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

Post by ksec » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

thedays wrote: post #86

pm90 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of an aside, but it never ceases to amaze me how many would be tech hubs try variations of Silicon Valley in their (maybe informal?) branding. Silicon hills, Silicon fern.. (I knew a couple more but I’m forgetting atm). It’s not like it’s the name which made it what it is.

An area in London was also amusingly called Silicon Roundabout.

Post by phonon » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #135

cptskippy wrote: post #112

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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 m…

ATI/AMD remains nearly the only competitor nvidia has in the discrete GPU space. But we started out with 3dfx, S3, nvidia, ati.

Post by Causality1 » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

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…

Post by justaguy88 » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

mekster wrote: post #133

bartread wrote: post #61

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> Nope, now Nvidia is going to destroy that progress and set everything back another 5+ years. You're blaming Nvidia. You should be blaming SoftBank and Masayoshi Son: bunch of fucking hucksters misleading people and making bad investments. Now they need to sell ARM to fill some of the gaping void that has resulted. They couldn't care less who they sell to and what the outcome of that sale will be. I have nothing but…

Would anybody have bought ARM if SoftBank didn't back in 2017? I wonder if Nvidia had bought it at some point anyway.

Post by hakfoo » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #41

noir_lord wrote: post #32

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The techies here including myself did, it was a deal the government should have looked into. It was a crown jewel of a company, hard to imagine the French government letting it slide or the US government letting a intel be sold to a foreign company.

Even though I've long followed Arm (I went to a presentation in Cambridge from Steve Furber about the Arm 1 in 1985ish even before the first commercial chips shipped) I'm a bit sceptical about how much value would ever be generated for the UK economy by Arm. The business model is about low margins and selling to everyone around the world so its hard to see how being next door to Arm (geographically) would be a big ad…