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

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251–260 of 313 posts

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

#251
post #10

I think he's right. A sale to Nvidia would be detrimental to ARM's current business model - now Nvidia may have other plans but the thought of that would certainly scare existing licensees even more. Should the UK government intervene? Yes. Will they? Probably not. The detail here is more nuanced than protectionist vs free market - but I don't think most people realise that and see it as just protectionism. It isn't…

It’s just protectionism with different justifications.

There is no evidence the UK government could run ARM better than NVidia. In fact the opposite is true.

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

#252
post #99

I suspect Apple would buy ARM before NVIDIA would ever get a chance to. That is of course, to protect their own interests as opposed to making it into a successful business in its own right.

Apple walked away from the opportunity. Anyone know why?

Apple founded ARM and walked away with a perpetual license. They have zero need for ARM, purchasing it would be a huge distraction and conflict.

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

#253

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.

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.

Because Nvidia will find a way to use ARM to strongly favour its own SoCs at the expense of everyone else’s - that’s why it would pay $32bn. That’s not good for ARM or the UK (or for everyone else for that matter).

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

#254
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Intel makes both CPUs and GPUs. AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs. nVidia would make both CPUs and GPUs. What would be the difference? Actually, as long as there are a number of arm design licensees, the situation would be way better than it currently is for x86: beyond Intel and AMD there is basically no other player in that field (Via? Transmeta? are they even noticeable?).

nVidia already makes CPUs and GPUs (they make the CPU that goes into the Nintendo Switch, for example). Buying ARM doesn’t change much in that regard, except that they can save on licensing fees and it puts them in a position to disrupt competitors who also produce ARM processors.

I would think not licensing new IP would be the main concern. basically hogging ARM IP completely for themselves and their products. It would take a couple of years for companies and devs to switch to a different architecture, but you can be sure that there are competitors willing to fill that gap.

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

#256
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.

FWIW Professional Linguists think it's perfectly fine to say "I could care less" and that people who peeve about it are just pointless peevers who don't understand how language works.

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

#257
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ARM has little use except for open source. Huh?? ARM is probably the most popular CPU architecture in use today -- unlike x86, which is largely limited to desktop/laptop and server computing, ARM is used in a lot of embedded applications.

Have you the counts of systems using ARM on Linux(Android) vs ARM in everything else? It's not even close.

You seem ignorant of exactly how many embedded systems out there are not running linux but smaller OS or just bare metal custom kernels. You should research it. Looks like someone down below is less lazy than me and gave some source so do some reading. ARM cores are everywhere buried deep, where you can't see, waiting for skynet to come along

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

#258

I would dearly love for the industry sh1tstorm that would happen if Huawei would buy ARM (please!) Would like to see Donny try to ban a Huawei ARM, or order Google to only supply to hot slow Intel Atom mobiles, with everyone of the asian makers walking away from the US market, while the world switches to an OSS Android fork. Although I still for the life of me can't understand why Miyoshi son is holding on to wework…

That would never happen. Huawei has made their own bed by consorting and being inextricably tied to the Chinese Communist Party, they deserve everything they're getting, while on a personal level I despise Trump, I don't mind that he's sticking it to China on privacy and industrial imbalances between the USA and China, while also stating the obvious that it's bad to use Chinese state controlled hardware at the heart of your communications systems

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

#259

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.

This issue was industry wide. RIP my XPS M1330.

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

#260

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.

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