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Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

bbc.com

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Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#211

Post by pantalaimon »

baybal2 wrote: post #169
panpanna wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIPS was pretty popular among early Shenzhen tablets. Then they just disappeared. Either MIPS screwed up or ARM did something really smart. My money is on the former...

> MIPS was pretty popular among early Shenzhen tablets. > Then they just disappeared. Either MIPS screwed up or ARM did something really smart. My money is on the former... MIPS SoCs simply fell too much behind. They kept presence in the STB, and router boxes for some time, but even there they lost due to overall "deadness" of the entire ecosystem: Want latest compiler work, and mainline GCC support? Go for ARM Want…

> Want latest compiler work, and mainline GCC support? Go for ARM

> Want to not to have to support your own Linux fork? Go for ARM

But that's also true for MIPS.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#212

Post by znpy »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #81
xvilka wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be the end of Linux on ARM. They will choke platform with blobs until the inevitable death. NVIDIA and open-source is like matter and antimatter - they simply cannot coexist in the same place and time.

You nailed it. Nvidia's refusal on releasing sufficient technical information and noncooperation with the FOSS community is already self-evident on multiple platforms. Need to play the "Blob" song by OpenBSD. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 > Blob was popular at school he was helpful too / He could get your motor runnin' / with a drop of goo / He was givin' it away never charged a dime / But by the time he gra…

did you really spam the whole song here ?

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#213

Post by numpad0 »

panpanna wrote: post #164
9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was the apple gpu fiasco. Apple laptop GPUs were failing at an extraordinary rate in 2010-2011, and Apple were getting harangued in the media about it (which was justified). Apple eventually announced a program to cover replacement of the GPUs, but it was very delayed. I'm 100% convinced the delay was caused by Nvidia refusing to accept responsibility. When the program was released, in order to have the repair…

> I'm 100% convinced the delay was caused by Nvidia refusing to accept responsibility. To be fair, the issue was mainly caused by Apples form-over-function thermal design. To best of my knowledge, Nvidia GPUs works just fine in all other laptops.

Discrete GPUs break all the time, customers are just used to it. Maybe it’s improving since GTX1xxx/RX4xx era but they were extremely unreliable when Apple was using them/industry was switching to RoHS compliant Pb free solders.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#214

Post by klelatti »

znpy wrote: post #209
klelatti wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not generally in favour of government picking winners but this is an exceptional case where keeping ARM independent really would 'benefit the whole'. The argument against Nvidia buying is that they are likely boost their own business at the expense of ARM and the wider ecosystem. It seems perfectly valid for the UK government to step in to protect its most successful technology firm.

> I'm not generally in favour of government picking winners tHe MaRkEt WiLl ReGuLaTe ItSeLf!!!

Effective regulation != Taking large equity stakes

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#215

Post by microcolonel »

kmeisthax wrote: post #101
Nitrolo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not doubting that this is the case, but what's the reason for nVidia wanting to restrict use in virtual machines?

"Fuck you, pay me". Nvidia explicitly forbids "datacenter usage" of their drivers outside of specific licensed-for-datacenter product stacks. (The only exception is for crypto mining, for some reason.) This isn't the only product segmentation in their lineup, either. CAD software optimizations are only available for Quadro cards and up, virtual GPUs are only available for GRID cards, etc. The same GPU they'll charge…

> The only exception is for crypto mining, for some reason.

I think this is because they were outcompeted by AMD in the GPU crypto days, so they didn't want to get in the way of that (nor were they likely to succeed in blocking this use).

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#216

Post by microcolonel »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #147
numakerg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall the GeForce Partner Program raised some controversy, although I couldn't say whether or it was bad or good or why. There's also the issue with them refusing to open source Linux drivers. Supposedly this is because they throttle workstation GPUs to create a market for higher-end versions while reducing the manufacturing diversity, but I haven't heard a definitive source for this.

> I recall the GeForce Partner Program raised some controversy, although I couldn't say whether or it was bad or good or why. It was about NVidia wanting to make it so their 3rd party GPU partners, (EVGA, Asus etc.), could only sell their popular GPU brands with NVIDIA in them, so for AMD they'd have to come up with something customers are entirely unfamiliar with. > here's also the issue with them refusing to open s…

> It's not just that. AMD didn't open-source their original Linux driver, presumably there could have been some 3rd party licensing issues, but they wrote a new one that is open-source.

Even further than this, they created such a healthy environment for it that there are now two competing open source Vulkan drivers, and the third party one (RADV) is usually winning by a bit, and is now directly supported (with staff) by Valve.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#217

Post by xdavidliu »

glangdale wrote: post #172
OJFord wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, 'I could care less'. ...I can barely bring myself to type and submit that...

Both "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" make sense. If you emphasize the second word ("I could care less") and phrase it in a tentative tone of voice it conveys the meaning - i.e. it's possible that I could somehow care less, but it's a theoretical possibility only.

that's kind of a stretch; I would imagine "I couldn't care less" is vastly preferred, and the people that use "I could care less" are most likely doing so out of ignorance and not an intent to convey the subtle "theoretical possibility"

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#218

Post by ris »

aj3 wrote: post #191
awalton wrote: post #8

I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors. (Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since they're entirely vertically integrated.) Bu…

Why don’t Apple buy ARM?

This would be ten times worse (for everyone except Apple).

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#219

Post by pantalaimon »

Symmetry wrote: post #171
9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was the apple gpu fiasco. Apple laptop GPUs were failing at an extraordinary rate in 2010-2011, and Apple were getting harangued in the media about it (which was justified). Apple eventually announced a program to cover replacement of the GPUs, but it was very delayed. I'm 100% convinced the delay was caused by Nvidia refusing to accept responsibility. When the program was released, in order to have the repair…

It was reported that the problem was NVidia switching to lead free solder for their chip to motherboard connections but not also switching the potting material to one that had the same thermal expansion coefficient as the new solder.

That was a general problem when the industry switched to lead free solder, see also the Red Ring of Death on the Xbox 360.

Re: Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

#220

Post by School-Cotton »

nojvek wrote: post #119

Could someone explain me what the huge deal about ARM is since they only licence but don’t actual fab the chips but intel, Apple and nvidia do. Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the other ?

Neither Apple nor nvidia fabs their own chips.
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