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Since ARM had been a mainstream acquisition target for years now, I'd suspect this owes more to their M&A team rather than their CEO. Estimating ARM's future e

Since ARM had been a mainstream acquisition target for years now, I'd suspect this owes more to their M&A team rather than their CEO. Estimating ARM's future earnings is relatively straightforward, and Softbank, like Berkshire, loves free cash flow. It doesn't require a visionary to go through the calculus of an acquisition under these parameters; it requires a team of shrewd finance professionals.

jldugger 10y ago
Intel doesn't exactly shy away from purchases either; is it likely that the only reason they haven't made an offer anti-trust regulations?
- frik 10y ago
  Wouldn't be allowed, right? That would position Intel as absolute monopolist on desktop, server and mobile CPU. Intel CPU cost already way to much due to lacking competition from the only left x64 vendor AMD which is years behind. And Intel slowed down the release of faster CPUs. Where are the 8 and 16 core CPUs? Where are the 5+ GHz CPUs? Why hasn't the single core performance advanced that much (if you discount the advance of memory speed) since 2004 (Pentium 4 era).
  - mandeepj 10y ago
    10 core is coming - http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/core-i7ee-processor.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/core-...
    - eatbitseveryday 10y ago
      Intel already sells 18-core processors, granted they are server chips, not desktop chips.
      - mandeepj 10y ago
        Thanks. AMD is coming with 32 cores - http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222921-amd-is-supposedly-planning-a-32-core-cpu-with-an-eight-channel-ddr4-interface http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222921-amd-is-supposedly-...
        eatbitseveryday 10y ago
        48-core ARM processors already exist[1] but via the vendor Cavium. The takeaway is that multi-core is continuing very much so. edit: I just looked; Intel has Haswell-based server processors with 24 physical cores[2] [1] http://www.cavium.com/newsevents_Cavium_Introduces_ThunderX_A_2.5_GHz_48_Core_Family_of_Workload_Optimized_Processors_for_Next_Generation_Data_Center_and_Cloud_Applications.html http://www.cavium.com/newsevents_Cavium_Introduces_ThunderX_... [2] http://ark.intel.com/products/93790/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-8890-v4-60M-Cache-2_20-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/93790/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-...
  - creshal 10y ago
    > Why hasn't the single core performance advanced that much (if you discount the advance of memory speed) since 2004 (Pentium 4 era). It has, but you have to use AVX and other new instruction sets. Singlethreaded, a fifth-gen Core m5 tablet CPU can be as fast as a first-gen Core i Xeon workstation CPU, and a sixth gen i7 desktop CPU can be twice as fast as both: https://admin.tao.at/post/evolution-of-cpu-efficiency/ https://admin.tao.at/post/evolution-of-cpu-efficiency/ (Sadly I don't have any Pentium 4s left to compare on. And of the Core2 generation only laptops.)
    - flamedoge 10y ago
      It seems like a lot of new tech went into AVX and increasing both width and number of vector registers. Kind of makes you doubt whether single-threaded performance is just a mask for wider execution pipe underneath.
  - redtuesday 10y ago
    Are you sure about the single thread performance? Because the jump from Pentium 3 to Pentium 4 was not that large, but the jump from Pentium 4 to Core 2 Duo (2006) was. All the jumps after that (Nehalem etc.) were larger than the jumps we have nowdays, and the jump to Sandy Bride (2011) was really large. Only since then has the single thread performance stagnated. Cinebench R10 32 bit single thread scores: Intel Pentium 4 660 - 3.60 Ghz - 2245 Points AMD Athlon X2 6000+ - 3.00 Ghz - 2848 Points Intel Core2 Duo E8400 - 3.00 Ghz - 3647 Points AMD Phenom II X6 1075T - 3.00 Ghz - 3820 Points AMD FX 8320E - 3.20 Ghz - 4056 Points Intel Core i7 950 - 3.06 Ghz - 4353 Points Intel Core i7 3930 - 3.20 Ghz - 6268 Points Intel Core i7 5960X - 3.00 Ghz - 6950 Points
    - StillBored 10y ago
      I'm not sure that cinebench is a good single thread benchmark because its basically a benchmark of how many vector ops you can run in parallel. But using it allows people to print pretty charts like you have there, as will benchmarks doing AES encryption, or any other "special purpose" instructions that have been added to the CPU in recent history. A better traditional single thread benchmarks might be spec int base minus libquantum. That tests things like how good the branch predictors are relative to pipeline depth, how fast dependent instructions or pointer chasing can be handled, etc.
      - redtuesday 10y ago
        Yes, I was not really sure how representable Cinebench is, hence my question how sure the parent is. But the benchmarks were easy to come by (back when I posted them already a while back). The only other benchmark I could find that had CPUs from Pentium 4 up to Haswell was Geekbench. Would love to see someone do a benchmark like that (would do it myself if I had enough spare money), with equal clock and memory bandwith etc. EDIT: after reading the critique about libquantum on wikipedia I'm even more interested in the benchmarks. "In the SpecInt2006 benchmarks, the 462.libquantum benchmark is highly vectorizable. The baseline computer for all benchmarks is a 1997 Sun Ultrasparc server computer. Whereas most of the spec sub-benchmarks turn in a performance improvement of about 5x to 80x times faster than the Ultrasparc, the particular 462.libquantum sub-benchmark turns in a result that is up to 4082 times faster than the Sun Ultrasparc .[3] This suggests that for this sub-benchmark, most of the improvements over the Ultrasparc are due to vectorizing compiler improvements, NOT due to CPU hardware improvements, since 1997."
- phire 10y ago
  Intel has already sold off their successful line of ARM chips ages ago and instead focused on domination via the x86 architecture (Which only Intel and AMD are licensed to make). I'm not sure Intel would want to also take full control of ARM chips regardless of Antitrust regulations. Whoever buys ARM can keep collecting the licensing fees, perhaps even increase the fees a bit. No platform is particularly tied to ARM in the long run, they just use it because ARM chips are cheap, fast and power efficient. If Intel tried to change the ARM licensing deals in monopolistic ways, then everyone would simply move to new chips. For example, Android has always been reasonably platform agnostic with their Java layer and Apple have been introducing platform independant binaries.
- perseusprime11 10y ago
  Why is it Anti-trust? Intel makes chips and ARM does not make chips.
  - scott_s 10y ago
    But they both design chips. And combined, they design most of the chips in the PC, server, mobile and tablet market.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Control of the intellectual property. Intel already controls what's in most desktops since Apple ditched PowerPC. No competition there across the globe. Tablets and mobiles were the challengers eating into that market share. ARM dominates there with its I.P. in almost everything that's mainstream with over 10 major companies licensing the I.P. for their own chips. If Intel owned that, they'd control the I.P. behind most of their rivals. Finally, there's the server situation where, although more ISA competition, x86 still dominates. Letting Intel have ARM would certainly be an antitrust situation given the sheer dominance Intel's I.P. would have at that point.
- gumby 10y ago
  Buying ARM wouldn't help Intel, that's why. I assume you ask this question because ARM is absolutely killing Intel on mobile CPUs. Worse, Intel has tried to get into that space and ARM has handed Intel its head more than once. So this is not a dumb question. But ARM makes a trivially small amount per CPU manufactured, making it up on volume. Intel takes a large amount of both revenue and profit on each piece silicon that goes out. And you can see the result: Intel's market cap is still 5X ARM's ($160 Bn to 30 Bn). As an individual investor ARM is (was -- assuming this buyout goes through) probably a better investment than Intel since Intel is struggling to find new markets to expand into, with most of its revenue coming from a dead end business (PCs) while ARM is being pulled by many people into new, growth businesses. But because of its business model, an ARM acquisition would dilute Intel's results (its margin would drop). For smaller companies it's OK to "eat your own lunch." This was in fact Sun's principle (which didn't work out for them so well) and Apple's (which has, so far). But when you get to be huge, it's hard to move the needle in a way that appeals to investors. Look at Apple: they have a crummy iPad business that, were it standalone, would be one of the phenomenal businesses of the decade. But when mixed in with the rest of Apple, it's simply blah. == Separately, I remain astonished that Intel killed its StrongARM business line. They definitely had the best ARM on the market and it played, I think, to their strengths. I think they were just afraid that it attacked their brand, which at the time was very expensive CPUs. But they could be dominating the mobile market now.
  - jldugger 10y ago
    > As an individual investor ARM is (was -- assuming this buyout goes through) probably a better investment than Intel since Intel is struggling to find new markets to expand. Well, ARM doesn't have those pesky chip fabs on their balance sheets, that's the licensee's problem. Accordingly, they have a profit margin of 30 percent, compared to INTC's 20.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jldugger 10y ago

