

Oracle wants to buy chipmaker, ARM shares rise - dmillar
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-24/arm-rises-as-oracle-s-ellison-says-company-may-buy-a-chipmaker.html

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gvb
AMD is mentioned as an alternative target and that makes a _lot_ more sense
than ARM.

* ARM is not a chip manufacturer, it is a CPU architecture design house.

* Oracle runs on big to medium iron: x86, Power (IBM), SPARC, and HP (Itanium, PA-RISC). They don't run on ARM and I would speculate that it would be a major effort to port to it. Oracle already owns SPARC.

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ssp
_ARM is not a chip manufacturer, it is a CPU architecture design house._

So is AMD after they spun off Global Foundries.

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wmf
They're still not in the same category. AMD designs chips that are fabbed by
GF. ARM designs cores, then hands them off to TI/Nvidia/Samsung/etc. to design
into chips, which are then fabbed by yet another company.

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gjm11
"Oracle to possibly buy ARM" is a pretty strange summary of the article, which
actually says (1) Ellison says that Oracle might buy some chip-making
companies, (2) stock in ARM rose, apparently in response, but (3) one of the
two sources cited by the article says that it's very unlikely that Ellison had
ARM in mind and the other goes no further than that it's _possible_ that he
had.

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1337p337
I certainly hope that it is just speculation. I've never seen a CPU that was
as much a joy to code for. I've done some assembly for various architectures,
and nothing at all compares to the elegant, powerful simplicity of the ARM.

Based on Oracle's treatment of Sun, it would be a crying shame for ARM's
design team to share a similar fate. No one needs a world where "movsne r0,
r1" is going to violate some Oracle license agreement.

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aberkowitz
This makes even less sense than Intel buying McAfee. Sure, there are ways that
ARM could be integrated with Oracle's products, but they don't need to buy
them to do that.

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bstrong
They didn't need to buy Sun to run on their servers, either. But they clearly
have ambitions to own the whole stack.

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borism
They didn't buy Sun for their servers

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jacquesm
Why on earth would Oracle buy ARM, they're not exactly the kind of processors
that Oracle would benefit from owning.

AMD, maybe, but that might come a bit too dear even for Oracle.

If there is one party that I think might buy ARM at some point it would be
Apple. Or some other mobile devices manufacturer.

~~~
bstrong
I would argue that ARM is the biggest threat to Intel/AMD in the datacenter
over the next ten years. Datacenter design these days is all about
computation/joule/$, and ARM has a big lead by that metric. Smooth-Stone is
already working on ARM-based server designs, and I'm sure more are in the
works. Seems like exactly the kind of processor Oracle would want to own.

~~~
jacquesm
Databases are not about computation, they're about throughput, IO, vast gobs
of memory, it goes much further than being simply compute bound.

Oracle is a database vendor first, OS vendor second, I can't make the case for
them becoming a chip manufacturer, but who knows, I've been wrong before.

~~~
bstrong
They may be a database vendor first, but they also have a big applications
business. They already have a good processor for databases (sparc), and ARM is
exactly the kind or architecture you want for your app servers. Btw, I'm just
playing devil's advocate. I sincerely hope that ARM doesn't join the Oracle
graveyard of once-great technologies.

~~~
jacquesm
> I sincerely hope that ARM doesn't join the Oracle graveyard of once-great
> technologies.

And maybe part of me is so scared of that happening that I see all kinds of
reasons why Oracle really shouldn't buy ARM.

Those big companies are like black holes, stuff goes in and it's anybodies
guess what will come out.

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spiffworks
What's with all these rumours about companies planning to buy ARM? ARM is a
famously profitable, 30 year old company that is on the verge of world
domination. What makes anybody think that they want to sell?

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sprout
Seems like buying ARM could set off antitrust allegations. Oracle already
strong-armed itself into the chip business with the purchase of Sun, going for
ARM, which aside from Power is the only credible x86 competitor gets on to
pretty shaky ground.

