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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#601

Post by ChuckMcM »

xigency wrote: post #498
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

And there you have it. Perhaps the greatest thing to happen to RISC-V since the invention of the FPGA :-). I never liked Softbank owning it, but hey someone has to. Regarding the federal investment in FOSS thread that was here perhaps CPU architecture would be a good candidate.

> I never liked Softbank owning it, but hey someone has to. I understand what you're saying and this seems to be the prevailing pattern but I really don't understand it. ARM could easily be a standalone company. For some reason, mergers are in.

I would like to understand what you know about ARM that it's board of director's didn't (doesn't) know? In my experience companies merge when they are forced to, not because they want to.

I have always assumed that their shareholders were offered so much of a premium on their shares that they chose to sell them rather than hold onto them. Clearly based on their fiscal 2015 results[1] they were a going concern.

[1] https://www.arm.com/company/news/2016/02/arm-holdings-plc-re...

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#602

Post by smolder »

013a wrote: post #590
klelatti wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Nvidia has an Arm architecture license already - the same as Apple - so can build Arm chips to whatever design it wants (and it does in Tegra). This is nothing to do with extending Nvidia's ability to use Arm IP in its own products.

Nvidia is a total powerhouse when it comes to chip design. Most people here are looking at this from the angle of "how does ARM benefit Nvidia", but I think its more valuable to consider "how does Nvidia benefit ARM". In 2020, given what we know about Ampere, I really don't think there's another company out there with better expertise in microprocessor design (but, to be fair, lets say top 3 next to Apple and AMD). N…

AMDs answer to Ampere won't be shabby based on info about next generation consoles. They're also widening the gap on CPUs with Zen to where ARM won't have an easy time making inroads on server/workstation.

On the Intel side, the process obstacles have been tragic, but they have plenty of hot products and plenty of x86 market share to lose, or in other words, plenty of time to recover CPU performance dominance.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#603

Post by 013a »

smolder wrote: post #602
013a wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia is a total powerhouse when it comes to chip design. Most people here are looking at this from the angle of "how does ARM benefit Nvidia", but I think its more valuable to consider "how does Nvidia benefit ARM". In 2020, given what we know about Ampere, I really don't think there's another company out there with better expertise in microprocessor design (but, to be fair, lets say top 3 next to Apple and AMD). N…

AMDs answer to Ampere won't be shabby based on info about next generation consoles. They're also widening the gap on CPUs with Zen to where ARM won't have an easy time making inroads on server/workstation. On the Intel side, the process obstacles have been tragic, but they have plenty of hot products and plenty of x86 market share to lose, or in other words, plenty of time to recover CPU performance dominance.

I hope so. And when AMD's graphics cards and Intel's processors become good again, they're welcome to reclaim a top spot. But, until then, they are woefully behind.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#604

Post by DCKing »

013a wrote: post #590
klelatti wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Nvidia has an Arm architecture license already - the same as Apple - so can build Arm chips to whatever design it wants (and it does in Tegra). This is nothing to do with extending Nvidia's ability to use Arm IP in its own products.

Nvidia is a total powerhouse when it comes to chip design. Most people here are looking at this from the angle of "how does ARM benefit Nvidia", but I think its more valuable to consider "how does Nvidia benefit ARM". In 2020, given what we know about Ampere, I really don't think there's another company out there with better expertise in microprocessor design (but, to be fair, lets say top 3 next to Apple and AMD). N…

> Nvidia is a total powerhouse when it comes to chip design. Most people here are looking at this from the angle of "how does ARM benefit Nvidia", but I think its more valuable to consider "how does Nvidia benefit ARM". In 2020, given what we know about Ampere, I really don't think there's another company out there with better expertise in microprocessor design (but, to be fair, lets say top 3 next to Apple and AMD). Now, they have more of the stack in-house, which may help produce better chips.

In my view you have this completely backwards. I think the opposite is true and that Nvidia is not a powerhouse CPU designer at all. They make extremely impressive GPUs certainly, but that does not automatically translate to great capabilities in CPUs. In terms of CPUs they have so far either used standard ARM designs and have attempted their own Project Denver custom architecture which are not bad but have not impressed CPU wise either. In this area Nvidia would need ARM - primarily for themselves.

> The other important point is Mali, which has a very obvious and natural synergy with Nvidia's wheelhouse. Another example of Nvidia making ARM better; Nvidia is the leader in graphics, this is no argument, so their ability to positively influence Mali (whether by actually improving it, or replacing it with something GeForce) may be beneficial to the OEMs who use it.

