Nvidia interested in taking over Arm, says report

[DanceswithUnix]

Yes, it sounds like tin foil hat nonsense, but look at the decades of damage Intels bribes created, we still haven't fully recovered yet.

Those shenanigans from Intel killed off PA-RISC, Alpha and Clipper. SGI were a bit more canny, but still got sucked along and almost took down MIPS. The world is a worse place for Intel, but we have to look forward.

If Nvidia tried to squeeze ARM licencees, that would just force adoption of RISC-V. Given Nvidia is a RISC-V user, they know this.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That is down to performance level, nothing to do with it being x86. The PS3 was originally export controlled in the same manner, big Power chips get the same treatment.

My understanding is that high end ARM chips would already get the same treatment, given ARM has some US design input. So the US pollution is already there, harm done.

It is all pointless stupidity, and I fully expect in 5 years time the Chinese will be selling high performance RISC-V designs back to us, with no use for Western CPUs.


UK Government buying ARM is an interesting thought. It would have been illegal subsidy as part of the EU, but supposedly we are out now so fair game.

It is down to being owned by a US company. If its US owned,the government can allow it to be exported,etc. Also only some of the ARM designs are affected but most are not.

Also all of this is causing competitors to appear. Russia has dusted off its Elbrus design again(after Intel actually hired some of its engineers away 20 years ago),and Europe is also looking towards designing CPUs too:
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-...supercomputers

What did our government do?? Allow foreign control of one of the most capable CPU design companies in the world!

Those shenanigans from Intel killed off PA-RISC, Alpha and Clipper. SGI were a bit more canny, but still got sucked along and almost took down MIPS. The world is a worse place for Intel, but we have to look forward.

If Nvidia tried to squeeze ARM licencees, that would just force adoption of RISC-V. Given Nvidia is a RISC-V user, they know this.

In the long-termyes,but not in the short-term,they will make more money. That is why we have this problem with China in the first place. More worried about a few quarters ahead.

[watercooled]

UK Government buying ARM is an interesting thought. It would have been illegal subsidy as part of the EU, but supposedly we are out now so fair game.

That's something that's crossed my mind too. I wonder if the purchase of OneWeb was similar?

There are a lot of details about this still unknown, for example there would surely be a lot of pressure from regulatory authorities if anyone like Apple/Nvidia/etc showed an interest in buying. Even Trump got involved to stop the Broadcom-Qualcomm takeover.

Also, given ARM is still effectively a UK company, albeit a subsidiary of a Japanese company, I wonder how much influence the UK Government still has on deciding who could buy it etc? I know they've wanted to appear 'pro-business', but at the same time it should be in their best interest to avoid something highly damaging from happening to one of the most important UK companies in existence.

Edit: Apparently they've also mulled the option of it going back to a public company. I'm not too well-versed in how exactly this works, but I wonder what exchange that would be from?

[LSG501]

That's something that's crossed my mind too. I wonder if the purchase of OneWeb was similar?

Pretty sure that was an ill-informed purchase to 'replace' the galileo gps system...something we've paid around 1.2 billion (out of 9 billion) into and as such 'should' have access to even after brexit.

[watercooled]

I mean similar in how I expect it wouldn't have been possible if still part of the EU, not the logic for making the purchase.

[chj]

Nvidia will likely use ARM as a stick with which to beat Intel, because what Nvidia really want is an x86 licence.

They needed the x86 license when making chipsets for certain intel processors but apart from that have they shown interest in using the license for anything else? Even before they lost it they put their eggs in ARM with project Denver.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Pretty sure that was an ill-informed purchase to 'replace' the galileo gps system...something we've paid around 1.2 billion (out of 9 billion) into and as such 'should' have access to even after brexit.

I was reading about that - apparently IIRC,we actually made stipulations non-EU countries couldn't access it. The problem is we are now a non-EU country,so the EU happily abided by it!

[DanceswithUnix]

They needed the x86 license when making chipsets for certain intel processors but apart from that have they shown interest in using the license for anything else? Even before they lost it they put their eggs in ARM with project Denver.

That was just a licence to talk to Intel CPUs so Nvidia could make chipsets. An actual x86 instruction set licence would interest them very much, enough that in the last legal settlement they had with Intel, Intel specifically banned them from not just making x86 CPUs but from emulating them in software. Rumour has it, officially denied IIRC, that Denver was intended as a code morph engine to run x86 code via translation much like the old Transmeta chips used to do.

[watercooled]

That's what I remember hearing around that time too. It's a shame we didn't see more of Denver because it was a really interesting microarchitecture.

[chj]

That was just a licence to talk to Intel CPUs so Nvidia could make chipsets. An actual x86 instruction set licence would interest them very much, enough that in the last legal settlement they had with Intel, Intel specifically banned them from not just making x86 CPUs but from emulating them in software. Rumour has it, officially denied IIRC, that Denver was intended as a code morph engine to run x86 code via translation much like the old Transmeta chips used to do.

