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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

nvidianews.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#161

Post by endgame »

LanternLight83 wrote: post #134
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are good points on both sides; as a Linux user, I feel the effects of their proprietary drivers and uncooperative approach, while I can also appreciate that they've managed to work with the Gnome and KDE project to have some support under Wayland, and the contributions they've made to the machine learning communities. Ad a whole, I do think that the former outweighs the latter, and loath the acquisition, but do…

https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

You mean this Weyland "support"?

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#162

Post by dannyw »

teruakohatu wrote: post #32
stupendousyappi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, Nvidia has done a solid job of advancing GPU performance even in the face of weak competition, and with their additional resources, ARM performance may advance even faster, and provide the first competition in decades to x86 in servers and desktops.

The tech may have advanced due to the insatiable hunger of machine learning, but the weak competition has meant pricing has not decreased as much as it should have or could have, only enough to move more GPUs. (nvidia biggest competitor are the GPUs they manufactured two years earlier).

Really? You get 2x perf per dollar with Ampere. That’s not good enough on the pricing front?

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#163

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

ianai wrote: post #135
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes I wonder the same thing about the sentiment against nvidia. It’s be helpful if there were some wiki about things they’ve killed or instances they’ve acted against foss systems.

Nvidia does not publish drivers, only binary blobs.

You generally have to wrap those and use them while not being foss-compatible.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#164

Post by sillysaurusx »

shaklee3 wrote: post #152
sillysaurusx wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference between a TPU and a GPU is that a TPU has a CPU. It's an entire computer, not just a piece of hardware. Is nVidia moving in that direction?

A TPU is a chip you cannot program. It's purpose built and can't run the fraction of the type of workloads that a GPU can.

I don't know where all of this misinformation is coming from or why, but, as someone who has spent the last year programming TPUs to do all kinds of things that a GPU can't do, this isn't true.

Are we going to simply say "Nu uh" at each other, or do you want to throw down some specific examples so I can show you how mistaken they are?

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#166

Post by shaklee3 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #164
shaklee3 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A TPU is a chip you cannot program. It's purpose built and can't run the fraction of the type of workloads that a GPU can.

I don't know where all of this misinformation is coming from or why, but, as someone who has spent the last year programming TPUs to do all kinds of things that a GPU can't do, this isn't true. Are we going to simply say "Nu uh" at each other, or do you want to throw down some specific examples so I can show you how mistaken they are?

Please show me the API where I can write a generic function on a TPU. I'm talking about writing something like a custom reduction or a peak search, not offloading a tensor flow model.

I'll make it easier for you, directly from Google's website:

TPUs Cloud TPUs are optimized for specific workloads. In some situations, you might want to use GPUs or CPUs on Compute Engine instances to run your machine learning workloads.

Please tell me a workload a gpu can't do that a TPU can.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#167

Post by mikhailfranco »

sjg007 wrote: post #86
boardwaalk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations say these types of things with every acquisition. It might be true initially and superficially, but that's all.

I doubt they will move all of the talent to the USA. I mean California is nice and all but I think a lot of Brits are happy to stay in Cambridge.

Cambridge is one of the most beautiful cities on the planet.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#168

Post by tony »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

This 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…

Surprisingly - they have a working driver for FreeBSD. Never had an issue with it - and the performance is fantastic. As far back as early 2000's I remember installing proprietary nvidia drivers on Linux and playing UT2004.

Maybe Nintendo/Sony uses Nvidia cards on their developer machines? I imagine FreeBSD drivers aren't simply altruism on their part.

On the other hand, stagnation on other fronts:

- Nouveau (tried recently) is basically unusable on Ubuntu. As in the mouse/keyboard locks every 6 seconds.

- Proprietary drivers won't work with wayland

And since their stuff isn't open, the community can't do much to push Nouveau forward.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#169

Post by zmmmmm »

Many various reasons for this but one perspective I am curious about is how much this is actually a defensive move against Intel, because nVidia knows Intel is busy developing dedicated graphics via Xe, and if nVidia just allows that to continue they are going to find themselves simultaneously competing with and dependent on a vendor that owns the whole stack that their platform depends on. It is not a place I would want to be, even accounting for how incompetent Intel seems to have been for the last 10 years.

Edit: yes I meant nVidia not AMD!

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