
Nvidia is reportedly in ‘advanced talks’ to buy ARM for more than $32B - caution
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/nvidia-said-in-advanced-talks-to-buy-softbank-s-chip-company-arm
======
DCKing
This is quite concerning honestly. I don't mind ARM being acquired, and I
don't mind Nvidia acquiring things. But I'm concerned about this combination.

Nvidia is a pretty hostile company to others in the market. They have a track
record of vigorously pushing their market dominance and their own way of doing
things. They view making custom designs as beneath them. Their custom console
GPU designs - in the original Xbox, in the Playstation 3 - were considered a
failure because of terrible cooporation with Nvidia [0]. Apple is probably
more demanding than other PC builders and have completely fallen out with
them. Nvidia has famously failed to cooporate with the Linux community on the
standardized graphics stack supported by Intel and AMD and keeps pushing
propietary stuff. There are more examples.

It's hard to not make "hostile" too much of a value judgement. Nvidia has been
an extremely successful company _because of it_ too. It's alright if it's not
in their corporate culture to work well with others. Clearly it's working, and
Nvidia for all their faults is still innovating.

But this culture won't fly well if your core business is developing chip
designs _for others_. It's also a problem if you are the gatekeeper of a CPU
instruction set that a metric ton of other infrastructure increasingly depends
on. I really, really hope ARM's current business will be allowed to run
independently as ARM knows how to do this and Nvidia has time and time again
shown not to understand this at all. But I'm pessimistic about that. I'm
afraid Nvidia will gut ARM the company, the ARM architectures, and the ARM
instruction set in the long run.

[0]: An interesting counterpoint would the Nintendo Switch running on an
Nvidia Tegra hardware, but all the evidence points to that this chip is a 100%
vanilla Nvidia Tegra X1 that Nvidia was already selling themselves (to the
point its bootloader could be unlocked like a standard Tegra, leading to the
Switch Fusee-Gelee exploit).

~~~
fluffything
You are not wrong, but the facts you have cherry picked fail to portrait the
whole picture.

For example, you paint it as if Nvidia is the only company Apple has had
problems with, yet Apple has parted ways with Intel, IBM (Power PCs), and many
other companies in the past.

The claim that Nintendo is the only company nvidia successfully collaborates
with is just wrong:

\- nvidia manufactures GPU chips, collaborates with dozens of OEMs to ship
graphics cards

\- nvidia collaborates with IBM which ships Power8,9,10 processors all with
nvidia technology

\- nvidia collaborates with OS vendors like microsoft very successfully

\- nvidia collaborated with mellanox successfully and acquired it

\- nvidia collaborates with ARM today...

The claim that nvidia is bad at open source because it does not open source
its Linux driver is also quite wrong, since NVIDIA contributes many many hours
of paid developer time open source, has many open source products, donates
money to many open source organizations, contributes with paid manpower to
many open source organizations as well...

I mean, this is not nvidia specific.

You can take any big company, e.g., Apple, and paint a horrible case by cherry
picking things (no Vulkan support on MacOSX forcing everyone to use Metal,
they don't open source their C++ toolchain, etc.), yet Apple does many good
things too (open sourced parts of their toolchain like LLVM, open source
swift, etc.).

I mean, you even try to paint this as if Nvidia is the only company that Apple
has parted ways with, yet Apple has long track record of parting ways with
other companies (IBM PowerPC processors, Intel, ...). I'm pretty sure that the
moment Apple is able to produce a competitive GFX card, they will part ways
with AMD as well.

~~~
vngzs
> The claim that nvidia is bad at open source because it does not open source
> its Linux driver is also quite wrong [...]

Hey! Wait a second, there. Nvidia isn't bad because it has a properietary
Linux driver. Nvidia is bad because it actively undermines open-source.

Quoting Linus Torvalds (2012) [0]:

> I'm also happy to very publicly point out that Nvidia has been one of the
> worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers, and that is
> really sad because then Nvidia tries to sell chips - a lot of chips - into
> the Android Market. Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever
> dealt with.

> [Lifts middle finger] So Nvidia, fuck you.

Nvidia managed to push some PR blurbs about how it was improving the open-
source driver in 2014, but six years later, Nouveau is still crap compared to
their proprietary driver [1].