Oh interesting!

[Wh00pS]

It doesn't matter which US firm tries to buy ARM because the Chinese will veto it, just like they did with the Qualcomm - NXP merger.

[DanceswithUnix]

In the long-termyes,but not in the short-term,they will make more money. That is why we have this problem with China in the first place. More worried about a few quarters ahead.

I'm struggling with that. Not at the possible intent, but this isn't like Intel where they sell allocations of silicon.

The thing with selling licenses rather than chips is that the contract will be signed and settled for years to come. Heck, even the price of parts at a factory for major items (mainly because of lead times) is nailed down for the next year. So prices can only really be raised on chips that haven't been designed yet, allowing people to just go knocking on the door at Si-Five. Android is a wrinkle there, I haven't seen a RISC-V port of that and the MIPS one is quite old if people wanted to try that route, but then most of the bit Android players are architecture licencees so again probably can't be squeezed.

I'm struggling to see how someone who owns ARM can play a short game, other than just waiting for an increase in the value of the company and re-selling at a profit as Softbank seem to be doing.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm struggling with that. Not at the possible intent, but this isn't like Intel where they sell allocations of silicon.

The thing with selling licenses rather than chips is that the contract will be signed and settled for years to come. Heck, even the price of parts at a factory for major items (mainly because of lead times) is nailed down for the next year. So prices can only really be raised on chips that haven't been designed yet, allowing people to just go knocking on the door at Si-Five. Android is a wrinkle there, I haven't seen a RISC-V port of that and the MIPS one is quite old if people wanted to try that route, but then most of the bit Android players are architecture licencees so again probably can't be squeezed.

I'm struggling to see how someone who owns ARM can play a short game, other than just waiting for an increase in the value of the company and re-selling at a profit as Softbank seem to be doing.

Because in the short term,they would make more money. Companies can't suddenly conjure out a RISC-V CPU out of thin air can they?? So a company like Nvidia can push to increase costs,which is literally what so many companies like Adobe have also been doing,even though the customers are moaning about it. The issue is longterm they end up with more competitors. Short term the market loves it,and you get even more investment in the company.

Companies are obsessed with short term gains,to prop up share price short term. What Softbank is doing is really shortsighted,especially for a Japanese company. The Japanese government itself is realising the threat from China and is trying to invest more and more into indigenous electronics now. Having ARM in this possession means less reliance on foreign contractors - CPUs such as the ARM based Fujitsu A64FX are examples of this push.

You also forget this is Nvidia,who are obssessed about short term gains - look at how they screwed themselves out of contracts with Apple,MS,Sony and got in a fight with Intel. Nvidia also had a good chance to get an X86 license by merging with AMD,but again they made certain demands. The fact is by allowing AMD those console contracts,it kept them alive to fight another day.

Look at what Nvidia does?? They try to push pricing higher and higher,much above the norms. But all of these moves eventually helped competitors. Works swimmingly well in the shorter term though.

Have you not noticed that both the El Capitan and Frontier supercomputers,which are set to the most powerful ones in the US,don't have Nvidia compute cards in them?? The tech press didn't make a big deal of it,but it is a big deal if you look at how Nvidia used to be the only game in town in this area. The reason is probably because Nvidia does what Nvidia does,and try and jack up pricing as much as they can get away with like Apple does. Then you have other competitors like the A64FX systems which don't even use compute GPUs. Now they have increasing competition in the area.

Look at machine learning in cars - Nvidia was one of the first into that,but again look at how many more companies are in that area now? Why do you think this is....probably Nvidia again asking too much money.

The consoles again...MS and Sony just dropped Nvidia. Why?? Nvidia wouldn't budge on dropping pricing. Nvidia is always trying to chase the next best thing,makes a quick buck,and then quietly moves onto the next best thing when more competitors get onto the market. Why do you think they started moving to RT?? It wasn't for gamers - all the talk at the beginning was about the "$250 billion VFX market". So Nvidia will attempt to be the only game in town with that for a few years(AMD probably will just be half awake and cede it to them). Then some other companies will start pushing competing products,so expect something else will come along. TBF,it does work to maximise short term profits.

However,the issue is if they didn't actually obsess over massive margins all the time,they would have been far more diversified by now,and probably have had their fingers in all the pies,and probably had their own high performance CPUs. AMD would also be probably gone by now,and they would be the only gaming dGPU supplier in town.

Nvidia might be doing well now,but as a company they essential leverage over a few markets,with 2/3 of revenue from PC gaming. If traditional gaming suddenly went the way of the Dodo,they would be in severe trouble. The narrative would increasingly be controlled by MS,Google,etc who also want to push costs down.

They were just very lucky AMD ballsed up on the GPU side,because if the current share had been closer to the ATI days,ie, AMD having between 35% to 50% of the GPU market,they wouldn't be making as much money.