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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

nvidianews.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#511

Post by Followerer »

my123 wrote: post #501
Followerer wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and may just fork off on the ARMv8.3 spec, adding a few instructions here or there" No, they may not. People keep suggesting these kinds of things, but part of the license agreement is that you can't modify the ISA. Only ARM can do that.

That's untrue. (famously so, Intel used to ship arm chips with WMMX and Apple for example ships their CPU today with the AMX AI acceleration extension)

That's like saying that my Intel CPU comes with an NVIDA Turing AI acceleration extension. The instructions the CPU can run on an Apple ARM-based CPU is all ARM ISA. That's in the license arrangement, if you fail to pass ARM's compliance tests (which include not adding your own instructions, or modifying the ones included) you can't use ARM's license.

Please, stop spreading nonsense. All of this is public knowledge.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#512

Post by rrss »

fluffything wrote: post #453
andy_ppp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what everyone thinks will happen is a pretend open ARM architecture and Nvidia CPUs dominating. Nvidia isn’t going to license the best GPU features they start adding. It’s an excellent deal for NVIDIA of course, I’m certain they intend to make the chips they produce much faster than the ones they license (if they even ever release another open design) to the point where buying CPUs from Nvidia might be they only…

That's not what everyone thinks. NVIDIA already has an CPU architect team building their own ARM CPUs with an unlimited ARM license. ARM doesn't give NVIDIA a world-class CPU team like apple's, amazon's or fujitsu. ARM own cores are "meh" at best. Buying such a team, would also have been much cheaper than 40b$. Mobile ARM chips are meh, but nvidia doesn't have GPUs for that segment, and their current architectures pr…

> ARM doesn't give NVIDIA a world-class CPU team like apple's, amazon's or fujitsu.

Are you referring to the Graviton2 for Amazon? If so, you might be interested to learn that ARM designed the cores in that chip.

> (NVIDIA themselves started replacing ARM cores with RISC-V cores in their GPUs years ago already...).

The only info on this I'm aware of is https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Tue1345pm-NVIDI..., which says nvidia is replacing some internal proprietary RISC ISA with RISC-V, not replacing ARM with RISC-V.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#513

Post by edderly »

DCKing wrote: post #510

This is terrible. Not really just because of Nvidia - which has a lot of problems I've previously commented on the rumors of this [1] - but Nvidia's ownership completely changes ARM's incentives. ARM created a business model for itself where they had to act as a "BDFL" for the ARM architecture and IP. They made an architecture, CPU designs, and GPU designs for others. They had no stake in the chip making game, and th…

I agree with the general sentiment here, but ARM is not exactly Snow White. It's an open secret that ARM was (and still is) selling the CPU design at a discount if you integrated their Mali (GPU). This isn't relevant to Nvidia today, but it was when they were in the mobile GPU space. Also this caused obvious problems for IMGtec and other smaller GPU players like Vivante.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#514

Post by mbajkowski »

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…

Curious as I don't know the terms of a perpetual architectural ARM license. But, is it valid only for a specific architecture, say v8 or v9, or is it valid for all future architectures as well? Or is it one of those things, where it depends per licensee and how they negotiated?

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#515

Post by DCKing »

edderly wrote: post #513
DCKing wrote: post #510

This is terrible. Not really just because of Nvidia - which has a lot of problems I've previously commented on the rumors of this [1] - but Nvidia's ownership completely changes ARM's incentives. ARM created a business model for itself where they had to act as a "BDFL" for the ARM architecture and IP. They made an architecture, CPU designs, and GPU designs for others. They had no stake in the chip making game, and th…

I agree with the general sentiment here, but ARM is not exactly Snow White. It's an open secret that ARM was (and still is) selling the CPU design at a discount if you integrated their Mali (GPU). This isn't relevant to Nvidia today, but it was when they were in the mobile GPU space. Also this caused obvious problems for IMGtec and other smaller GPU players like Vivante.

I'm sure that ARM is not a saint here in the sense that they would also have an incentive to milk their licensees as much as possible. Now they will keep having that incentive, but also the terrible incentive to actively outcompete their licensees which is much worse.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#516

Post by Wowfunhappy »

DCKing wrote: post #510

This is terrible. Not really just because of Nvidia - which has a lot of problems I've previously commented on the rumors of this [1] - but Nvidia's ownership completely changes ARM's incentives. ARM created a business model for itself where they had to act as a "BDFL" for the ARM architecture and IP. They made an architecture, CPU designs, and GPU designs for others. They had no stake in the chip making game, and th…

To play devil’s advocate a bit, are nVidia's incentives necessarily so different? Their goal will be to make as much money as possible, and it's clear that licensing has been a winning strategy for ARM.