Drew DeVault, on Nvidia support in Sway [2]:

> Nvidia, on the other hand, have been fucking assholes and have treated Linux
> like utter shit for our entire relationship. About a year ago they announced
> “Wayland support” for their proprietary driver. This included KMS and DRM
> support (years late, I might add), but not GBM support. They shipped
> something called EGLStreams instead, a concept that had been discussed and
> shot down by the Linux graphics development community before. They did this
> because it makes it easier for them to keep their driver proprietary without
> having work with Linux developers on it. Without GBM, Nvidia does not
> support Wayland, and they were real pricks for making some announcement like
> they actually did.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ)

[1]:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-n...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-
nouveau-2019&num=2)

[2]: [https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-
nvidia.html](https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html)

~~~
verroq
Which is funny because AMD drivers on linux has been nothing short of trouble
(both open source and proprietary) and Nvidia’s blob just works.

~~~
boogies
[citation needed] My experience directly conflicts with this and IIUC most
GNU/Linux users have exactly the opposite impression. Maybe you're thinking of
some past situation?

~~~
pjmlp
Here, my card on the travel netbook that I use,

[https://www.gpuzoo.com/GPU-
AMD/Radeon_HD_6320_IGP.html](https://www.gpuzoo.com/GPU-
AMD/Radeon_HD_6320_IGP.html)

The open source driver is kind of ok if the only thing we expect from it is
getting a working X session.

Now if one wants to do some complex OpenGL stuff, then it might work, or not.

~~~
pezezin
That card is super old, before GCN. Have you tried with something a little bit
more recent?

I used to have a HD 7950 and it always worked perfectly, same with my current
Vega 56.

~~~
pjmlp
Sure, how do I replace the card on an otherwise perfectly working laptop?

The usual linux answer to hardware problems, keeps being to buy new hardware.

~~~
pezezin
I would say that's a much more prevalent attitude in the Windows and Mac
worlds. Linux tries to keep compatibility with really old software. It was
only 4 years ago that major distros started to require at least a 686, aka
Pentium Pro, released in November 1995!

But at some point you have to consider if it's really worth it keeping a 10
year old laptop around. It's painful to say them goodbye, I know, I have been
there, but for me it's just not worth it.

~~~
pjmlp
Asus sold the laptop with Windows 7 support as well, the drivers kept being
updated up to Windows 8.1, and thanks to Windows driver ABI, those drivers
work perfectly fine in Windows 10.

No need to throw a perfectly working laptop to enjoy the DirectX 11 and OpenGL
4.1 capabilities that it was sold for.

------
walterbell
_> Nvidia is the only suitor in concrete discussions with SoftBank, according
to the people._

Would Arm _stake_ holders (i.e. much of the computer industry) prefer an IPO?

In 2017, Softbank's Vision Fund owned 25% of Arm and 4.9% of Nvidia, i.e.
these are not historically neutral parties,
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/softbank-nvidia-vision-
fun...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/softbank-nvidia-vision-fund/)

After WeWork imploded,
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-23/how-
do...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-23/how-do-you-like-
we-now)

 _> Neumann created a company that destroyed value at a blistering pace and
nonetheless extracted a billion dollars for himself. He lit $10 billion of
SoftBank’s money on fire and then went back to them and demanded a 10%
commission. What an absolute legend._

Is the global industry (cloud, PC, peripheral, mobile, embedded, IoT,
wearable, automotive, robotics, broadband, camera/VR/TV, energy, medical,
aerospace and military) loss of Arm independence our only societal solution to
a failed experiment in real-estate financial engineering?

~~~
nojito
IPO'ing a business that only makes revenue from licensing arrangements is a
recipe for disaster

~~~
Followerer
ARM was publicly traded between 1998 and 2016. In that period its value
multiplied about 25x, not counting the premium of the acquisition. Could you
elaborate, please? Where do you see the disaster? (Honest question).

~~~
nojito
Because of Apple. Not to mention their last 40% price increase was because of
the Vision fund's nonsense.

