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

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241–250 of 313 posts

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

#241
post #53

Surely a sale would be allowed if regulatory compliance compliance is met? I was part of a private semiconductor company bought by a public American company and the buying company had to convince the US gov they would not turn the product line into a captive portal. I expect it's the same here?

So what happened?

They had to get clearance and satisfy the USG the products would still be available to third parties. Had to do this in Korea and China too. Once the governments were satisfied, the acquisition was completed.

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

#242
post #34

I for one would welcome this. Firstly, as mentioned, it gives people incentive to look into RiscV. That aside, for far too long QCOM has had a monopoly on the phone chip market. Patents aside, which increasingly became irrelevant due to the death of Sprint, their major advantage has always been in Adreno, which as far as I remember AMD basically did for them. Mali is terrible. If Nvidia could revamp ARM graphics at t…

The best results on these graphs are not from Adreno

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15963/oppos-reno3-vs-reno3-pr...

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

#243

AMD have to license their cpu to China in order to get a life line. when AMD stock was in the toilet. Softbank doesn't want ARM anymore. what do Hermann Hauser proposed? Let ARM holding die(?). He offer no solution.

> Let ARM holding die

Why would ARM die? it's very healthy and financially stable right now. it's softbank who's bleeding money.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because ARM is one of the few things he invested in that actually makes money. It's a cash-crunch driven deal, nothing else.

Yep - I was always told, keep your dividend-paying winners, sell your losers. Wework is definitely a loser, ARM is a winner - its completely upside down. If he wants cash, he should sell his trash. And avoid future losses by not buying trash in the first place.

Rather Alibaba and Yahoo Japan are Softbank's dividend-payers. ARM has proven nothing more than a bargaining chip to kickstart the vision fund and now a crunch zone to keep the group liquid. ARM's valuation has barely moved despite the continued dominance of the platform.

Selling ARM lets Softbank keep WeWork living for a couple more years, enough time to bring the non-japan markets into cashflow positive status. Japan by some miricle was cash flow position from the start, he must think the model can work overseas.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. Government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers and this is more about denying someone else that benefiting the whole. Oh its wrapped up in pretty paper with a ribbon on it but the true reason is they don't want "those people" to have it. (being Nvidia but I am certain there are a few more suitors they don't like either)

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.

Valid for what reason? There is no evidence ARM would be anymore successful under UK control then nVidias, in fact the opposite maybe true. The history of government owned businesses, esp. in UK is desultory.

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

#246
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "mobile" as in cars and robots. It's not mobile as in cell phones.

It's also in the Nintendo Switch :)

Only the older chip series they could not sell to tablet makers. The newer chips are too power hungry for mobile and are targeted at automotive where Nvidia has gotten traction. Nintendo better hope Nvidia has something new coming up in time for a next generation.

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

#247

He's absolutely right. Unless there is a 100% firewall between ARM and Nvidia then Nvidia will influence ARM to move in directions that help Nvidia's wider business and not the ARM ecosystem as a whole - and that will adversely affect everyone who uses an ARM CPU - and that's basically everyone. I don't believe that such a firewall is possible in any event. Who will enforce it? For those who are saying that it's grea…

OneWeb cost $500M, SoftBank wants $32B+. Not gonna happen.

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

#248
post #21

Seems like alarmist FUD to me. While I agree that having Arm owned by any one of its major customers creates some potential conflicts of interests, I think the notion that NVIDIA or any other company would start to drive licensees away with draconian terms/costs with some poor business planning pretty silly. The more interesting question to me is what would any single (major customer of Arm) company gain from owning…

The most cynical view would be that they could not reup licenses for competitors.

No one is going to pay $32B for a business, then cut off its key customers and revenues.

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

#249

I find it baffling that SoftBank isn’t simply taking ARM public. If ever there was a company that should be independent, it’s ARM. Is there a good explanation out there for why this isn’t the obvious choice?

Son wants $32B+ so he doesn’t take a loss on ARM. ARM is worth no more than $10B, so he needs to find a strategic buyer.

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

#250
post #47
post #3

Sounds like a protectionist who doesn't want ARM to be owned by any foreign entity. "most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia" Is this true? It seems like quite a stretch. Nvidia doesn't offer a chipset for the mobile, battery powered market(it tried, and gave up because of competition from Qualcomm).

> Sounds like a protectionist who doesn't want ARM to be owned by any foreign entity. Yeah, so? If the 21st century taught us anything, is that protectionism makes sense for many products/services (not that big countries really forgot it - they only "forgot" it when for the time that their products was the only game in town).

The 21st century has taught us that free trade makes the most sense.
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