Samsung considers Arm bid in form of an equity stake

[HEXUS]

It wants to be part of a larger consortium that acquires the chip design and licensing company.

Read more.

[watercooled]

A consortium sounds like a more plausible and less contentious option for sure.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53637463

The co-founder of the company described as the jewel in the crown of British tech has said it would be disastrous for it to be sold to a US computing firm that is reportedly negotiating a takeover.

It's the second time in four years that the future of Cambridge-based chip-designer ARM Holdings has been uncertain.

In 2016, Softbank ended up buying it. But the Japanese firm is now reportedly in advanced talks to sell it to Nvidia.

Hermann Hauser told the BBC he thought the UK government should intervene.

The tech entrepreneur - who spun off ARM from Acorn Computers in 1990 - says ministers should help make it an independent UK business again.
'Unsuitable owner'

ARM creates computer chip designs that others then customise to their own ends. It also develops instruction sets, which define how software controls processors.

Just about every modern mobile phone and smart home gadget is powered by a chip that relies on one or both of these innovations.

When Softbank bought the firm for £24bn soon after the referendum to leave the EU in 2016, it was hailed by the government as a vote of confidence in a post-Brexit Britain.

But Dr Hauser said at the time it was a sad day for him and for UK technology.

He explained that ARM's business model - in which all the big chip-makers license its technologies - made Nvidia an unsuitable owner.

"It's one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody," he explained.

"The one saving grace about Softbank was that it wasn't a chip company, and retained ARM's neutrality.

"If it becomes part of Nvidia, most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia, and will of course then look for an alternative to ARM."

While Dr Hauser voted against the Softbank deal in 2016, he says the Japanese firm kept its promises to retain Cambridge as the main focus of ARM's research and to boost employment there.

He has little faith in that remaining the case if Nvidia takes over.

Even the ARM co-founder said Nvidia would be a terrible owner,so yes a consortium would be a better choice. As he mentioned ARM has to stay neutral and be easily licensable,other as he said companies will look at other alternatives.

[philehidiot]

Just sell it to me. I've got a good few hundred quid in the bank and my credit card goes up to a grand or so.

I'll be neutral. I just won't sell to any company which has treated me like a turd as a consumer. That is however, a very long list.

[sykobee]

A consortium would be a far better option than a single owner that has no licensing experience. Samsung/Qualcomm/Marvell/Apple?/Broadcom?/Amazon/Fujitsu? and other major ARM licensees would all stand to benefit from this model.

Allowing the sale of ARM outside of the UK or even the EU was a critical failure of the government.

[darcotech]

I think UK government should do all that is in their power to bring back ARM to UK.

We are seeing the tech war going USA vs China, and it is ugly. For all other countries who do not have some unique but wanted tech (like ARM), it will be difficult and expensive in the future.

PS: I am not UK citizen, but I always loved Acorn and then ARM, and always saw them as the jewel of UK tech.

[Helios451]

Years ago I worked as a Stockbroker and one of my colleagues managed to bag Dr Hauser as a client. We used to call up our clients when a good deal arose to see if they had any spare cash to invest. My colleague once called Dr Hauser when was on the ski slopes, on holiday, and gained the kudos of his client boasting to his party that only his stockbroker called him whenever there was a good deal around. Suffice to say, my colleague didn't stay working for too long after that, given the commission he was earning!

[will19565]

Just as long as no Chinese company is involved

[persimmon]

"But Dr Hauser said at the time it was a sad day for him and for UK technology."
As he dabbed at his eyes with some million pound notes ...
Risc5 is looking more and more feasible (open source Cpu)

[watercooled]

Risc5 is looking more and more feasible (open source Cpu)

Many say that but it's not really as simple as that. As I've said in other threads, RISC-V is an ISA - you still need someone to actually design a CPU themsleves, from scratch, or have someone else design it and license out the design to others, in which case the situation really isn't so different to what we have with ARM.

Designing competitive CPUs is hard (just ask Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Marvell, etc), the ISA is just one part of many things that need to come together to produce an end product. Plus ARM has a massive install and developer base, way beyond the obvious we see with things like phones. Even things like some x86 CPUs contain embedded ARM processors.

Overall I believe a misunderstanding about what RISC-V actually is has people thinking it's something it's not. It's an open standard ISA, NOT an open source CPU.

To be clear there are a handful of open RISV-V CPU cores by various teams, but of the ones I'm aware of, we're mostly talking about things like microcontroller cores or project designs, not intended to compete with the best cores currently on the market.