Publicly traded companies that rely on income from "licensing" peak in revenue
then stagnate because innovation becomes harder to come by.

~~~
Followerer
Apple is a small, although significant, part of ARM's total market share. And
that 25x is, as I said, _without_ taking into account the premium. If you do,
and there are good arguments to do so, the valuation growth is 35x, in almost
20 years.

Regarding innovation, ARM's been at it since 1990. I'm sure it's not the same
now as it was 30 years ago, but we're well past the point where one can
reasonably fear it to be an unsustainable business. Last time I heard numbers,
they were talking about more than 50 billion devices shipped with ARM IP in
them. That is a massive market.

You don't answer my question. Why wouldn't licensing businesses work as
publicly traded companies? What's the fundamental difference, specially in an
increasingly fabless market, between a company licensing IP to other companies
and a company selling productized IP to consumers?

------
klelatti
This is troubling.

At the moment ARM lives or dies by the success of the ecosystem as a whole.

When its owned by a customer this may no longer be the case and there are huge
potential conflicts of interest. For example, would an Nvidia owned ARM offer
a new license to a firm that would be a significant competitor to an existing
Nvidia product (eg Tegra)? Will Nvidia hinder the development efforts of other
competitors? Will Nvidia give itself access to new designs first? How will it
maintain appropriate barriers to the flow of information about competitors new
designs to its own design teams?

I can see this getting very significant regulatory scrutiny and rightly so.

~~~
novaRom
Once ARM is American it will escalate trade war with China. There's no way
China can quickly create any competitive platform.

~~~
klelatti
Not sure ARM UK is really in control of ARM China anyway.

[https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/arm-china-
as...](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/arm-china-asks-beijing-
government-intervene-row-arm-uk-2020-07/)

~~~
amluto
Does ARM China actually do any engineering or is it just licensing?

~~~
klelatti
Not aware of any design but probably working with local firms on
implementation of ARM designs. Happy to be corrected.

------
Keyframe
It's Nvidia circling back for a kill on intel. They didn't go head to head,
even they wanted to. Instead they built a completely different space within
data centers for them, got a foothold, expanded (mellanox) and now going for
the missing piece, which will also allow them to expand the battleground with
intel outside of datacenters. Interesting times and Nvidia, so far, showed
they know their strategic moves.

~~~
AsyncAwait
NVidia is awful when it comes to FLOSS support. If they get ARM, at least it
may accelerate RISC V developments.

~~~
jshap70
you do realize that Nvidia is a major backer of RISC-V and already uses it on
GPU's Turing and newer?

~~~
FeepingCreature
Yeah but they have no avenue to control it. Not like ARM and its ISA
licensing.

~~~
jshap70
RISC-V is inherently a customizable ISA though, whereas ARM implementations
are very specific about what they require to be called an "ARM processor".
This wouldnt change from this acq.

------
dekhn
So basically, it will be two companies which own both the CPU and GPU stack
(AMD/ATI and Nvidia/ARM) and intel will just sort of end up at the wayside.
Not really what I expected.

~~~
meragrin_
Do you not know Intel is close to releasing their own GPUs or do you just
think they will just fail at it?

Even with the acquisition of ARM, I don't see Nvidia any better off than Intel
at this moment as far as CPU/GPU stack goes. Frankly, I would think AMD would
be the one to end up by the wayside since they still are weak on the software
side.

~~~
sillysaurusx
I think there's a good chance they'll fail. This is true of any new venture,
so it's a bit lame to say, but there are reasons:

Right now I have a fairly decent GPU in my Macbook which I've hardly used.
Very little supports it, because it's not nVidia. I can't use it for AI
training, for example. Sure, it might work ok for some games, but Macbooks
aren't really for gaming, and nVidia has captured that market nicely anyway.

Things can change; maybe Intel's software stack will be incredible. I don't
know. But they have quite a hill to climb before they reach that summit.

~~~
xvilka
There's ROCm[1] though. It's just almost every ML platform blindly bent to the
NVIDIA vendor lock-in. CUDA is a disaster, like DirectX was back in time. One
day it will go, hopefully soon enough.

[1]
[https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm](https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm)

------
phkahler
This would be bad. Not because of the CPU business - I think RISC V will
eventually make that irrelevant. Once CPUs are open source commodities, the
next big thing is GPUs. This merger will eliminate a GPU maker, and one that
licenses the IP at that.

~~~
Symmetry
I hear a lot of people talking about RISC-V but I wonder why people don't
think companies would move to other open ISAs like Power or MIPS.

~~~
Teknoman117
"MIPS Open" came after the RISC-V announcement, and is still currently
somewhat of a joke. Half the links on the MIPS Open site are dead.

I think one of the major points for RISC-V was to avoid the possibility of
patent encumbrance of the ISA so that it can be freely used for educational
purposes. My computer architecture courses 5-6 years ago used MIPS I heavily.
MIPS was not open at the time, but any patents for the MIPS-I ISA had long
since expired.

POWER is actually open, but it is tremendously more complicated. RISC-V by
comparison feels like it borrows heavily from the early MIPS ISAs, just with a
relaxation of the fixed sized instructions and no architectural delay slots
and a commitment to an extensible ISA (MIPS had the coprocessor interface, but
I digress).