At that point you would just have AMD/Intel on x86 vs. Oracle. Not a monopoly,
but I wouldn't expect that to be a good situation.

~~~
adbge
ARM is really ubiquitous in any device that isn't big iron or a personal
computer, so you can bet the FTC would be all over any attempt at purchasing
ARM Holdings, no matter who is buying.

I think the only reason we haven't seen serious antitrust litigation against
ARMH is because they're very good about licensing all the technology they
produce to anyone that can pay and generally avoiding anti-competitive
behavior. The FTC is going to be very nervous about that liberal licensing
scheme going away if someone does purchase ARMH.

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limmeau
Doesn't look plausible to me -- Oracle's Sun business uses Sparc and x86
processors. If the chip-maker purchase is supposed to complement Oracle's
existing products, they should rather buy a x86 or Sparc company. Unless they
plan to throw away the existing Sun designs in order to replace them with
efficient ARM-based servers (then why buy Sun).

They could buy ARM just for the dividends, but then they could also buy a
fast-food chain.

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gaius
Agreed. This Didier Scemama ought to be laid off!

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pietrofmaggi
I agree with you, this story makes little or no sense.

But he seems a serious guy that knows what he's talking about:
<http://uk.linkedin.com/in/didierscemama>

[edit: typo]

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corin_
Someone will surely buy them some day, but doesn't seem logical that Oracle
would. My money is still (literally) on Apple buying them in the next couple
of years.

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nivertech
I think it's unlikely for Oracle to buy ARM. They are more likely to buy chip
companies in $30-300MM range, not multi-billion companies. But, I see why
Ellison would like to buy ARM:

* Buying ARM will give Oracle more leverage over Google in their Android/Java litigation.

* Combining their SPARC and Server expertise with ARM Design expertise will give them competitive advantage in Low Power High Density Datacenter plays.

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protomyth
I would expect that Apple, Google, Samsung, TI, and Qualcomm would do a little
bit of a panic and try to put in competing bids. ARM works because it is a
neutral party, and Oracle would be regarded as anything but a neutral party.
This could have a large impact on a lot of companies, and some of those
companies have much deeper pockets than Oracle.

Give Oracle already has SPARC, perhaps he meant GLOBALFOUNDRIES?

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alain94040
Apple has an architecture license for ARM, so they don't really care what
happens to ARM the company. It could shutdown tomorrow and that would not
impact future iPhones in any way.

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mechanician
Rumor aside, I'm surprised in general that ARM's stock has risen so much in
the last year. I suppose the increase in price is due to the current, and
anticipated, use of ARM designs in mobile devices. Still, in the long run
would ARM really be able to maintain it's lower-power chip dominance over
Intel? I know Intel isn't there yet, but they seem to be a fearsome R&D
competitor.

~~~
nuriaion
There are a LOT of ARM processors in use. It would be interesting how much
money ARM gets from the smartphone use compared how much it gets from all the
other applications.

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pkaler
This is completely rational if you consider that Larry Ellison's goal is to
build TJ Watson's IBM. Oracle wants to be a systems company instead of a
software license company.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/ellison-wants-to-model-new-
ora...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/ellison-wants-to-model-new-oracle-after-
tj-watson-jrs-ibm/24801)

~~~
spitfire
Why was this downvoted? It's perfectly obvious Ellison wants to be an Apple of
enterprise computing. You don't guy and buy megabytes and gigabytes from
apple, you buy something that just works.

Ellison wants that too. You pay $bucks, plug in a power cord and an ethernet
cord and your erp/accounting/db setup is done. If I were a decent sized
company I'd pay beaucoup bucks for that.

Personally, I commend him. IT is a cost centre for most companies.

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listic
Doesn't it look disturbing that premier financial data company, the source of
business & financial news, needs to describe ARM Holdings Plc as "designer of
chips that power Apple Inc.’s iPhone"?

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nonane
Can someone comment on the implications of this for Google, Apple and
Microsoft if such a thing happens? All major software companies in the non-pc
space are mostly dependent on ARM.

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joezydeco
It all comes down to the royalties ARM will charge the chipmakers. If the
price of a TI OMAP or Freescale i.MX jumps 100%, that seriously hurts the
price of phones and netbooks.

Google, Apple, and Microsoft really don't get hurt on the software end, just
the hardware pricing end.

~~~
timthorn
ARM's average royalty per chip is currently around 4.5c.
[http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-holdings-plc-
reports-s...](http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-holdings-plc-reports-
second-quarter-half-year-results-30-june-2010.php)

Of course, that's a blend of the royalty for all their cores, but at that
level a 100% hike won't have a material effect on a $400 smartphone, even with
2.6 cores/phone (again, average from above source).

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stuaxo
Ew, Please no.

You may take our Java, but you will never take our ARM!

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bitwize
I see Larry needs low-power navigation equipment for his new boat...

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devmonk
Oracle seems to be too focused on acquisitions and litigation.

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francoisdevlin
Why?

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timthorn
Power density in the datacentre.

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c00p3r
Buy ARM to ruin it? ^_^

Jokes aside, seems like the target is AMD. They're in trouble, like Sun.