Samsung comes to mind as another company that makes their own TVs, phones, SSDs, ect., but is also perfectly happy to license the underlying screens and chips in those products to other companies. From my vantage point, the setup seems to be working well?

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#517

Post by janoc »

kabacha wrote: post #435
janoc wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V is only a tiiny player in the low end embedded space (there are only a few parts actually available with that instruction set) and no competition at all at the high end. Maybe in a decade or so it may be more relevant but not today. Calling this a "fundamental threat" is a tad exaggerated.

Where are people getting the "decade" number from? Looks demand for RISC-V just went up significantly and it's not like it's broken or not-existing, RISC-V "just worked" a year ago already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19118642

The "decade" comes from the fact that there is currently no RISC-V silicon with performance anywhere near the current ARM Cortex A series.

And a realistic estimate how long it will take to develop something that would be on par with today's Snapdragon, Exynos or Apple's chips is at least those 10 years. You need quite a bit more to have a high performance processor than just the instruction set.

The "just worked" chips are microcontrollers, something you may want to put in your toaster or fridge but not a SoC at the level of e.g. Snapdragon 835 (which is an old design, at that).

Also the Sipeed chips are mostly just unoptimized reference designs, they have a fairly poor performance.

Most people who talk and hype RISC-V don't realize this.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#518

Post by klelatti »

DCKing wrote: post #510

This is terrible. Not really just because of Nvidia - which has a lot of problems I've previously commented on the rumors of this [1] - but Nvidia's ownership completely changes ARM's incentives. ARM created a business model for itself where they had to act as a "BDFL" for the ARM architecture and IP. They made an architecture, CPU designs, and GPU designs for others. They had no stake in the chip making game, and th…

Precisely, plus just consider the information that Nvidia will have on all its competitors who use Arm IP.

- It will know of their product plans (as they will need to buy licenses for new products).

- It will know their sales volumes by product (as they will need to pay fees for each Arm CPU sold).

- If they need technical help from Arm in designing a new SoC then the details of that engagement will be available to Nvidia.

How does this not give Nvidia an completely unfair advantage?

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#519

Post by ATsch »

himinlomax wrote: post #425
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…

> nVidia could cut them off from any new designs Why would they do that anyway? The downsides are obvious (immediate loss of revenue), the risks are huge (antitrust litigation, big boost to RiscV or even Mips), the possible benefits are nebulous. Those who are most obviously at risk are designers of mobile GPUs (Broadcom, PowerVR ...).

If they do it that directly, sure. But on a large enough (time)scale, incentives are the only thing that matters. And they'll certainly think hard about putting their fancy new research that would help a competitor into their openly licensed chips from now on.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#520

Post by DCKing »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #516
DCKing wrote: post #510

This is terrible. Not really just because of Nvidia - which has a lot of problems I've previously commented on the rumors of this [1] - but Nvidia's ownership completely changes ARM's incentives. ARM created a business model for itself where they had to act as a "BDFL" for the ARM architecture and IP. They made an architecture, CPU designs, and GPU designs for others. They had no stake in the chip making game, and th…

To play devil’s advocate a bit, are nVidia's incentives necessarily so different? Their goal will be to make as much money as possible, and it's clear that licensing has been a winning strategy for ARM. Samsung comes to mind as another company that makes their own TVs, phones, SSDs, ect., but is also perfectly happy to license the underlying screens and chips in those products to other companies. From my vantage poin…

It could be Nvidia just wants ARM's profits and leave them alone, but I don't understand why Nvidia would spend 40 billion dollars on that. They spend 40 billion on the control of a company, why would they do that if they just would leave them be? Surely they want to exercise that control in some way for their own goals. Especially a company like Nvidia which (in my linked comment) has a proven track record of not understanding how to collaborate with others.

EDIT: Let's be clear that ARM's incentive last week was to create and empower as many competitors for Nvidia as possible. They were good at that and was the root of the success of the ARM ecosystem. That incentive is completely gone now.

I'm guessing Samsung has a track record where I'd feel a little more confidence in the situation if they'd taken over ARM here, but in general ARM's sale to Softbank and thereby its exposure to lesser competitive interests has been terrible. They could have remained a private company.

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