The following is my own experience - while obviously high performance CPU
cores are the product of intelligent multi-person teams and many resources, I
believe RISC-V is simple enough that a college student or two could implement
a _compliant_ RV32I core in an HDL course if they knew anything about computer
architecture. It wouldn't be a peak performance design by any measure (if it
was they should be hired by a CPU company), but I think that's actually a
point of RISC-V as an educational platform AND a platform for production CPU
cores.

~~~
Symmetry
As a teaching tool RISC-V is clearly great, as it is for companies that want
to add custom instructions to their microcontrollers like NVidia or WD. But if
I was looking to design a core to run user applications then to me it looks
like everything is stacked in favor of Power. The complexity of the ISA is
dwarfed by the complexity of a performant superscalar architecture. And to be
performant in RISC-V you'd probably be needing extensive instruction fusion
and variable length instructions anyways further equalizing things. And you
really need the B extension which hasn't been standardized yet. Plus binary
compatibility is a big concern on application cores and ISA extensions get in
the way of that.

~~~
Teknoman117
I totally agree.

------
mrweasel
I know it says “more” than $32B but isn’t that a little low if Softbank paid
$31B?

Neither Softbank nor Nvidia care what I think, but I would feel better if the
buyer of ARM wasn’t a company with a existing chip business.

~~~
Zenst
If you look at the products these chips are in and see the breakdown. Cost of
IP license from ARM, price to make that chip and price that chip sold in that
product, let alone the final product price. The margins are thinest in ARM's
area and for each chip they sell, the others down the line do have larger
margins. I don't have TMSC's production costs and what they charge at hand,
but i'd hazard that what TMSC make per chip is possibly more than what ARM
makes per chip.

Maybe why SOftbank want to raise those licence costs and that is with
alternatives now about, not that easy an equation than just raising those
costs as many for controllers that RISCV become more than fine for and some HD
manufacturers already transitioning for a few cents extra savings currently,
let alone if ARM license increased.

Sure ARM here there and everywhere but it got that way as much on the cheap
costs of using that IP as much as the array of IP packaged up. So yip they
make money, but it's if you breakdown how they make money, ARM are
regular/reliable, hence less spikes in income either way.

Logicaly, for ARM to increase revenue, it would need to branch out into other
markets. Nvidia honestly would be a good fit for that over shafting licensing
costs, which may well see an increase, but for what softbank wants for returns
- ARM would not wear out the level of increases they would want and Softbank
know this - hence sell or IPO them best for Softbank and also ARM.

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
> I don't have TMSC's production costs and what they charge at hand, but i'd
> hazard that what TMSC make per chip is possibly more than what ARM makes per
> chip.

Most ARM chips made aren’t pushing 7nm ultra expensive processes - and you are
probably still correct.

That’s good take on ARM’s margin per chip.

------
mikece
I wonder if it would be possible for a consortium of companies like Apple,
Microsoft, and Google to swoop in and outbid Nvidia? All of them rely on
customization agreements with ARM and Nvidia, being a chip maker, would be
competition. And a consortium like that would allow the consortium members to
keep their changes to themselves so whatever Qualcomm and Microsoft are doing
with the SQ1 or Apple with their Silicon stuff wouldn't have to be shared will
all consortium members -- or a competing chip maker like Nvidia.

~~~
burnte
Apple has a perpetual license on the ARM instruction set, so they just pay a
royalty per chip. Apple owning ARM would be a massive problem for regulators,
as they'd be the sole source of chips to their competition.

MS and Google don't make chips, and MS doesn't even license any ARM tech (I
don't think, they just make software and buy CPUs, they don't make any).
They're a bad fit. Google's dipping their toes in it, but I don't think
they're doing fully custom silicon. Most companies buy the rights and layouts,
and tweak those layouts.

NVidia makes chips, but they don't make many mobile chips, and virtually no
chips for phones compared to Samsung and Qualcomm. They're a better fit.

~~~
kevingadd
The chipset in the Nintendo Switch is a mobile chipset by NVidia.

~~~
burnte
Yes yes, there are outliers which is why I didn't make a blanket statement
NVidia doesn't make anything mobile.

------
yalogin
Why is ARM selling itself? May be I am missing something here but if Qualcomm
can generate a bulk of their revenues through licensing fees, shouldn't ARM be
bringing in more? It feels like going public would be a profitable route for
their investors. Wonder why they are opting for that.

~~~
smitty1110
ARM is owned by SoftBank, who has had a very bad year and a half. I guess they
just want cash, not to take it public.

