact open source.
They stand to be a force that could propel ARM’s strength in data center and desktop computing. For some reason you’re okay with the current x86 duopoly held by AMD and Intel, both who have their own destiny over CPUs and GPUs.
The HN crowd is incredibly biased against certain companies. Why not look at some of the potential bright sides to this for a more nuanced and balanced opinion?
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because of this transaction? I’m sure this deal will have absolutely no impact on apple’s deal with ARM. Apple could of course Afford to invest in RISC-V (and surely has played with it internally) but they have enough control of their future under the current arrangement that it will be a long long time before they feel any need to switch — 15 years at least.
Apple and Nvidia don't seem to see eye to eye. Nvidia doesn't support macs (CUDA support was pulled a year or two ago) and apples don't include Nvidia cards. This could change.
This is because Nvidia screwed apple (from Apple’s POV) years ago with some bad GPUs to the point where Apple flat out refuses to source Nvidia parts. I don’t know the internal details of course just the public ones so can’t say if Apple is being petty or if Nvidia burned the bridge while the problem was unfolding.
Given that the CEO was the supply chain guy at the time I suspect the latter, as I’d imagine he’d be more dispassionate than Jobs.
In any case I seriously doubt nvidia could, much less would benefit from cancelling Apple’s agreement.
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#126Why do you think Nvidia cares about Arm? Probably the "access" into a lot of industries?
I think this is driven by partly embedded applications and more directly by the datacenter. Nvidia already own the parallel compute/ML part of the datacenter and the Mellanox acquisition had brought the ability to compete in the networking part of the datacenter - but they were missing CPU IP, for tasks that aren't well matched to the GPU. This plugs that hole. They are in control of a complete data-center solution n…
There's a huge number of synergies that this deal provides.
(a) NVIDIA becomes a full-fledged full-stack house, they have both CPU and GPU now. They can now compete with AMD and Intel on equal terms. That has huge implications in the datacenter.
(b) GeForce becomes the reference implementation of the GPU, ARM processors now directly fund NVIDIA's desktop/datacenter R&D in the same way consoles and Samsung SOCs fund Radeon's R&D. CUDA can be used anywhere on any platform easily.
(c) Acqui-hire for CPU development talent. NVIDIA's efforts in this area have not been very good to date. Now they have an entire team that is experienced in developing ARM and can aim the direction of development where they want.
Basically there's a reason that NVIDIA was willing to pay more than anyone else for this property. And (Softbank's) Son desperately needed a big financial win to show his investors that he's not a fucking idiot for paying $32b for ARM and to make up for his other recent losses.
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#127I’m not convinced this is a death sentence for ARM. I doubt nVidia spent $40b on a company with the intention of killing it’s golden goose business model. The contractual agreements might change, but ARM wasn’t exactly giving their IP away for free before this move.
It is less about them intentionally killing it and more about their culture and attitude killing it.
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have heard numerous arguments but they arguments don't feel that compelling, what are reasons why this is bad?
Consider one of NVidia's rivals: AMD, who uses an ARM chip in their EPYC line of chips as a security co-processor. Does anyone expect NVidia to "play fair" with such a rival? ARM as an independent company, has been profoundly "neutral", allowing many companies to benefit from the ARM instruction set. It has been run very well: slightly profitable and an incremental value to all parties involved (be you Apple's iPhone…
> Consider one of NVidia's rivals: AMD, who uses an ARM chip in their EPYC line of chips as a security co-processor. Does anyone expect NVidia to "play fair" with such a rival?
Yes, absolutely.
NVIDIA's not going to burn the ARM ecosystem to the ground. They just paid $40 billion for it. And they only had $11b of cash on hand, they really overpaid for it (because SoftBank desperately needed a big win to cover for their other recent losses).
Now: will everybody (including AMD) probably be paying more for their ARM IP from now on? Yes.
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#129HN being hyperbolic and anti-NVIDIA as usual. I think this is a great thing. Finally a competitor to the AMD-Intel x86 duopoly. I imagine the focus will first be on improving ARM’s data center offerings but eventually I’m hoping to see consumer-facing parts available sometime as well.
I think the biggest concern is NVIDIA's stance against OSS.
Look at their AI/CUDA documentation and associated githubs. Many of their tools and libraries are open source.
Tell me, what other AI platform works with x86 and PowerPC and ARM? Currently NVIDIA’s GPUs do.
Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B
#130This is awful . Out of all the big tech companies, Nvidia is probably least friendly to open source and cross-platform comparability. It seems to me that their goal is to monopolize AI hardware over the next 20 years, the same way Intel effectively monopolized cloud hardware over the last 20. Expect to see less choice in the chip market and more and more propietary software frameworks like CUDA. A sad day for CS and…
Lol with the italics awful and your “seems to me” angle