
Masayoshi Son wants Arm’s blueprints to power all tech - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/05/masayoshi-son-wants-arms-blueprints-to-power-all-tech
======
walterbell
In addition to competition from RISC-V, open-source MIPS and patents are an
Arm competitor in networking and ML,
[https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hardware/mips-joins-
risc...](https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hardware/mips-joins-risc-v-
second-open-source-alternative-arm)

 _> Having spent years in the open source technology movement, I can attest to
the hunger for community-driven solutions," Art Swift, president of Wave’s
MIPS IP business, said in a statement. "However, until now, there has been a
lack of open source access to true industry-standard, patent-protected, and
silicon-proven RISC architectures."_

------
ordinaryradical
Softbank's investment theses are interesting. They represent a kind of vision
I haven't found an equivalent for in the western VC culture. But this article
feels a little soft...

> Yet Mr Muller’s “drawings” are anything but simple. They are computer code
> which give Arm’s customers a blueprint for the construction of
> microprocessors, information-processing machines so complex that firms are
> happy for Arm to shoulder the burden of their fundamental design. Those
> clients—consumer-hardware giants such as Apple

A question for anyone who knows--my impression of the Apple-Arm relationship
was that Apple primarily needed a new ISA to do an end-run around Intel's x86
stranglehold and found an avenue via ARM? For the recent chips, I thought
large majority of the silicon was custom designed in-house, with Arm's own
designs serving as a loose blueprint.

Is Arm really delivering value here to other firms? And is it sustainable or
meaningful in the long-term?

~~~
ip26
Apple could have made their own ISA, or used one of any number of other ISAs.

ARM provides a couple things. First, they offer a progression. You can start
out with a drop-in ARM core, and as you progress you can start customizing,
and then eventually you can make your own design. (Indeed, the original iPhone
CPU contained an off-the-shelf ARM11 core, and the Apple A4 was an ARM-
designed Cortex-A8 with some speed tweaks by Apple)

Second, obviously it's a proven starting place, you know it works well. It has
been debugged, and verification is established. ARM might even license out the
formal verification testing, which is a big chunk of work to develop.
Designing your own ISA just takes time.

Third, there's an established software base and other developers writing for
ARM already. BSD already ran on ARM when Apple started making their own core,
and gcc/clang have supported ARM targets for years.

It's a little bit like licensing USB. Yeah, you _could_ design your own
connector with new cables and protocols and electricals. Maybe it would even
be better. Or maybe the dominance of USB, proven design, extensive software
stack, and so on is worth something.

As for providing value, as with USB, ARM will continue to develop the ISA,
guide the way for the many other smaller companies, and through their inherent
leadership as the sole owners of the ISA, generally keep things cohesive &
interoperable.

~~~
cpeterso
At Apple's scale, is there much financial advantage to switching from ARM to
RISC V for iOS devices? Does Apple have to pay ARM any per-device royalties?

~~~
ip26
That's all closely guarded, I'm not even sure if that's public knowledge or
not. Worth noting, however, Apple's quarterly revenue is like $50B while ARM's
is $500M- split across many customers.

Apple certainly has shown a proclivity for such bravado, but I think there's
no way it wouldn't be a huge setback to the business & the competitiveness of
their chips, and breaking free of Intel ASAP is probably worth a lot more than
any royalties they pay ARM.

~~~
ksec
>That's all closely guarded, I'm not even sure if that's public knowledge or
not.

Well it isn't closely guarded really. Apple has an architecture license, which
is the most expensive one time cost license but pays little to no cost per
chip. Since none of the ARM designs fits Apple criteria anyway and Apple are
investing into design of their own. Remember Apple has an ARMv8 64bit SoC
_Shipping_ before ARM themselves even had a ARMv8 blueprint design for
_PreOrder_.

So in terms of Financial incentives, Apple has no reason to switch to any
other ISA.

~~~
ip26
Yes, arch license. But do we know for a fact that there is no per-chip or per-
wafer royalty? I hadn't heard.

------
euske
FYI: He believes that the singularity is coming. Apparently he has had this
dream since his childhood. In another Japanese interview, he repeatedly said
that hyper-intelligence will make people happy.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/dealbook/masayos...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/dealbook/masayoshi-
son-softbank-artificial-intelligence.html)

~~~
agumonkey
I have near zero faith in singularity benefits (if it ever happens). The more
people have the less they see.

~~~
colordrops
Perhaps I have the wrong idea of what the "singularity" even is, but I suspect
there wouldn't even be recognizable humans afterward.

~~~
agumonkey
singularity is mostly an exponential growth in capabilities, closed loop
cascade from all technologies; of course people think they'll be able to
augment humans to infinity but it's a large ignorance about humans, limits,
balance and wisdom.

It's just tech pornography, unlimited blah, people will try and they will
realize it's mostly a useless thrill.

------
phkahler
They're already thinking of relisting ARM. I can't help but thinking risc V is
invalidating their plans for Arm and they want out. Some big customers are
designing their own CPUs now and that should be showing up in Arms sales
projections.

~~~
herogreen
Mind to share a source ?

~~~
phkahler
>> Mind to share a source ?

A source for which statement? I made a few. If you mean that they are thinking
of relisting ARM, the linked article that this comment thread is under says
that softbank is considering relisting ARM (already!).

If you want a source for my statement that big customers are designing their
own CPUs then I could offer that Samsung is a current ARM customer that is
known to be developing RISC-V cores:

[https://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/mannerisms/dilemmas/...](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/mannerisms/dilemmas/samsung-
defection-arm-risc-v-2016-11/)

[https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-risc-v-cpu-
core-731...](https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-risc-v-cpu-core-731670/)

I thought there were more direct sources back when the news came out about
Samsung but don't see them now.

Western Digital has indicated many times that they will be transitioning 1
Billion cores per year to RISC-V:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48V8yMOFxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48V8yMOFxA)

It seems hard to find proof of _what_ WD will be replacing with RISC-V but it
seems extremely likely that its ARM, and here is one link that indicates ARM
in a WD product:

[https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/wd-my-cloud-3-tb-network-
hdd...](https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/wd-my-cloud-3-tb-network-hdd-
review/3/)

We also know NVIDIA is replacing their Falcon GPU controller with a home-grown
RISC-V core, but that will not displace ARM. They did indicate a desire for
"rich OS" support, which they currently do with ARM. Here's their old
presentation:

[https://riscv.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Tue1100_Nvidia_...](https://riscv.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Tue1100_Nvidia_RISCV_Story_V2.pdf)

Looking around, it's easy to find companies supporting risc-v but hard to find
direct statements indicating its use to replace ARM.

Anyway, given all the activity I think ARM sales representatives have a good
view of their future prospects. They undoubtedly have some preliminary numbers
on future ARM displacement by risc-v. If I were on an investors conference
call with them (which they don't have because they're owned by softbank now?)
I would ask directly about this very thing.

~~~
herogreen
I asked about "thinking of relisting ARM". I should have bothered bypassing
this paywall, and will next time. Sorry for your time!

------
jcoffland
Did you know that the ARM instruction set was designed by transgender woman
Sophie Wilson? Interesting story.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson)

