Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#71

Post by shmerl » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #57

shmerl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company which is heavily pushing lock-in shouldn't be allowed to buy ARM, since it can cause too much damage by it. Lock-in is not a driver of innovation, it's a brake on it.

I talked with you on several different platforms over years and I'm also a bit of open source zealot. But the deal is: reason why Nvidia able to keep their lock-in going for decades is because they actually do invest a lot into R&D and take risks. There simply very few companies that doing it. Big reason why Intel and AMD have their open source teams is because that's give them edge against Nvidia. All we see from Nv…

ARM chips are used even by someone like AMD.

Point is, Nvidia can't be trusted not to use that anti-competitively, given their existing reputation and amount of leverage they would get on even more things. So if competition laws would have worked as intended, Nvidia wouldn't have been allowed to buy ARM.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#72

Post by valuearb » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

Hauser is worried NVidia will pay $40B so it can light ARM on fire. That’s crazy on it’s face.

Follow-up by noting ARMs actual economic value is less than $10B, do it seems unlikely NVidia or anyone else would pay what SoftBank is asking.

Lastly Hauser says NVidia would do this to become the “dominant microprocessor company” in the world, then cut its customers off from new developments.

First, ARM isn’t a dominant microprocessor company, it’s architecture is dominant but it’s revenues make it a flea among elephants. It doesn’t make anything like Intel, AMD, or TSMC, it simply licensed designs. And it’s own designs for that architecture, while popular, aren’t near the best, Apples are.

Apple and others have perpetual licenses allowing them to make their designs and enhancements. No one is getting “cut off” from ARMs mediocre next gen designs, they may never use them to begin with.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#73

Post by kakwa_ » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

whereistimbo wrote: post #49

rvz wrote: post #15

The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…

UK seems to be easy to sell them out. Even France to this day still refuses dailymotion to be acquired by Chinese companies.

Dailymotion is a bit of an exception, and somewhat of a waste (Specially when Orange, the national/historic telco operator in France, was forced to bought them by the government, and didn't help Dailymotion development).

But one the other side, you have tons of small to mid size enterprises that got bought.

For example, Adobe has bought quite a few French companies such as Neolane (marketing solution) Fotolia (image bank) or Alegoritmic (3D texture editor) in the past few years.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#74

Post by coliveira » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

tcldr wrote: post #35

rvz wrote: post #15

The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…

I attended a talk in the UK at Google Campus in London by Eric Schmidt. At the end of the talk there was some Q&A and one very apparently angry and frustrated member of the audience asked something along the lines of 'Do you think it's fair for Google and other big American Tech firms to keep buying up innovative and valuable British and European companies!?' Eric Schmidt immediately replied 'Well if you don't want u…

England has always been prey to the liberal delusion. The public truly believes in liberalism, when the rest of the world (headed by the US) acts on pure self interest and will bend any kind of market ideology to enrich themselves. This is the true nature of capitalism.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#75

Post by coliveira » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #46

tcldr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a talk in the UK at Google Campus in London by Eric Schmidt. At the end of the talk there was some Q&A and one very apparently angry and frustrated member of the audience asked something along the lines of 'Do you think it's fair for Google and other big American Tech firms to keep buying up innovative and valuable British and European companies!?' Eric Schmidt immediately replied 'Well if you don't want u…

100x this! I think it's our fault as Europeans that we don't value and invest in tech enough. Why is it the US's fault that they consider tech to be valuable to their economy and national security and we don't? What's stopping us from doing the same? As long as we'll keep treating tech as some cost center instead of a core business while we keep pumping money to keep afloat 19th century industries who's ships have sa…

The US will require that Europe plays by the rules when it is their interest, but will bend all rules to protect their tech industry. That's why this happens.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#76

Post by coliveira » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #69

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100x this! I think it's our fault as Europeans that we don't value and invest in tech enough. Why is it the US's fault that they consider tech to be valuable to their economy and national security and we don't? What's stopping us from doing the same? As long as we'll keep treating tech as some cost center instead of a core business while we keep pumping money to keep afloat 19th century industries who's ships have sa…

That's a difficult and slippery slope type problem. If the Europeans stop the US from acquiring companies there, the US ends up doing the same to European companies trying to acquire US assets. We let Germany buy one of the most important companies on the planet in Monsanto. I consider Monsanto to be a national security level company, we should have never let it go. Seed & AG tech is critical for the coming century a…

That's not even comparable. The reason pharma companies relocate is to have access to tax havens that in the past were available only to oil and finance industries. They remain still American companies in essence. Even tech companies like Apple and Google have used European countries as a tax haven scheme.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#77

Post by labcomputer » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #69

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100x this! I think it's our fault as Europeans that we don't value and invest in tech enough. Why is it the US's fault that they consider tech to be valuable to their economy and national security and we don't? What's stopping us from doing the same? As long as we'll keep treating tech as some cost center instead of a core business while we keep pumping money to keep afloat 19th century industries who's ships have sa…

That's a difficult and slippery slope type problem. If the Europeans stop the US from acquiring companies there, the US ends up doing the same to European companies trying to acquire US assets. We let Germany buy one of the most important companies on the planet in Monsanto. I consider Monsanto to be a national security level company, we should have never let it go. Seed & AG tech is critical for the coming century a…

I don't think OP's point was that Europe should prevent US companies from acquiring European tech firms via, e.g., legislation.

Rather, that Europeans should place more value on those companies--and either: for competing European firms to outbid US acquisition attempts; or for the owners to not sell them when the offers are too low.

One of the major challenges is "synergies" (gak!). Acquiring, say, ARM adds much more value to a company like Apple or nVidia than it does to SAP or Spotify. There's no way around the fact that right now American tech companies can afford to outbid European ones for ARM because ARM adds more value to American companies.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#78

Post by DudeInBasement » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #72

Hauser is worried NVidia will pay $40B so it can light ARM on fire. That’s crazy on it’s face. Follow-up by noting ARMs actual economic value is less than $10B, do it seems unlikely NVidia or anyone else would pay what SoftBank is asking. Lastly Hauser says NVidia would do this to become the “dominant microprocessor company” in the world, then cut its customers off from new developments. First, ARM isn’t a dominant m…

ARM might be sold from SoftBank to get money. They aren't doing so well after the 'WeWork' garbage.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#79

Post by Someone » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

yoran wrote: post #24

> Hauser says the acquisition would allow Nvidia to swipe “the microprocessor crown from Intel”, and become the chip supplier for 95 per cent of mobile phones, 90 per cent of embedded controllers for the internet of things, as well as taking the PC and data centre markets. Is it a possibility that an acquisition by Nvidia will be blocked due to anti-trust reasons? Who is the authority who has to decide on that? Is it…

Each country/country group that the to-be-merged company will have presence in can block the merger within its borders (assuming it has anti-trust laws, which most, if not all, will have)

Of course, the larger such a country (group), the more the to-be-merged companies will think pursuing the merger isn’t worth it.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#80

Post by justaguy88 » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #67

someperson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't NVidia achieve this without spending tens of billions buying ARM?

You have a lot of options available when you own a company, that you don't have when they're independent. Example: Nvidia would prefer certain specifications on an internal bus they'd use, but nobody else uses as a standard.

They can already do that