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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

#201

Post by afroboy »

wwice wrote: post #132
kitsunesoba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, Apple has a special perpetual license for the architecture thanks to it being one of the companies that founded ARM. This deal shouldn't have too much impact on Apple.

From this article https://www.imore.com/mac-moving-apple-silicon-not-arm "First, ARM has two different kinds of licenses. One is for chipset designs. You pay your fee, you take your Cortex cores or whatever, you get them fabbed, and you've got your CPUs. The other is an ISA license. With that, you get no chip design. None. All you get is the instruction set architecture. You have to roll the actual design yourself. A…

Isn't that what everybody doing Qualcomm, Samsung, huawei ..?

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

#202

Post by gwd »

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…

> Now, an opportunity to become a technical peer to Intel at the CPU level? To control their own destiny?

> They'd be insane not to take this opportunity.

It made financial sense for ARM's board to sell to SoftBank; it makes financial sense for SoftBank to sell to NVIDIA; it makes financial and strategic sense for NVIDIA to buy ARM; it makes financial and strategic sense for NVIDIA to radically change the way the ARM ecosystem works to benefit themselves.

And yet, the world will lose out massively by having the ARM ecosystem radically changed to benefit NVIDIA.

Capitalism certainly does a lot to create value for society as a whole, but this is just one of many examples of where capitalism also destroys value for society as a whole.

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

#203

Post by jcelerier »

baybal2 wrote: post #75
bartread wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You're blaming Nvidia. You should be blaming SoftBank and Masayoshi Son: bunch of fucking hucksters misleading people and making bad investments. You shouldn't be blaming bad investors. They pay for their decisions with their, or more often somebody's else, money. Blame the collective ownership of means of production, which in form of public companies have dominated the Western world for the last 30+ years. When pe…

> When people think of of selling their business, which is their life's work

That's a bit of a grandiloquent take on reasons that could lead one to start a business.

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

#204

Post by jonplackett »

slipheen wrote: post #93
jonplackett wrote: post #43

What effect does this have on Apple and them basing their own chips on Arm? Are the now so far down their own road of development that it doesn't really matter?

None whatsoever. They have a license from the Newton days which allows them to do whatever they want perpetually.

Do apple just build on their own direction now then - I thought ARM would every so often create a new design and then everyone would use that as the basis for their chips. Do apple not do that? Or am I misunderstanding what's going on?

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

#205

Post by bsaul »

gwd wrote: post #202
ethbr0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Now, an opportunity to become a technical peer to Intel at the CPU level? To control their own destiny? > They'd be insane not to take this opportunity. It made financial sense for ARM's board to sell to SoftBank; it makes financial sense for SoftBank to sell to NVIDIA; it makes financial and strategic sense for NVIDIA to buy ARM; it makes financial and strategic sense for NVIDIA to radically change the way the ARM…

Why stop there ? It'll make financial sense for previous users of ARM license to start looking for alternatives ( such as riscV) and create more competition in the field. Which ultimately benefits to the people as a whole.

At least that's the theory of capitalism..

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

#206

Post by klelatti »

npunt wrote: post #139
klelatti wrote: post #63

On reflection I'm a bit surprised that a consortium hasn't emerged to offer more for Arm given the concerns expressed here: - $40bn isn't a lot in aggregate for the companies that are heavily invested in the Arm ecosystem (Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon etc) - maybe even Intel would take a small stake! - The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock. Would cash be more attractive? - Could probably partly fund th…

Apple almost certainly has some kind of long term or perpetual contract that assures access to ARM instruction set and perhaps some other IP, given they co-created ARM Holdings back in 1990. While A-series chips use ARM instruction set, they've moved on from using actual ARM cores to their own custom cores with the A6 (2012), so they're probably not that exposed on IP if ARM changes hands. Additionally, since Apple c…

Agree on all the individual points but owning a stake in Arm would be a lot less messy than potentially moving to whole new ISA (and possibly losing access to lots of Arm patents for example).

I suspect that the calculation is that Nvidia would be a 'good enough' steward of the Arm ISA.

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

#208

Post by klelatti »

valuearb wrote: post #96
klelatti wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is bound to be some sort of financial engineering going on too. Doesn't Son have a stake in Nvidia so maybe this is to help support the Nvidia share price?

Giving $40B of Nvidia stock to a cash strapped seller hurts the stock price.

I was wrong on Son having a holding in Nvidia too - seems to have sold it.

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

#209

Post by chii »

gwd wrote: post #202
ethbr0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Now, an opportunity to become a technical peer to Intel at the CPU level? To control their own destiny? > They'd be insane not to take this opportunity. It made financial sense for ARM's board to sell to SoftBank; it makes financial sense for SoftBank to sell to NVIDIA; it makes financial and strategic sense for NVIDIA to buy ARM; it makes financial and strategic sense for NVIDIA to radically change the way the ARM…

> the world will lose out massively by having the ARM ecosystem radically changed to benefit NVIDIA.

if that's the case, then the people who stand to lose from this _should_ be pushing the gov't to standardize and prevent fracturing of ecosystems from happening.

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

#210

Post by chii »

adrian_b wrote: post #175
Animats wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Softbank has to prop up Uber and WeWork with something. I dunno, would you rather have ARM technology owned by a US company or by a front for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund?

Unfortunately, after the last years any non-US citizen would rather have ARM technology owned by a Saudi fund or by any other non-US entity. When you choose to include ARM technology in some of your products, then you will spend a lot of time and money for the implementation and you will need a long term availability of that technology, to be able to recover you costs and to give you time to switch to another technol…

> long-term commitment for providing any US-owned technology can no longer be believed

only if you are not already under the thumb of the US gov't. Otherwise, it's a non-issue.

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