
Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster - mepian
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53637463
======
awalton
I'm in agreement. nVidia's history of not playing nicely with others does not
make this sound like a good deal, especially for entrenched ARM vendors.
(Apple won't be phased; they basically design everything themselves, so they
don't really even care about the direction of ARM or the architecture. They
could hard fork tomorrow, or two years ago, and nobody will notice since
they're entirely vertically integrated.)

But, on the plus side, it's the biggest opportunity RISC-V will ever get.
Almost overnight anyone who was building ARM cores will suddenly see
investments in RISC-V prudent as a hedge against nVidia's future core designs
not being licenseable. SiFive will very quickly become a multi-billion dollar
organization...

~~~
chongli
I think nVidia could run into some serious anti-trust issues if they tried to
interfere with the ARM ecosystem. There's far too much at stake here. Is there
a phone on the planet that doesn't run ARM?

~~~
jraph
The Asus Zenfone 2, released 5 years ago, ran on x86 (Intel Atom) [1]. I know
someone who was still using it this year Eventually switched but the phone
still works. So, to the question:

> Is there a phone on the planet that doesn't run ARM?

Well, technically, yes ;-) This does not change anything to your point though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_ZenFone#Second_generation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_ZenFone#Second_generation_\(2015\))

~~~
slimsag
I used the ZenFone 2 for about a year ~3.5 years ago; it worked surprisingly
well. It was impressive that it really "just worked" like a normal ARM device.

There were some annoying software aspects (the Play Store only allowed me to
download x86 apps even though it could run ARM apps), and the device was 100%
a battery hog - but cool tech.

Surprised Intel gave up on that effort.

~~~
dannyw
Intel gave up because Atom for smartphones were sold at a negative price after
marketing incentives. They couldn’t even get volume from manufacturers when it
costed less than zero; because no one wanted to invest upfront R&D costs.

~~~
mycall
Intel should have made their own phones.

------
MilnerRoute
The Observer proposed an interesting solution last weekend:

 _" The government could offer a foundational investment of, say, £3bn-£5bn
and invite other investors — some industrial, some sovereign wealth funds,
some commercial asset managers — to join it in a coalition to buy Arm and run
it as an independent quoted company, serving the worldwide tech industry..." _

[https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/10/0358216/should-
the-...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/10/0358216/should-the-uk-
government-form-a-coalition-to-buy-arm)

~~~
rpastuszak
I feel like with the current political climate in the UK this solution is
fairly unlikely to happen.

~~~
klelatti
Actually the UK government has started taking stakes in technology firms where
it deems it has a strategic interest. [1]

I can easily see the man now running the UK (Dominic Cummings) deciding to
take a stake in ARM. Maybe other ARM customers would also be willing to take
(non controlling) stakes to keep it away from Nvidia (Apple of course used to
be a big shareholder).

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
environment-53279783](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53279783)

------
klelatti
He's absolutely right. Unless there is a 100% firewall between ARM and Nvidia
then Nvidia will influence ARM to move in directions that help Nvidia's wider
business and not the ARM ecosystem as a whole - and that will adversely affect
everyone who uses an ARM CPU - and that's basically everyone.

I don't believe that such a firewall is possible in any event. Who will
enforce it?

For those who are saying that it's great as it will give RISC-V a boost. Fine
in principle, but how long will it take before the RISC-V ecosystem is
anywhere near comparable to ARM in mobile?

One final point: the UK government is now considerably more interventionist
than at any time in the recent past. Not completely impossible that they
intervene in this in some way.

~~~
sharken
I agree that this deal is good for Nvidia only and will hurt ARM CPU usage.

Nvidia is right now not in the same league as Intel/Apple, but having the most
successful consumer and corporate GPU business along with control of Arm
architecture CPUs puts them in the same league in my opinion. That kind of
dominance is never good for consumers.

Having worked for a company that was acquired and became a daughter company,
such a setup is not enough of a firewall.

Slowly, the acquiring company will modify internal systems and internal
processes until there is not much left of the original company. And many key
employees will leave as they don't identify with the way things are being
done.