~~~
softwaredoug
The irony of WeWork causing a great product like ARM to need to be sold off...

~~~
pstuart
Irony redux: even if WeWork wasn't a trainwreck, this pandemic would have
killed it.

~~~
beervirus
It wouldn't have been great in the very short term. But there's an argument
that mid-long term, the pandemic will be good for WeWork.

~~~
hobofan
And what would that argument be? That the increase in unemployment leads to
more new businesses being founded that can somehow miraculously afford
luxury(-priced) offices?

~~~
beervirus
That a lot of businesses are deciding they don't need as much full-time office
space as it seemed like last year. Long term leases are expensive. On-demand,
short-term leases are looking more attractive.

------
trynumber9
Interesting, Nvidia has been using their own RISCV designs in their GPUs.
Perhaps they are more interested for their automotive line?

~~~
ch_123
I think it's for the datacenter. They have already purchased Mellanox. In many
HPC applications, having fast GPUs and fast interconnects is 99% of what you
need. A reasonably competent CPU architecture would round this out, and I
don't think RISC-V is there yet.

ARM have also made some HPC plays, e.g. buying Allinea (probably the best
supercomputer debugging tool).

------
mytailorisrich
If that happens it may have wider consequences.

ARM would become owned by an American company. It has to comply with American
restrictions on dealing with China but that would make it essentially no
different from any other American company, either legally or in fact.

So in the current context this would be bound to raise eyebrows in Beijing,
and China could only react by doubling-down on developing domestic
alternatives.

~~~
sfifs
I'm kind of wishing this trend will push investment in something open like
RISC V. Up and coming countries should definitely be thinking - if US targets
China today, it could be them next.

~~~
mytailorisrich
> _I 'm kind of wishing this trend will push investment in something open like
> RISC V._

This is indeed happening.

~~~
phkahler
The challenge is on the GPU side. Now is they could finalize the V extension
people could start using that for graphics.

------
natch
Can anyone explain what is going on between Apple and Nvidia? Seems Apple will
not add Nvidia hardware to its machines no matter what. What’s the back story
to that?

And where this is related is I wonder if Apple will have to relent (assuming
the purchase goes through) and do business with Nvidia since it licenses some
technology from ARM. Or, have I got it wrong here? Does Apple not rely on ARM?

~~~
lowbloodsugar
Google "macbook faulty nvidia". e.g. [1] references to "arrogance and bluster"
from Nvidia.

My personal experience: I had a 2011 Macbook Pro with an nvidia card. It
started to fail randomly. Apple identified that certain nvidia GPUs were
failing and created a test the "Geniuses" would run. My Macbook always passed,
even though it kept throwing noise on the screen anywhere other than the Apple
store. Eventually it finally failed their test: Four days after the (extended)
warranty period. They refused to replace it. Bitterly, the best option for me
was to pay the $800 for a new board.

[1] [https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/18/apples-
management...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/18/apples-management-
doesnt-want-nvidia-support-in-macos-and-thats-a-bad-sign-for-the-mac-pro)

~~~
natch
Wow. I have had Apple do me right for free repairs out of warranty (and past
AppleCare expiration) but several things applied: It was in California where
retail culture is less combative about helping the customer; 2) the laptop did
have AppleCare; 3) It was at the Palo Alto store which tends to have very well
educated employees, with cross flow between the employee pool and corporate;
4) the laptop was purchased at an Apple store, which inexplicably gives them
more leeway (well, possibly due to their certainty it was always in Apple’s
hands prior to direct sale to the customer).

~~~
nkurz
For what it's worth, I had almost exactly the same experience with the same
2011 MacBook as 'lowbloodsugar'. From my point of view, it was clearly
starting to fail while still in AppleCare warranty (snow on the screen when
doing anything graphics intensive), but somehow it passed their 'tests'.

Shortly after the warranty ended, the Nvidia card failed for good. On the
bright side, it was a dual-video system, and I was able to keep it running a
few years longer through complicated booting rituals that convinced it to boot
with the lower power Intel graphics (although I lost the ability to recover
from sleep).

I'm not sure why we have such different experiences with Apple customer
service. I was also in the Bay Area, but not Palo Alto. It's possible that
with a more aggressive approach I could have gotten them to fix it. Instead, I
accepted their verdict, and now spread the word through forums like this that
their warranties are not to be trusted.

