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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#201

Post by zamadatix »

tony wrote: post #168
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 r…

Not just developer machines e.g. the Nintendo Switch uses an Nvidia Tegra X1 and run FreeBSD. Lots of game consoles do, you don't have to worry about the GPL.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#202

Post by dheera »

QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #124
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…

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…

> The HN crowd is incredibly biased against certain companies.

No kidding, regarding the HN crowd. -- every time I post a comment criticizing Apple's monopoly and policies I get downvoted to oblivion, and I'd say that some of the things they do e.g. on the Apple store and proprietary hardware/software combinations are far more egregious than anything Nvidia has ever done. The HN algorithm basically encourages an echo chamber of people who gang up and downvote/flag others who don't agree with the gang opinion.

(Psst ... If you see this comment disappear after a while, it's probably because the same Apple fanboys found this comment and decided to hammer it down again.)

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#203

Post by selectodude »

endgame wrote: post #161
LanternLight83 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

"October 26, 2017"

I'm not coming out and saying it's gotten significantly better, but that is a three year old article and Nvidia-wayland does work on KDE and Gnome.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#205

Post by drivebycomment »

01100011 wrote: post #153

Can we,for once, hear the opinions of people in the chip industry and not the same tired posts from software folks? NVIDIA Bad! Ok, we get it. Do you have anything more insightful than that? I'm starting to feel like social media based on upvotes is a utter waste of time. Echo chambers and groupthink. People commenting on things they barely know anything about and getting validation from others who don't know anythin…

You're not wrong, but most of HN threads are like this. 80% of comments are low information, Dunning-Kruger effect in action. But among that, there are still some useful gems, so despite what you said, HN is still worth it. If you fold the first two top level comments, the rest have some useful , informed perspective.

I don't see this as having that much of an impact on any short to medium term. ARM has too much intricate business dependencies and contracts nVidia can't just get out of.

My speculation is that nVidia might be what it takes to push arm to overcome the final huddle into more general purpose and server cpu, and achieve that pipedream of a single binary/ISA running everywhere. Humanity would be better off if a single ISA does become truly universal. Whether business/technology politics will allow that to happen and whether nVidia has enough understanding and the shrewdness to pull that off is to be seen.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#206

Post by renewiltord »

hetspookjee wrote: post #151

I wonder what the this means for Apple and their move to ARM for their macbooks. End of 2019 Apple and NVIDIA broke up their cooperation on CUDA. Both these companies are very tight on their hardware. Apple must've known this was happening but I guess they weren't willing to pay more than 40B for this risky joint venture they're bound to go into. Anyone has a proper analysis on the ramifications of this acquisition f…

Apple is an ARM founder. You can bet your boots they made sure they were safe through the history of ARM's existence and sale to Softbank in the first place. No one can cite the deep magic to them, they were there when it was written.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#207

Post by andrewprock »

paulmd wrote: post #186
mixmastamyk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus famously gave them the middle-finger.

"linus went on a hyperbolic rant" isn't sufficient evidence for anything. linus is a hyperbolic jerk (as he admitted himself for a few months before resuming his hyperbolic ways) who is increasingly out of touch with anything outside the direct sphere of his projects. Like his misguided and completely unnecessary rants about ZFS or AVX. if there are technical merits to discuss you can post those instead of just appea…

The notion that the maintainer if Linux has a narrow focus role that isn't capable of advocating and serving the broader community is belied by the fact that Linux has grown from being a niche hobbyist platform to the de facto cloud standard OS.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#208

Post by TomVDB »

cycloptic wrote: post #137
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's good that they open sourced that stuff, but the main problem is that CUDA itself is closed source and vendor locked to nvidia's hardware.

It only makes sense to demand them to give this away for free if you consider them a hardware company and a hardware company only.

Look at them as a solutions company and the first question to answer is: why is it fine for companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe etc and any other software company to profit from closed software yet a company should be ostracized for it as soon as hardware becomes part of the deal?

Nvidia invested 15 years in developing and promoting a vast set of GPU compute libraries and tools. AMD has only paid lip service and to this day treats it as an ugly stepchild, they don't even bother anymore to support consumer architectures. Nvidia is IMO totally justified to reap the rewards of what they've created.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#209

Post by BLKNSLVR »

therealmarv wrote: post #55
rvz wrote: post #34

What a death sentence for ARM right there and the start of a starvation in a new microprocessor winter. I guess we now have to wait for RISC-V to catch up. Aside from that, ARM was one of the only actual tech companies the UK could talk about on the so-called "world stage", that has survived more than 2 decades. But instead, they continue to sell themselves and their businesses to the US instead of vice versa. In 201…

Have you read the press release at all? It's too early to judge this now. ARM will stay in Cambridge and Nvidia wants to invest in this place.

I'm reminded of this recent development:

https://www.oculus.com/blog/a-single-way-to-log-into-oculus-...

Discussed here on HN, with the top comment being a copy and paste of Palmer Lucky's acknowledgement that the early critics turned out to be correct:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201306

Different situation, different companies, but if you "follow the money" you'll never be too far wrong.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#210

Post by paxys »

01100011 wrote: post #153

Can we,for once, hear the opinions of people in the chip industry and not the same tired posts from software folks? NVIDIA Bad! Ok, we get it. Do you have anything more insightful than that? I'm starting to feel like social media based on upvotes is a utter waste of time. Echo chambers and groupthink. People commenting on things they barely know anything about and getting validation from others who don't know anythin…

You are just starting to feel that now?
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