I would like to think that acquisitions can be a good thing, but that's not
the case in my experience.

~~~
thrwyoilarticle
Nvidia are worth more than Intel.

~~~
sharken
It is, although it's just in the last month:
[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-stock-beats-
intel](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-stock-beats-intel)

In October 2019 the market cap was 226B vs 108B in favor of Intel.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/10/ho...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/10/how-
does-nvidias-valuation-compare-to-its-peers/#bf4a6d535c08)

------
QuixoticQuibit
Seems like alarmist FUD to me. While I agree that having Arm owned by any one
of its major customers creates some potential conflicts of interests, I think
the notion that NVIDIA or any other company would start to drive licensees
away with draconian terms/costs with some poor business planning pretty silly.

The more interesting question to me is what would any single (major customer
of Arm) company gain from owning Arm? For instance, if NVIDIA wants to be
competitive in data center CPUs (which would put them at equal footing with
AMD and Intel, not more monopolistic), why couldn’t they go the Apple approach
with a perpetual license and design it entirely custom (or not) as they see
fit? (AFAIK they already design custom mobile CPUs.)

What do you gain by buying out an expensive, large licensing company that
essentially makes no money that leaves you in a weird position with various
rivals? Doesn’t quite click for me.

~~~
foota
The most cynical view would be that they could not reup licenses for
competitors.

~~~
the-dude
Wouldn't they be forced into RAND?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-
discriminat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-
discriminatory_licensing)

~~~
foota
Afaict that seems to be an agreement that a patent holder enters into a third
party with to promise to license their patents to implementors of the
standard. In this case there is no standard, just the patents and associates
technology, so I'm not sure that applies. I would be shocked though if big
players didn't have similar long term agreements with Arm.

------
axaxs
I for one would welcome this. Firstly, as mentioned, it gives people incentive
to look into RiscV.

That aside, for far too long QCOM has had a monopoly on the phone chip market.
Patents aside, which increasingly became irrelevant due to the death of
Sprint, their major advantage has always been in Adreno, which as far as I
remember AMD basically did for them. Mali is terrible. If Nvidia could revamp
ARM graphics at the spec level, we'd have real competition again from Samsung,
Mediatek, and potentially others.

~~~
xvilka
It will be the end of Linux on ARM. They will choke platform with blobs until
the inevitable death. NVIDIA and open-source is like matter and antimatter -
they simply cannot coexist in the same place and time.

~~~
pjmlp
ARM is all about licensing and selling hardware IP, they will use Linux to the
extent that it helps to sell their IP, just like most companies that actually
pay for engineers to contribute some parts of their crown jewels to Linux,
while leaving the rest for their own in-house distributions.

Also in case you haven't noticed, the IoT domain where ARM thrives is getting
full of BSD/MIT POSIX clones, guess why.

ARM mbed, Zephyr, RTOS, NuttX, Azure RTOS ThreadX, ...

~~~
stragies
Having an liberally licensed code-base with make it very easy for entities to
publish a benign version on github, and then deploy an "enhanced" version on
the real hardware, cryptographiclly signed, and not dumpable. They'll find
something, that can support the argument, that not all functionality can be
open-sourced, and that is why the published binary will never have the same
checksum as something you have compiled from the public sources.

~~~
pjmlp
From my comment history you will see I am pretty much into commercial and dual
licensing, so I do agree with your point, however kind of feels like the way
copyleft licenses have been managed has brought us back to the commercial
licenses with source code, just under a different name to make them more
appealing to younger generations.

~~~
stragies
Hi, thanks for replying!

> the way copyleft licenses have been managed has brought us back to the
> commercial licenses with source code, just under a different name to make
> them more appealing to younger generations.

