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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#381

Post by klelatti »

kllrnohj wrote: post #178
zdw wrote: post #73

I see this going a few ways for different players: The perpetual architecture license folks that make their own cores like Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Fujitsu (I think they needed this for the A64FX, right?) will be fine, and may just fork off on the ARMv8.3 spec, adding a few instructions here or there. Apple especially will be fine as they can get code into LLVM for whatever "Apple Silicon" evolves into over time…

Samsung, Qualcomm, and MediaTek all currently just use off the shelf A5x & A7x cores in their SoCs. Unless that part of the company is losing money I don't expect nVidia to cut that off. Especially since that's likely a key part of why nVidia acquired ARM in the first place - I can't imagine they care about the Mali team(s) or IP.

What happens if/when Nvidia launches SoCs that compete with Qualcomm and MediaTek. Will it continue to offer the latest cores to competitors when it will make a lot more money on its own SoCs? This is the reason for the widepsread concern about Nvidia owning Arm.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#384

Post by pas »

emn13 wrote: post #375
millstone wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple is not committed to ARM at all. Bitcode, Rosetta 2, "Apple Silicon" - it all suggests they want to keep ISA flexibility.

Wow, but that cost - it's not a small thing to transition ISA, and don't forget that this transition is one of the simpler ones (more registers, fairly few devices). The risks of transitioning everything away from arm would be much greater. I guess they have some ISA flexibility (which is remarkable). But not much; each transition was still a very special set of circumstances and a huge hurdle, I'm sure.

Do it more and more and they'll have the tools to efficiently manage them.

Also likely the small tweaks they will want from time to time should be "easy" to follow internally, if you can orchestrate everything from top to bottom and back.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#385

Post by pas »

scarface74 wrote: post #264
systemvoltage wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also agree, the thing is - businesses breakup and come together all the time. If it makes sense and both parties can agree despite of past disagrements and lawsuits, they will partner. Just because Apple and nVidia has bad relationship at the moment regarding their GPUs is probably orthogonal to what they'll do with this new branch of nVidia, that is ARM.

What need does Apple have with ARMs R&D going forward? They have their own chip designers, build tools, etc.? True about frenemies the entire time that Apple was suing Samsung, it was using Samsung to manufacture many of its components.

But if your chip heavily builds on arm's IP you need a license for that at least as long as you can't replace the infringing parts of the design. Which sounds very much impossible if you also want to progress on other aspects of having the best chips.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#387

Post by IshKebab »

Ecco wrote: post #320
na85 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss DIP chips that would fit on breadboards. I don't have steady enough hands to solder QFP onto a PCB, and I'm too cheap to buy an oven :(

You’re supposed to drag-solder those. Look it up on YouTube, it’s super easy. The hardest part is positioning the chip, but it’s actually easier than with an oven, because you can rework it if you only solder one or two pins :)

There's an even easier way than drag soldering - just solder it normally, without worrying about bridges. You can put tons of solder on it.

The use some desoldering braid to soak up the excess solder. It will remove all the bridges and leave perfect joints.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#388

Post by lrem »

ckastner wrote: post #373

Softbank paid $32B for ARM in 2016. A 25% gain over a horizon of four years is not bad for your average investment -- but this isn't an average investment. First, compared to the SP500, this underperforms over the same horizon (even compared to end of 2019 rather than the inflated prices right now). Second, ARM's sector (semiconductors) has performed far, far better in that time. The PHOX (Philadelphia Semiconductor…

There's also a fundamental threat to ARM in the raise of RISC-V.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#389

Post by tick_tock_tick »

jonhohle wrote: post #286
kabacha wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, Apple is already straddling the line (and imho way past it) on anti-comp laws.

What is their monopoly or which of their competitors are they colluding with?

Neither of those are required to violate anti-trust laws.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#390

Post by Quequau »

darksaints wrote: post #226
drivebycomment wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Itanuim deserved its fiery death and resurrection doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's a dead end architecture, and humanity gained (by freeing up valuable engineering power to other more useful endeavors) when it died.

Itanium was an excellent idea that needed investment in compilers. Nobody wanted to make that investment because speculative execution got them 80% of the way there without the investment in compilers. But as it turns out, speculative execution was a phenomenally bad idea, and patching its security vulnerabilities has set back processor performance to the point where VLIW seems like a good idea again. We should have…

I dimly recall reading an interview with one of Intel's Sr. Managers on the Itanium project where he explained his thoughts on why Itanium failed.

His explanation centred on the fact that Intel decided early on that Itanium would only ever be an ultra high end niche product and only built devices which Intel could demand very high prices for. This in turn meant that almost no one outside of the few companies who were supporting Itanium development and certainly not most of the people who were working on other compilers and similar developer tools at the time, had any interest in working on Itanium because they simply could not justify the expense of obtaining the hardware.

So all the organic open source activity that goes on for all the other platforms which are easily obtainable by pedestrian users simply did not go on for Itanium. Intel did not plan on that up front (though in hindsight it seemed obvious) and by the time that was widely recognised within the management team no one was willing to devote the sort of scale of resources that were required for serious development of developer tools on a floundering project.

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