~~~
sudomakeup
Interesting, I have nearly the exact same situation except replace Nvidia with
AMD. "Radeongate".

Also have miraculously saved the machine with a booting ritual/hack that
bypasses the discrete gpu

Also 2011 MacBook.

~~~
nkurz
I'm worried that you are right, and that I had an AMD card as well. I'm
unsure, as the focus of my disappointment is Apple, rather than the
manufacturer of the card.

------
MindGods
See related discussion (from last week):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929993)

------
dudus
SoftBank purchased ARM for $32B in 2016. If this figure is correct it looks
terrible for SoftBank. Another one in a string of bad investments.

~~~
growlist
Depends how much they've milked it in the meantime.

~~~
valuearb
It’s growth has slowed and profits are down. I doubt they will get $20B for
it.

------
cromwellian
I think people are overlooking a worse outcome. Chinese companies have already
bought the Asian subsidiary of ARM, if China bought ARM who knows how they
would retaliate with it given the current attacks on Huawei. They might use it
as leverage.

realistically we need an open unowned architecture like RISC-V, because
whoever buys ARM will cause concern given how hyperconpetitive mobile is, the
incentive to abuse the ownership is high.

We really want to avoid another Oracle/Java scenario as well.

------
xbmcuser
Looking at how qualcomm has a virtual monopoly for mobile processors nvidia
buying arm and getting back into the mobile space might be a good thing.
Though I think this is more a play for desktop processors intel is getting
into discrete cpu market Amd already is. Every year integrated gpus are
getting better at giving good enough performance so the market for discrete
gpus will decrease in the end Nvidia might need its own cpu to stay relevant.

~~~
mkl
> qualcomm has a virtual monopoly for mobile processors

Not even close. Qualcomm has about a third of the market:
[https://cntechpost.com/2020/03/24/samsung-surpasses-apple-
to...](https://cntechpost.com/2020/03/24/samsung-surpasses-apple-to-
become-3rd-largest-mobile-processor-maker/)

------
Abishek_Muthian
Oh no, look what have you done WeWork. Who would have thought that rich kids
burning VC money, who themselves were running elaborate ponzi scheme would
end-up as a threat to the democracy of computing.

Ofcourse U.S. Govt. wouldn't have problems with this unlike Broadcom-Qualcomm
deal, on the contrary this will put American semiconductor industry in a more
dominant position.

RISC-V is the only hope for the rest of the world now.

------
yydcool
This would be good. I'm waiting to see high performance PCs running on ARM CPU
instead of x86.

------
InTheArena
This isn't a bad move strategy wise. If the Apple performance is as awesome as
is rumoured and hype, there are going to be a lot of people looking for new
arm chips, with no obviously ahead players. nVidia has looked a couple of
times at building their own x86 core, and ARM cores may be a better bet.

At this point - AMD, Intel, Apple are all looking at fully integrated
APU/CPU/GPU stacks. That leaves NV out in the cold if they don't do something.

------
kyriakos
Looking further into the future nvidia buying arm now means they could have
their cpus and gpus in the next generation of consoles instead of amd

~~~
als0
Except AMD has:

* better single threaded performance than ARM

* the same instruction set as developers' workstations

* the willingless to add Microsoft/Sony's hardware IP to the console chips

~~~
stjo
1) There are many domains that don’t care about single threaded CPU
performance or CPU performance at all. I would say gaming is becoming one such
domain

2) This might soon change if Microsoft and Apple succeed in their quest to
push ARM machines to the consumer market. I can imagine than an ARM macbook is
all that's needed to start an avalanche in adoption

3) Willingness can change easily :)

------
minusSeven
Dunno what Softbank is doing here, I thought ARM is the kind of company they
would want to keep.

------
georgeburdell
This might be a lucky break for Intel. If NVidia buys ARM, this might slow the
ARM ecosystem's intrusion on Wintel. As others have noted, NVidia will
probably go and develop a data center CPU to complement their other offerings.
Qualcomm already tried that and failed though [0], so NVidia's effort may meet
the same fate several years from now. Regardless, Intel would get a little
more time to work through its process problems.

