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Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

nvidianews.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#681

Post by smabie »

inlined wrote: post #394
smabie wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rare for the acquiring companies stock to not decline, regardless of whether the market thinks they overpaid.

I worked at Parse when it was bought by Facebook. The day the news broke, Facebook’s market cap grew by multiples of the acquisition price. I remember being gobsmacked that Facebook effectively got paid to buy us.

More sophisticated analysis is required. You should look at the beta of Facebook at the time and determine whether the market reacted positively to the acquisition, or if the move was inline with Facebook's exposure to the market

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#683

Post by nitrobeast »

ineedasername wrote: post #669
nitrobeast wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if Europe develop a company that threatens US leading tech / surveillance companies like Facebook / Google, or becomes the leader of the next tech wave, be prepared for US government actions to take it down. See: Japanese semi conductor industry in the 80s, Alstim, Bombardier, Tiktok.

They have yet to do this with rare earth metals, which represent a huge strategic threat to both the US and much of the rest of the world to rely on China for a vast majority of the supply.

It has been said that other countries, including US, in fact have more rare earth deposits. If they choose to relax environmental laws and disregard patents held by Chinese corporations, more rare earth would be produced.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#684

Post by kevin_b_er »

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…

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-...

Broadcom has an architectural license. They do also license core designs.

Really if nVidia locks up the lower end cores, then a lot of stuff breaks. Billions of super tiny ARM cores are everywhere. ARM has few competitors in the instruction set space for low end, low power, low cost cores. AVR, PIC, and MIPS are what come to mind. And AVR/PIC are owned by Microchip corporation.

These ARM chip unit licenses are dirt cheap, there's hundreds of small manufacturers, and their chips go in everything, and in unexpected places. And these aren't just little microprocessors anymore. They're even in SoCs as little coprocessors that manage separate hardware components in realtime.

The amount of penetration ARM has in hidden places cannot be underestimated. And there isn't a quick replacement for them. Not one freely licensed to any manufacturer.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#685

Post by ksec »

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…

>Will Nvidia allow selling ARM licenses to competitors of Nvidia's business?

Like AMD? Sure. None of the ARM IP compete with Nvidia much. Not to mention by "Not" Selling to AMD it create more problem for its $40B asset than anyone could imagine.

>Will Nvidia reserve ARM's best IP as a selling point for its own chips? Will Nvidia allow Mali to continue existing?

Sure. Mali dont compete with Nvidia at all. Unless Nvidia will put up their CUDA Core for IP licensing with similar price and terms to Mali. Could they kill it or raise the price of Mali? Sure. But there is always PowerVR. Not to mention AMD is also licensing out Radeon IP to Mobile. Mostly because AMD dont / cant compete in that segment.

>Unless Nvidia leaves ARM alone (and why would they spend $40B on that??)

It has more to do with Softbank being an Investor. They were already heavily invested in Nvidia. And they need money, they want out. And seriously no one sane would buy ARM for $40B ( It is actually $35B, with $5B as performance bonus, the number $40 was likely used only for headline. ) As a matter of fact I would not be surprised if Softbank promise to buy it back someday. This also paint a picture of how desperate Son / Softbank needs those Cash. So something is very wrong. ( Cough WeWork Cough )

But I do understand your point. Conflict of Interest. Similar to Apple wouldn't want to build their Chip in Samsung Foundry.

While I would have liked ARM to remain independent. I am not as pessimistic as some have commented. And normally I am the one who had people pointing at my pessimism.

On the optimistic side of things. There are quite a lot of cost could be shared with the tools used for TSMC and Samsung Foundry implementation. ( Nvidia is now in bed with Samsung Foundry ) For ARM that means higher margin, for its customers that mean access to Samsung Foundry Capacity where previously they are stuck with TSMC. Nvidia also gets to leverage ARM's expertise in licensing, so their Nvidia GPU could theoretically enter new market. The real IP with Nvidia isn't so much about the GPU design, but its Drivers and CUDA. So may be Nvidia could work towards being an Apple like "Software" company that works with specific Hardware. ( Pure Speculation only )

There are lots of talk about Nvidia and ARM. While I dont think the marriage make perfect sense, It is not all bad. There are more interesting point no one is talking about. Marvell, AMD, Xillix and may be Broadcom. The industry is consolidating rapidly because designing leading edge chip, even with the cheap IP licensing is now becoming very expensive. And the four mentioned above have less leverage than their competitors.

Interest Times.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#686

Post by bodpoq »

adventured wrote: post #665
i386 wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You buy, you control, that's how the world works. Only in countries with poor regulators like the states does it work like this.

No, it works like that all across the world in fact. It works like that in Japan: say hello to the many giant conglomerates that rule their economy top to bottom. It works like that in South Korea: say hello to Samsung, roughly 12% of South Korea's GDP in a given year (Walmart by contrast is equal to 2.5% of US GDP, and that's crazy big). It works like that in Germany: say hello to a parade of big old industrial gian…

Hey now, don't bring Pakistan in to this. We are owned by the military, not some puny corporation. Our biggest industrialists/companies barely hit a few billion dollars in yearly revenue, and they do it by keeping their head down and staying quiet.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#687

Post by ksec »

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 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).

It is actually the other way around. ARM is more like giving the Mali GPU for free ( or at a very low cost ) if you use their CPU.

>Also this caused obvious problems for IMGtec

Yes, part of the reason why PowerVR couldn't get more traction and Apple were unhappy with their GPU pricing.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#688

Post by ksec »

fishermanbill wrote: post #637

When will Europe realise that there is no second place when it comes to a market - the larger player will always eventually end up owning everything. I can not put into words how furious I am at the UK's Conservative party for not protecting our last great tech company. Europe has been fooled into the USA's ultra free market system (which works brilliantly for the US but is terrible for everybody else). As such Ameri…

I sort or agree but those aren't exactly great example.

I dont see how Renderware would compete with Unreal. Even their owner EA choose Unreal. They were great in PS2 era, but next Gen console ( PS3 ) they were not.

Nokia was dead even before Stephen Elop became the CEO. So the Microsoft acquisition has nothing to do with it.

IMG - Yes. But I would argue they were dead either way. They couldn't get more GPU licensing due to ARM's Mali being cheap and good enough. They couldn't expand into other IP licensing areas. Their MIPS acquisition was 5 years too late. Their wireless part couldn't compete with CEVA. And they somehow didn't sell themselves to Apple as an Exit. ( But then Apple lied about not using IMG's IP. While Steve Jobs often put a spin thing, I find Time Cook's Apple quite often just flat out lying )

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#689

Post by granzymes »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #611
dralley wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VIA doesn't have a license for the AMD64 instruction set, however. Intel and AMD did a cross-licensing deal so they have a co-equal position.

Thankfully those patents are about to expire.

The original patents have expired.

The problem with waiting for the patents to expire is you're always stuck 20 years behind.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

#690

Post by branko_d »

saagarjha wrote: post #628
branko_d wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge "call rax"? Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't need "call rax". --- Compiler has access to optimizations that are at the higher level of abstraction than what CPU can do. For example, the compiler can eliminate the call completely (i.e. inline the function), or convert a dynamic dispatch into static (if it can prove that an…

There is no way a compiler can do anything for an indirect call that goes one way for a while and the other afterwards. A branch predictor can get both with if not 100% accuracy about as close to it as you can possibly get.

Sure.

My point was simply that the compiler may be in position to disprove the assumption that this call is in fact dynamic (it may actually be static) or that it has to be a call in the first place (and inline the function instead).

I'm certainly not arguing against branch predictors.

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