I think, I'm following along (&agree), but to be sure, could you perhaps
elaborate a bit on that? (Also for other? readers)

~~~
pjmlp
Basically Linux kernel, GNU utilities and GCC are the only projects left with
a copyleft license, almost everyone else migrated to non-copyleft licenses in
the context of making money with some form of open source.

And not everything gets upstream, in name of keeping the main business at the
company's soul, for example those optimizations used by clang on PS4? Sure all
of those that don't reveal PS4 architecture features that could eventually be
"misused".

The large majority of those business have moved into clang, thus reducing GCC
usage to copyleft hardliners, Linux is visible on ChromeOS and Android but not
on a context that it can fully profit from and then there is Fuchsia waiting
on the backstage.

So in a couple of generations, when copyleft software is just a memory in
digital books, we will have gone full circle to the days when buying developer
software would entitle you to an extra floppy with a partial copy the source
code.

The only difference is how that partial copy gets delivered, which will be
just the upstream of non-copyleft software.

~~~
stragies
O.K. so we see the same things.

I can't discern from your writing tone, if you think the above is desirable or
a train_wreck_in_slow_motion coming.

I think, it's the latter, not necessarily by direct effect, but by all the bad
behavior this will enable in corporations for generations to come.

------
nojvek
Could someone explain me what the huge deal about ARM is since they only
licence but don’t actual fab the chips but intel, Apple and nvidia do.

Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the
other ?

~~~
stragies
RISC-V sounds like a good idea, but (imo) could lead to a situation, where
all/many device manufacturers make custom processors based of the liberally
licensed code-base. At first, this sounds great, "Yah, no more reliance on
Intel/ARM/, no more ME/Trustzone". But then you realize, that although you,
the user/buyer, can build/run some custom code on there, you'll never be able
to tell for sure, if you did not get a version/series with a gimped HWRND, or
other (security-reducing) goodies. Targeted attacks will become _very_ easy
for anybody, who can pressure companies/engineers into adding something for (a
subset of) the customers, or can reroute/intercept device shipments to you.

ARM is a "known" situation. They have TrustZone, we know it exists, but
buyers/end-users do not get full control of it (outside of some niche
products, or dev-boards). That situation will not change. With ARM, get
already got used to the idea, that you'll never "own" the machine, you are
merely allowed to execute some code in a walled-off area of your Telescreen.

So, with RISC-V, you have even less assurance, that the processor IC really
contains what you expect, and nothing more.

~~~
young_unixer
RISC-V allows companies to make closed systems, but it also allows them to
make open systems, which wasn't viable before.

Most people will keep using closed systems because they don't care about
computer architecture, but us hackers will finally have a chance at having a
(small) portion of the market. A small industry of open hardware.

~~~
stragies
> RISC-V allows companies to make closed systems, but it also allows them to
> make open systems

True, but can you recall any moment in history, where market forces did not
actually make producing "open" devices unprofitable? So, (imo) in theory, you
are right, but in practice, (successful) companies will use the technology to
create "even more closed" system, and worse: Make systems, where the user
can't even tell, if he got an "open" system.

> A small industry of open hardware

That you will only be able to use in a lab/isolated_env, or illegally, because
mandatory signing of FWs/BLs/OSs/APPs is just around the corner for consumer
devices capable of speaking to the internet.

~~~
hakfoo
> True, but can you recall any moment in history, where market forces did not
> actually make producing "open" devices unprofitable?

I'd say that the early era of personal computers proved it. The Apple II and
IBM PC were very open platforms-- thoroughly documented, developer friendly
and made with very few parts you couldn't buy out of your favourite
electronics distributor catalogue.

They were riotous successes in large part because the open platform meant they
didn't have to guess or corral the entire market. Remember that most of the
killer apps of the era (VisiCalc, WordPerfect, dBase, 1-2-3, etc.) were third
party, and it was largely aftermarket firms selling "six-in-one" cards, Sound
Blasters, and Hercules graphics cards that patched the gaping holes in the
PC's hardware design.

Conversely, look at a machine like the TI-99/4 series: while on paper a decent
machine for the time, it was as "closed" as a machine of the era could be: an
unusually limited built-in development platform, and many of the desirable
upgrades involved buying a very expensive expansion chassis.

It's interesting to consider what the business tradeoffs of today's walled
garden model are. Apple could choose to do a "pure hardware" play, or emulate
the early 1980s IBM, where they offered some popular software via their own
product line as a trusted source. The result would probably be a marginally
larger total addressable market, as it would bring some customers and
developers to the platform who needed something that could never clear the App
Store before. But would the growth in market size compensate for the reduction
in the average cut they can command from the market?

~~~
als0
> IBM PC were very open platforms

What about the whole debacle around the IBM BIOS?