I know you're only entertaining the thought, but the image of Nvidia shipping HDL designs of Geforce IP to Samsung or Mediatek in the short term future seems completely alien to me. Things would need to change drastically at Nvidia for them to ever do this.

Certainly Nvidia has the capabilities to sell way better graphics to the ARM ecosystem, and very likely only one line of GPUs can survive, but it just seems extremely unlike Nvidia to ever license Geforce IP to their competitors.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#605

Post by pottertheotter »

manquer wrote: post #462
bananaface wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And note that the $12B is also owned by Nvidia's shareholders (they own the company which owns the cash), so they're paying for that too. It's just different forms of shareholder assets being traded for other assets, by the shareholders (or rather, their majority vote).

Effectively all of it is funded by the shareholders who "own" the corporation. In the current example if the cash is coming from a debt instrument is it not bank funding it now? it is typically about who is fronting the money now, it could be your bank making loans, or from cash reserves you have, fresh stock issue, selling another asset, or even the target's bank as in the case of LBO. The shareholders always end up…

It's still the shareholders even if debt financing is used. The shareholders, through the company, have to pay off the debt. It increases the risk of bankruptcy.

When doing a deal, it comes down to price and source of funds. Changing either can drastically change how good or bad the deal is.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#606

Post by paulmd »

runeks wrote: post #588
baddox wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung makes (excellent) screens for iPhones, which are huge competitors to Samsung's own flagship phones, but Samsung still seems happy to take the profits from the screen sales. If there are smaller potential competitors that Samsung won't work with it's most likely because the scale is too small to be in their economic interest, not because they're rejecting profits in order to stifle potential competitors.

> Samsung makes (excellent) screens for iPhones, which are huge competitors to Samsung's own flagship phones, but Samsung still seems happy to take the profits from the screen sales. What markup does Apple pay for Samsung OLED displays compared to Samsung’s other OLED customers? I think this is highly relevant if you want to use it as an example. Because if the markup for Apple is 5x that of other buyers of Samsung O…

demanding information that you know nobody will be able to produce is an unethical debating tactic.

obviously nobody but Samsung and their customers will know that information, and anyone who could reveal it is under NDA.

Apparently the prices are good enough that Apple doesn't go elsewhere.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#608

Post by simias »

baddox wrote: post #569
klelatti wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that Samsung hasn't stifled some potential competitors by refusing to sell them screens or by selling them an inferior product?

Samsung makes (excellent) screens for iPhones, which are huge competitors to Samsung's own flagship phones, but Samsung still seems happy to take the profits from the screen sales. If there are smaller potential competitors that Samsung won't work with it's most likely because the scale is too small to be in their economic interest, not because they're rejecting profits in order to stifle potential competitors.

iPhones sell massively well though, to the point where it would be a big loss if Apple went to another company for their screens. You just can't screw with a company the size of Apple without consequences. It's not like they'd go "oh no, no more iPhone now I guess :'(" if Samsung decided not to sell them screens anymore.

The problem is more with smaller companies that could be destroyed before they even get a chance to compete. Those can be bullied pretty easily by a company the size of Samsung.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#609

Post by saagarjha »

Followerer wrote: post #589
rrss wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WMMX was exposed via the ARM coprocessor mechanism (so it was permitted by the architecture). The coprocessor stuff was removed in ARMv8.

In ARMv8 you have a much cleaner mechanism through system registers(MSR/MRS).

Apple has been using system registers for years already. AMX is interesting because it's actual instruction encodings that are unused by the spec.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#610

Post by simias »

emn13 wrote: post #597
rocqua wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the low-level driver interface, transitioning ISA is a big deal. But I would guess that, at higher levels, most of the work is just changing the target of your compiler? As in, most of the work occurs in the low-level parts of the Operating system. After that the OS should abstract the differences away from User-space.

No way; not at all. First of all: there's lots of software that's not the OS. The OS is the easy bit: everything else: grindy, grindy horrorstory. A lot of that code will be third-party. And if you think, "hey, we'll just recompile!", and you can actually get them to too - well, good luck, but performance will be abysmal in many cases. Lots and lots of libraries have hand-tuned code for specific architectures. Anythi…

Extremely aggressive optimizations are really special though, and they tend to require rewrites when new CPU extensions release (and workarounds to work on older hardware). If you rely on super low level ultra-aggressive micro optimizations your code is going to have a relatively short shelf life, different ISA or not.

The vast majority of the code written for any given computer or smartphone doesn't have this level of sophistication and optimization though. I'd wager that for most code just changing the build target will indeed mostly just work.

It won't be painless but modern code tends to be so high level and abstracted (especially on smartphones) than the underlying ISA matters a lot less than in the past.

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