231–240 of 279 posts
I think in many ways Arm is (or should be) a sort of large 'Mittelstand' [1] business. Long term focus, independence, customer focus etc are key to the success of this type of business. Trouble is, its success and its sector has given it a profile that attracts attention from the likes of Softbank who have other ideas. A company doesn't need to have a Nvidia like P/E ratio to be successful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.o…
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> It's generally not a good business to invest in. i agree. > Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March i find the current valuation ludicrous, and it seems like it's pushed more by Softbank's Vision Fund than a firm grasp in reality.
> Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March > i find the current valuation ludicrous, and it seems like it's pushed more by Softbank's Vision Fund than a firm grasp in reality. Just for comparison, AMD, which is still quite small, gets about $2b - $4b annual net profit. Intel, before their recent disaster quarters, had as much as $24b in annual net pr…
It seems a bit like Linux to me - you could say Linus Torvalds is disappointing because he's not as rich as Elon Musk and yet one might argue both that he has done more and that if he had tried to get super rich out of it he would not have achieved so much because every effort to extract significant money would have lessened the breadth of his impact. People wouldn't have co-operated.
How long until Apple does a hostile takeover? /s I assume regulators would block a hostile takeover like they would a regular buyout if there are concerns regarding market power?
Why would Apple ever want to own ARM? Their internal CPU design team is years ahead of the ARM team. Apple has an architectural license and doesn't care about ARM core designs. Quite honestly, ARM falling on its face hard is actually a benefit to Apple. That would mean that Apple Silicon and iPhone SoCs have less competition. Imagine if Qualcomm chips based on ARM designs are 5 years behind instead of the 2-3 years n…
Was. They're now at Qualcomm.
I’m glad that RISC-V SBCs are starting to become usable.
Depends on what you mean by usable. If you don't need long term support, strong software ecosystem support, and performance parity, it's great. It'll be a few more years before everything comes together, but hopefully not too many.
Reads like FUD, as you go on to list a bunch of items that RISC-V actually already delivers.
Point per point:
>long term support
Is achieved via upstreaming drivers[0] and providing documentation[1], something that e.g. StarFive is doing much better than Raspberry Pi ever has.
>strong software ecosystem support
RISC-V is rapidly building the strongest ecosystem.
>performance parity
JH7110 SoC used in boards like VisionFive 2 provides CPU performance between Raspberry Pi 3b and 4, at much lower power consumption.
TH1520 SoC used in boards like Sipeed Lichee Pi4A[2] provides performance above Raspberry Pi 4.
Both SoCs provide faster GPU (JH7110 is 4x that of Pi 4, TH1520 is faster), better hardware video codec blocks, cryptography acceleration, faster memory interface, faster I/O outside of the SoC and otherwise better and more built in peripherals.
Note: Raspberry Pi have been used as reference points as they are, by far, the most popular ARM SBCs.
>It'll be a few more years
As proven above, it's already there against the Raspberry Pi line.
But next year it'll be better, as RISC-V will finally compete with the fastest cores available. This is based solely on what's already announced (Ascalon, Veyron, P570 and so on).
RISC-V enables the best processors.
0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan
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Oracle, SAP, Adobe, VMware, Intuit, AutoDesk, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, just to list a few still surviving companies. Microsoft absolutely expands into areas it considers strategic profit or capability centers. E.g. office productivity, web browser, database, gaming, etc. But they, and especially early/smaller Microsoft (90s-00s), left a ton of money on the table for the good of the platform.…
> Oracle, SAP, Adobe, VMware, Intuit, AutoDesk, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Electronic Arts SQL Server, Dynamics, TrueType/Silverlight, Hyper-V, Microsoft Money, Softimage was owned by MS, Activision are in the process of being bought by MS, Epic and EA both compete with MS. In the case of the above Microsoft has tried to compete with, kill, or acquire all of them. That's using others to do the hard work of mark…
And yet, these companies are all extremely large and healthy.
Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard is a great example, because it speaks to the modern competitive landscape.
Microsoft isn't "using others to do the hard work of market discovery." Activision Blizzard has a USD$72b market cap.
That's a hyperscaled conglomerate attempting to buy a still-huge company.
And if you want to suggest Microsoft's behavior is unique in that... I'd suggest we start with redressing the lax competitive laws that (a) make Microsoft feel it needs to do that to compete with its rivals & (b) allow Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard.
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> I wonder to what extent the overarching business culture of the UK (which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not hostile, to the engineering profession) might have anything to do with it. That's nothing to do with it - the company is only listing on NASDAQ - ARM has office all over the world but will still be based and managed in the UK along with most of its employees (engineers) like when it was ow…
Are there really big capital inventors who will say “nope I don’t work on that exchange”?
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RISC-V is in the prospectus as a risk. Good for RISC-V!
>> RISC-V is in the prospectus as a risk. One option is to embrace it as an opportunity. ARM designs some pretty good CPU cores, so imagine they offered good RISC-V cores as well. RISC-V can be free, but a lot of companies still license core designs.
This is the approach MIPS took. They deprecated their legacy ISA, embracing the industry-standard RISC-V.
Problem is, ARM's management hasn't shown any signs of actually being capable of doing this. It would have to be replaced, and the business model would need a deep redesign.
But everything hardware takes a long time. Can ARM survive until they have competitive RISC-V designs ready?
I will not bet on that.
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> which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not hostile, to the engineering profession Any chance you could elaborate on this? Arm exists and is British, after all.
The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk. As a consequence there is low appetite for risky new ventures and those that want to undertake them mostly migrate elsewhere. What's left is a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dianosaurs, a de…
They have designed a processor architecture that is RISC-style. For some companies, ARM sells the design and others manufacture the chip. So what do Apple and Qualcomm get out of it, if they design their own architecture? Is apple tacking on proprietary extensions or instructions?
Why didn't apple design a CPU architecture from the ground up ala RISC-V?
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> Oracle, SAP, Adobe, VMware, Intuit, AutoDesk, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Electronic Arts SQL Server, Dynamics, TrueType/Silverlight, Hyper-V, Microsoft Money, Softimage was owned by MS, Activision are in the process of being bought by MS, Epic and EA both compete with MS. In the case of the above Microsoft has tried to compete with, kill, or acquire all of them. That's using others to do the hard work of mark…
Indeed, Microsoft has offerings in many of these categories, one reason I specifically mentioned databases. And yet, these companies are all extremely large and healthy. Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard is a great example, because it speaks to the modern competitive landscape. Microsoft isn't "using others to do the hard work of market discovery." Activision Blizzard has a USD$72b market cap. That's a hypersca…
One reason I am pessimistic about Arm's future is they will struggle to balance raising money for future needed R&D without creating the appearance of being too lucrative a target for a nVidia or SoftBank wanting to play monopoly. That is going to push people to RISC-V. I hope they manage to do something, but they're in for a rough time.