[0]
[https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/10/qualcomm_layoffs/](https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/10/qualcomm_layoffs/)

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H8crilA
Such a good use of their inflated stock price for an all-stock transaction.
Go, NVIDIA!

~~~
manquer
SoftBank would want cash, they need to reduce their debt load , that’s pretty
much they are considering this price in the first place

~~~
H8crilA
Fortunately there's a market for stocks.

~~~
manquer
There is no easy for market for 32b of any stock . You cannot just make sell
order for that qty and expect that Order to be filled.

That stock market is also there for ARM stocks . There is no need to trade for
nvidia shares at an undesirable price if there is no immediate cash in it.

Nvidia could potentially raise money from an FPO or similar instruments and
leverage advantageous stock price they have, I.e. issue lesser newer stock
than they would have at a lower price ,but only way SoftBank will consider a
deal is if they get cash

~~~
H8crilA
There actually is. For example - on the last annual Berkshire shareholders
meeting Buffett was talking about how easy it was for them to unload billions
worth of airlines, 100% of their holding.

On a typical single day $4B worth of NVIDA stock is traded.

~~~
H8crilA
PS. ARM is currently privately held (i.e. it is not on the stock market).

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dirtyid
Wonder how much of this is pushed by US policy to secure IC dominance like
getting TSMC to build US fab. Barr was floating the idea of getting Cisco to
acquire Ericsson for 5G, not a stretch to also ask Nvidia to buy ARM.

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oskhan
This makes no sense. nVidia is already transitioning away from ARM and
shipping RISC-V controllers in their GPUs. They already gave up on Denver,
their high perf ARM server chip. Why would they buy ARM?

~~~
corin_
Pure uneducated guesses from me: maybe the reason for giving up on Denver
would no longer be a reason if they owed ARM. Or maybe they see a future use
of ARM's tech that will either benefit them to own, or that scares them that
ARM competition (or competition from other companies working with ARM) in a
current or future area. Or just that they believe ARM is a solid business that
will make money whoever owns it.

But I don't have a clue if it's a good idea or not.

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valuearb
Super shocked anyone would pay more then $10B based on their financials.

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pier25
I can see why Apple wouldn't want to buy ARM since that would put them in very
delicate position, but I'd be surprised if Intel or AMD weren't trying to buy
ARM as well.

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novaRom
This acquisition is in US interests and can be supported by US government.
They try to stop leaking silicone industry in general (famous CHIPS act), and
block Huawei and its partners.

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tengbretson
I hope that this ends up giving Nvidia enough leverage over Qualcomm that they
can start putting Tegra chips in smartphones again without cellular radio
patent disputes.

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McP
The name is officially "Arm", not "ARM", and that's been the case for exactly
3 years now. Bloomberg has it correct in the article.

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figgyc
People in this thread discuss what Nvidia would do with ARM after they buy it,
but I'm honestly not even sure if anyone even _could_ buy ARM to be honest.
The article barely even mentions the anti-competitive nightmare that it would
probably become, and if Nvidia agreed to let everyone else keep buying
licenses and designs as it is now, then you have to argue is there any reason
for them to buy ARM at all?

~~~
nojito
>then you have to argue is there any reason for them to buy ARM at all?

ARM provides them a stable, consistent, and regular revenue stream.

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gerty
This will be killed or severely hampered by antitrust agencies. Definitely by
the EU, maybe the US as well if there's anyone decent left there.

~~~
grazhero99
Antitrust nowadays is just a buzzword politicians throw around every couple
years in reference to household names like FAANG in order to get reelected.
Unless your average grandma knows the name Nvidia, don't count on those in
power to even pretend to do something about this.

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fortran77
I imagine Apple already negotiated a long-term (or in perpetuity) license for
ARM so Nvidia won't be able to put the squeeze on them...

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unix_fan
I really hope this doesn’t happen. Nvidia could hike prices for future
designs, making devices more expensive as a result.

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shmerl
With Nvidia's nasty anti-competitive and lock-in attitudes, this doesn't bode
anything good.

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Donckele
Thats a lot of money and must be very tempting. Lets hope that ARM doesn’t get
bullied to bite the apple. Nvidia sees the writing on the wall with GPUs and
knows it must acquire the future king of CPUs to survive.