~~~
hakfoo
I think they made a commented disassembly available officially, and there were
definitely aftermarket books with blow-by-blow analysis.

You could argue it was imperfect (not exposing every feature it could, and
having performance costs, sent a lot of software to bypass it and pound
hardware registers directly, creating that weird world of early clones that
would run MS-DOS but not 1-2-3 or Flight Simulator) but it doesn't seem like a
hostile gesture to external developers.

Now it was definitely a legal hurdle if you wanted to make an outright clone,
but by 1984 or so, Compaq and Phoenix had solved that problem.

------
georgewfraser
I find it baffling that SoftBank isn’t simply taking ARM public. If ever there
was a company that _should_ be independent, it’s ARM. Is there a good
explanation out there for why this isn’t the obvious choice?

~~~
thayne
Most likely, money. Specifically, they probably think they can get a better
price from nVidia than on the public market.

------
klelatti
There would be a certain symmetry if Apple took a (non controlling) stake in
ARM to keep it independent given that sales of ARM shares in the 1990s were a
significant factor in giving Apple financial stability in the 1990s.

[1] [https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-
alrea...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-already-
saved-apple---twice)

------
H8crilA
NVIDIA's stock is so massively pumped up. They will simply make an all-stock
offer that's pretty much impossible to refuse and that will be the end of it
(most likely).

~~~
mvn9
NVIDIA is the only hardware company that takes software serious.

In every hardware thread, someone complains about hardware people being behind
on software technology. And then there is NVIDIA, the company that provides
the best development environment for GPU development, the company that used
chip simulation for their first processor.

AMD was kept alive by oil money and console contracts. NVIDIA made it on their
own. They were innovative in the past, they can be innovate in the future. To
me, that's an opportunity for much more future growths.

How much is too much if NVIDIA can take Intel's market? And we are only at the
start of machine learning and product simulations.

------
01100011
Sounds like a protectionist who doesn't want ARM to be owned by any foreign
entity.

"most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia"

Is this true? It seems like quite a stretch. Nvidia doesn't offer a chipset
for the mobile, battery powered market(it tried, and gave up because of
competition from Qualcomm).

~~~
jaimex2
Isn't Tegra their mobile chip?

~~~
01100011
It's "mobile" as in cars and robots. It's not mobile as in cell phones.

~~~
jaimex2
It's also in the Nintendo Switch :)

~~~
Danieru
Only the older chip series they could not sell to tablet makers. The newer
chips are too power hungry for mobile and are targeted at automotive where
Nvidia has gotten traction. Nintendo better hope Nvidia has something new
coming up in time for a next generation.

~~~
01100011
It might happen with a process shrink but that remains to be seen.

------
MangoCoffee
AMD have to license their cpu to China in order to get a life line. when AMD
stock was in the toilet.

Softbank doesn't want ARM anymore. what do Hermann Hauser proposed? Let ARM
holding die(?). He offer no solution.

~~~
thayne
If I understand correctly, his solution is to make ARM a publicly traded
independent company, rather than selling to another company like nVidia.

------
2mylesaway
Competition breeds innovation they never should have sold in the first place.
If an investment firm won't hold them they should start an IPO instead of
seeking value validation from contending clients and players in the hardware
industry.

I'm tired of the tech industry's standard duopolies. ARM breaks that trend by
licensing to Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, MediaTek, & others; surrendering
independence today could hurt the future of tomorrow.

------
guiriduro
I would dearly love for the industry sh1tstorm that would happen if Huawei
would buy ARM (please!) Would like to see Donny try to ban a Huawei ARM, or
order Google to only supply to hot slow Intel Atom mobiles, with everyone of
the asian makers walking away from the US market, while the world switches to
an OSS Android fork.

Although I still for the life of me can't understand why Miyoshi son is
holding on to wework and selling ARM.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Because ARM is one of the few things he invested in that actually makes money.

