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How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

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Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#81

Post by rektide »

rektide wrote: post #11

lol the cortex a7 is still the go to low power arm cpu. how a vast company with all the funding in the world can "bet on iot" but fail so miserably to make any improvement or change at all for so long is something i don't think I'll ever understand. dont get me started on how impossible to purchase most chips are, how inaccessible/non-existant the docs are, how vendored the frak up the screwball drivers are. what a d…

interesting how high this comment got then how hard it fell. +6 to +2. for my posts thats a notable swing

amusingly the critics are saying that a7 isnt the right choice, but are citing an equally aged, unmoving set of microcontrollers as what should be used. these chips at least uaually have docs, i feel like.

personally i think decent low power application processors are as much if not more of the challenge than microcontrollers to iot's developmemt. everything is a smart speaker, smart camera, has screens. watches run apps, clocks run apps. arm failing this industry miserably is quite the story. but yes, datacenters & the cloud are eattinf the world. tech is innovating ul, to bigger & bigger more expensive offerings, & the cut-throat consumer tech offerings are dying. it's a market intel bounced out of, amd commands a huge price in, and which sees nearly no wins. m3/m4+a7 forever and ever; maybe someday risc-v will shake things up.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#82

Post by rektide »

brandmeyer wrote: post #77
PennRobotics wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I'd say M0+ is the king and offers good debug facilities over the M0 despite the slightly larger die size. However, @rurban is probably correct purely because Ambiq is building their portfolio around the M4 (and M33), and they seem to be working hardest in pursuing and patenting IoT layouts/technologies that reduce energy usage. I love AVR for teaching/learning, but the fact that you can* get a more powerful…

I love it all. Cortex-M0, M3, M4, M7, and A7 all together span several full orders of magnitude in performance. Every one of them has their niche. Unfortunately for ARM, all of those designs are many years old and they are still nearly optimal in their niches. ARMv8-M parts are starting to show up, but they aren't exactly revolutionary compared to their predecessors.

they're all a decade old. it's absurd that we havent found any architectural wins.

i have no idea whether there'a just scant dew wins to be had, or whether this complete lack of innovation is a company asleep at the wheel.

do you also love the cortex-a53 for application processing? because it too is another dinosaur relic that we seemingly cant eacape from. a55 seems to have made a like 12% difference.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#83

Post by carride »

If you need to avoid the FT paywall, here is the story republished through the FT partnership with Arstechnica. HN does not allow this link to be submitted. Instead HN robots mark [dupe] and redirect to the paywall. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/how-softbanks-costly...

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#84

Post by flyingcircus3 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #79
flyingcircus3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few to no compelling use cases for consumers creating a true network of internet connected things, because they don't have distributed physical things. If all your stuff is nearby, and isn't in large quantities, then the internet, or computer networking in general, is not the path of least resistance to control/monitor/utilize it to some greater application. Controlling X with your phone is novel at first,…

I know, that's why I was talking about industrial use cases....

My sincerest apologies for agreeing with you and expanding on your points.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#85

Post by m-ee »

rektide wrote: post #82
brandmeyer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it all. Cortex-M0, M3, M4, M7, and A7 all together span several full orders of magnitude in performance. Every one of them has their niche. Unfortunately for ARM, all of those designs are many years old and they are still nearly optimal in their niches. ARMv8-M parts are starting to show up, but they aren't exactly revolutionary compared to their predecessors.

they're all a decade old. it's absurd that we havent found any architectural wins. i have no idea whether there'a just scant dew wins to be had, or whether this complete lack of innovation is a company asleep at the wheel. do you also love the cortex-a53 for application processing? because it too is another dinosaur relic that we seemingly cant eacape from. a55 seems to have made a like 12% difference.

As an EE/embedded dev the M4s are approaching a mature technology for the bog standard MCU driven products I work on. You can get a 180MHz processor with 1MB of RAM and 2MB of flash. For reading sensors and doing some lightweight application layer stuff I don’t know what more I would even ask for. Current product is not power constrained so not paying much attention to that.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#86

Post by zeusk »

FanaHOVA wrote: post #48
hartator wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sp500 has both better returns and better diversification so less overall risks. And I am sure Vision Fund has higher expenses ratio than most of sp500 indexes. The only ones winning here is the execs of the fund.

You aren't understanding how capital and risk allocation work at a portfolio level. The people putting money in the SoftBank funds ALREADY have hundreds of billions invested in public equities. They are looking to diversify their portfolio across different asset classes. Your comment isn't relevant.

so they'd rather plow it in a fund that buys options on exactly the equities that make up the index? or blow it on bets like oyo, wework et al? all the while expense ratio blowing through the roof.

My brother was a buy side banker at softbank, we all know the kind of debauchery that went on in there.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#87

Post by devmunchies »

bogota wrote: post #57
devmunchies wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “This Week in Startups” podcast from last week, episode 1378, interviewed the CEO. They are hiring their own drivers and building their own delivery hubs, meaning products you order are coming from their hubs, not from CVS or Walmart. They have more control over efficiency. They even acquired BevMo and are converting those into hubs.

How do they scale demand for peak times with a fixed workforce? It seems trivially easy for say Uber to start hubs if they wanted to and they have a huge existing base. But it comes down to execution and it will be interesting to see the space in another 5 years.

They own the hubs but the drivers are technically contractors like all the others.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#88

Post by smabie »

allisdust wrote: post #68
smabie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct: an uncorrected return stream that underperforms market beta is often still highly desirable / sought after.

Probably meant *correlated

No I meant uncorrelated

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#89

Post by panqueque »

treyfitty wrote: post #66
threshold wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really want every household item squirreling information back to the manufacturer about our personal habits? Exactly who stands to benefit from that? Consumers will lose a fortune and shun the technology.

Of course no one “wants” that. But let’s rewind 20 years ago and ask: “do we really want our telephones squirreling info back to the manufacturer about our personal habits?” Sounds equally absurd.

No post body was provided.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#90

Post by allisdust »

ashtonkem wrote: post #78
allisdust wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line one actually looks brilliant. It has the appeal of letting any new growth easily happen and keep transport options simple. Though most likely there will be uneven development even on this design.

It's genuinely the dumbest city design I have ever seen, and it makes transport an absolute nightmare assuming you're interacting with real technology and not magic. Cities are generally round for a good reason. You put the important stuff in the middle and your average transit trip remains as low as possible. Straight lines do the opposite, as you guarantee that each new resident is in literally the worst possible p…

May be. But think not about the utilization or optimization for a moment and focus on the maintainability and buildability aspects. Something that looks this regular probably be both built and maintained through pure automation. I mean self driving is super simple in this layout (as they mention their transport is automated). Compare the same to the ever expanding cities that quickly run out of central space and end up having a premium center and poor suburbs.

Obviously line is not the only thing that can provide these benefits. How about a large square or circle with the center purely reserved for green space. Anything beats the shitty cities we have today where people stay outside because they cant afford the rent and have to travel towards the center for work.

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