Read more.Qualcomm, Google, and Microsoft tell regulator that deal could harm competition.
Read more.Qualcomm, Google, and Microsoft tell regulator that deal could harm competition.
As discussed many times, no Licensee should ever become the licensor, especially for something that is globally utilised so heavily. It creates an unhealthy precedent and I doubt any company that licenses ARM IP is going to be happy.
I doubt if Nvidia will change the business model of ARM because ARM is successful in the mobile sector not data centre or desktop compute. Nvidia is simply looking for other ways to expand its portfolio. Softbank wanted to sell and thank God intel or Apple was not interested. The desktop and server software stack is EXTREMELY complicated and x86 is here to stay for decades to come just in-case you are worried.
You are quite categorically wrong and quite naive to think just because it's "EXTREMELY complicated" doesn't mean others in the industry are just too dumb to work it out. ARM is also quite complicated and also quite powerful, the limiting factor is software compatibility with the chicken and the egg issue. There were no chips strong enough/diverse enough to support mainstream software and there was no software implicitly compatible with ARM enough to widen the market. But now major players are weighing in on ARM with substantial investment (and RISC-V), it's becoming (read: become) a competitor.
ARM is used in growing excess in networking, datacentre, compute and even Desktop. Apples M1 chip is just the tip of the iceberg.
Both Microsoft, Amazon and Google have heavy investment into Datacentre ARM (Amazons Neoverse is quite successful).
Frankly, Nvidias purchase observationally looks to be a threefold:
-ARM is going through an evolution, it's become almost a juxtaposed brand alongside x86 in the desktop and Datacentre space. Due to that growth, there is substantial market growth meaning sweet sweet licensing money
-If Nvidia gets a hold of the ARM stack from development through to licensing, they get a leg up on ALL of the competition, regardless of any BS "anti-compete" paper which in the super-scale enterprise world isn't worth the paper it's written on (See AMD v Intel 2009)
-(tinfoil hat time) I would be willing to place a small amount of money that Nvidia was coaxed to looking at ARM because Nvidia is a US based company and if they acquired ARM it would become a defacto US business and therefore they could effectively cut off China from the second largest CPU design globally, setting China back years if not decades. The only reason why China still got access to ARM during the Trump restrictions was because they said "we're UK based and owned by Japan, some US entities contribute to ARM but that does not imply US control" so ARM just shrugged it off and carried on.
Nvidia may not be the worst business to get a hold of ARM but they are certainly not the best to get a hold of it either. No business with a stake in ARM as a licensee should own such a globally critical business.
As far as jobs go we want it going to a rich company that's going to invest into it. If I worked for ARM I'd be pretty happy about an Nvidia purchase.
As far how it suits the rest of us, well it really depends on what Nvidia do with it. They are going to want to make money, it cost them a lot, so obviously they aren't going to just leave ARM to do what it's been doing. There's two ways they could do this:
1) lock down the cpu so it becomes an Nvidia thing, and take it in an x86 direction where you have to buy that cpu from a few people. It's what Intel did and it worked out well for them.
2) expand on ARM's basic tenant of licensable by anybody but expand it from just the cpu to also include gpu, compute, ai, interconnect, modems, etc. Become the one stop shop to license your cpu's bits from no matter whether you want to make a toaster of a super computer.
What I hope is they pick 2, and imo that's the way the industry has been heading - the days of having a strangle hold on cpu's like Intel do are ending.
Friesiansam (15-02-2021),Pleiades (15-02-2021)
While there may be a place on Hexus for thoughtful and respectful debate on different countries' political systems, I think this thread perhaps isn't the spot for it, certainly not sweeping X is better than Y/needs to be stopped type statements. Let's keep discussions welcoming to all.
Pleiades (15-02-2021)
It's ok I'll bring the thread back on track.
- sounds painful. I wouldn't want to acquire a whole arm in any kind of probing situation.FTC to probe deeper into Nvidia's Arm acquisition
CAT-THE-FIFTH (15-02-2021),kalniel (16-02-2021)
Thing is, Nvidia have never licenced anything out before have they?
And while selling ARM to anyone who is actually an ARM player was always going to get lots of scrutiny, it being Nvidia doubly so.
After all they have managed to alienate so many of their past 'partners' over the last few decades (Microsoft, Apply, Sony) leaving them with only really Nintendo.
Look, I've got a message. What if you all go back to square one and unpick the twisted logic and talk sensibly instead of trading low blows at the speed of sound otherwise any valid points just get swallowed in the sea of noise and confusion, like white shadows against the foamy breakers. I appreciate taking a step back can be the hardest part, and far be it from me to try and fix you, but whether it's X or Y or X&Y is kind of immaterial. It'll still sell shed loads
CAT-THE-FIFTH (15-02-2021),Pleiades (15-02-2021)
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