It's a cash-crunch driven deal, nothing else.

~~~
guiriduro
Yep - I was always told, keep your dividend-paying winners, sell your losers.

Wework is definitely a loser, ARM is a winner - its completely upside down. If
he wants cash, he should sell his trash. And avoid future losses by not buying
trash in the first place.

~~~
Danieru
Rather Alibaba and Yahoo Japan are Softbank's dividend-payers. ARM has proven
nothing more than a bargaining chip to kickstart the vision fund and now a
crunch zone to keep the group liquid. ARM's valuation has barely moved despite
the continued dominance of the platform.

Selling ARM lets Softbank keep WeWork living for a couple more years, enough
time to bring the non-japan markets into cashflow positive status. Japan by
some miricle was cash flow position from the start, he must think the model
can work overseas.

------
tinktank
Surely a sale would be allowed if regulatory compliance compliance is met? I
was part of a private semiconductor company bought by a public American
company and the buying company had to convince the US gov they would not turn
the product line into a captive portal. I expect it's the same here?

~~~
mjcohen
So what happened?

~~~
tinktank
They had to get clearance and satisfy the USG the products would still be
available to third parties. Had to do this in Korea and China too. Once the
governments were satisfied, the acquisition was completed.

------
leeoniya
conversely, it may be just what RISC-V needs to go mainstream sooner.

------
jarym
I think he's right. A sale to Nvidia would be detrimental to ARM's current
business model - now Nvidia may have other plans but the thought of that would
certainly scare existing licensees even more.

Should the UK government intervene? Yes. Will they? Probably not.

The detail here is more nuanced than protectionist vs free market - but I
don't think most people realise that and see it as just protectionism. It
isn't I don't think.

~~~
valuearb
It’s just protectionism with different justifications.

There is no evidence the UK government could run ARM better than NVidia. In
fact the opposite is true.

------
maxdo
Any other real non US company can benefit from it except Chinese companies ?

~~~
PaulHoule
There are all kinds of Euro-based electronics firms such as Alcatel or
Phillips or Siemens.

~~~
maxdo
I’m aware of them but do they really develop any mainstream devices ? I might
be wrong but aren’t those companies working in their niche eg cell towers etc.
Isn’t that a way tooo narrow application of such a great tech ?

------
pecker458
Me too in agreement. NVIDIA got interested in ARM after the launch news of
Japan Supercomputer. They want to suppress, I think.. as it's bad for their
business. (Twice faster than First Supercomputer ) ...

------
jokowueu
This IS good news . If nvidia's history is something we can go by then the arm
licencing etc will be so miserable that people will flock to riscV

------
rgbrenner
\--

~~~
throwaway5792
I think you're confused. He didn't own ARM, it wasn't his choice to sell.
Hauser was vehemently against the SoftBank sale.

~~~
rgbrenner
You're right. I retract my criticism of his position. It's completely
consistent. Thank you.

------
gigatexal
it's been said before, they need to just IPO.

------
nix23
Not for RiscV ;)

------
timwaagh
British government should not bother to clean up the mess capitalists make.
They will have a hard enough time living with the consequences of brexit and
corona without buying up companies.

------
monadic2
How could it not be?

------
tedk-42
I suspect Apple would buy ARM before NVIDIA would ever get a chance to.

That is of course, to protect their own interests as opposed to making it into
a successful business in its own right.

~~~
mikerg87
Apple walked away from the opportunity. Anyone know why?

~~~
valuearb
Apple founded ARM and walked away with a perpetual license. They have zero
need for ARM, purchasing it would be a huge distraction and conflict.

------
jimbob45
Yeah, Hermann? Where was this grave concern when you sold to SoftBank? Why
don’t you man up and just admit you play favorites?

Edit: His concern was far more muted when it came to SoftBank in 2016
[https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/690588/ARM-
Holdings-...](https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/690588/ARM-Holdings-
Hermann-Hauser-24bn-SoftBank-a-very-sad-day-Theresa-May)

~~~
rswail
So you're arguing about the level of concern? I can think of lots of reasons
to be more concerned about a chip manufacturer buying the design/licensing
business literally at the core of the majority of mobile phones than of a
technology investment firm.

Or maybe you should just admit that your original comment was not well
founded?