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phendrenad2
Is nvidia seriously going to get into ARM business? Are they going to grok the
business of embedded development and microcontrollers? I can't help but think
that this would mean the end of ARM as we know it.

~~~
MikeCapone
The Arm people would still be there running the company, it's not like they
all get fired and overnight it's Nvidia people with no experience doing it.

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geogra4
If this goes through would that mean that Huawei can no longer use ARM chips?

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fataliss
Well, I guess that's one way to keep Apple as a customer :P

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spicyramen
In the ML GPU they are a monopoly but man they do a great job providing
support for TF or Pytorch where AMD hasn't invested. So in Cloud Nvidia is the
only way to go

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EdwinLarkin
Hmm did not Softbank buy ARM for 32bn?

That investment did not pay off I guess..

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andy_ppp
Well nvidia need to create an operating system now and we could end up with
three ecosystems that could be competitive with each other. Good for consumers
I say.

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jayd16
I wonder what this means for Tegra and/or mobile GPUs.

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jarrell_mark
Intel should start investing in RISC-V or opening up their own architecture.
This is the only way they will keep market share in the next 10 years.

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barnabee
Just a thought but if big tech that controls entire markets is bad now
(apparently some law makers seem to think so), maybe don’t let this happen.

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gok
Kinda curious if this would mean the end of Nvidia's CPU group and/or ARM's
GPU group or if there would be a peaceful integration.

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throwawaysea
Apple seems to be against use of nvidia GPUs in their products - would they
potentially abandon using ARM if it comes under nvidia ownership?

~~~
jzelinskie
Apple is not fundamentally against the use of nVidia products. nVidia refused
to implement the Metal APIs knowing full well that in a few years they'd be
replaced by Apple's own silicon. Why spend a 1-2 years implementing adding a
feature that will be legacy 1-2 years after it ships?

~~~
dahart
> Apple is not fundamentally against the use of nVidia products.

Are you sure about that? I don't know this story about Metal, but I believe
Apple has refused to certify an nVidia driver on Mac since like 2018 (I
think), effectively cutting Apple users off from using nVidia products on
Apple platforms.

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thehappypm
Slightly unrelated, but I did a quick look on Wikipedia and both Intel and
Nvidia are based in Santa Clara, CA? Is there history there?

~~~
TomVDB
This 1.7 mile walk starts at Intel's HQ, goes past AMD's HQ and stops at
Nvidia's HQ:

[https://goo.gl/maps/DkbETh1V1ucSqtPb7](https://goo.gl/maps/DkbETh1V1ucSqtPb7)

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pyuser583
What’s the word for that thing you get when one part of a duopoly acquires the
other? I think there’s a board game about it ...

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varbhat
1) Nvidia my produce good performing GPUs, but it doesn't provide Open Source
Drivers and it is not so cooperative with Linux Desktop. Also it is quite
buggy.

2) Due to (1) , i believe that this acquisition might promote locked down
devices. I don't want this situation to occur.

3) This acquisition may have some affect on Apple since Apple is transitioning
to ARM Hardware. If this is the case, Apple may even transit to some other
Hardware architecture like RISC-V or OpenPower once again.

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tus88
This seems stupid and pointless. Although I would probably buy a Nvidia mobile
phone :D

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person_of_color
This will be a boon for RISC-V

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anoncow
What if Intel bought ARM? Could that work for Intel? Do they have the
resources?

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aleppe7766
Doesn’t sound legit. ARM was purchased by SoftBank in 2016 for 32bn USD.and
from then it might have grown more than 20% per year. Selling a growing
company with bright perspectives today for the same price you purchased it 4
years ago makes no sense, even for a struggling Softbank.

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plekter
I do wonder what this means for Arm's Mali GPUs if this goes through.

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opless
Best thing for ARM to do is IPO.

As far as I understand this is all rumour still.

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ritwik310
What if apple aquires it first! :p

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m0zg
Not looking forward to this at all. This is one of the clear-cut cases that
should be shut down by antitrust regulators.

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0x0
Wow, way to stick it to Apple!

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jdright
To me, and probably a lot other people, this means the death of ARM. Not
literally, but practically.

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varispeed
I wouldn't be surprised if they bought it to extinguish it, probably a proxy
buy by Intel.

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grazhero99
I bet Apple's really banging their heads against a wall right about now.

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mensetmanusman
At first my mind read this as AMD, reaction: ‘meh’

Then I realized it was ARM, ‘wow’

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cma
Could hopefully get Google to invest millions in RISC-v

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findingnaeemo
Is there a way to get rid of these paywalls? So annoying to click on a popular
post with plenty of upvotes only to find it is paywall-restricted. Incognito
mode works but inefficient.

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moonbug
I hope Huawei beat them to it.

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monadic2
Wow this is really not good.

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ritwik310
wtf! x_x

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PHGamer
apple is going to be pissed.

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thewindow1
Wouldn't Alphabet be able to buy Arm. I think as long as it is separate from
Google it should be fine. It would be the company starting with A in their
portfolio.