Intel doesn't exactly shy away from purchases either; is it likely that the only reason they haven't made an offer anti-trust regulations?

frik 10y ago
Wouldn't be allowed, right? That would position Intel as absolute monopolist on desktop, server and mobile CPU. Intel CPU cost already way to much due to lacking competition from the only left x64 vendor AMD which is years behind. And Intel slowed down the release of faster CPUs. Where are the 8 and 16 core CPUs? Where are the 5+ GHz CPUs? Why hasn't the single core performance advanced that much (if you discount the advance of memory speed) since 2004 (Pentium 4 era).
- mandeepj 10y ago
  10 core is coming - http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/core-i7ee-processor.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/core-...
  - eatbitseveryday 10y ago
    Intel already sells 18-core processors, granted they are server chips, not desktop chips.
    - mandeepj 10y ago
      Thanks. AMD is coming with 32 cores - http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222921-amd-is-supposedly-planning-a-32-core-cpu-with-an-eight-channel-ddr4-interface http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222921-amd-is-supposedly-...
      - eatbitseveryday 10y ago
        48-core ARM processors already exist[1] but via the vendor Cavium. The takeaway is that multi-core is continuing very much so. edit: I just looked; Intel has Haswell-based server processors with 24 physical cores[2] [1] http://www.cavium.com/newsevents_Cavium_Introduces_ThunderX_A_2.5_GHz_48_Core_Family_of_Workload_Optimized_Processors_for_Next_Generation_Data_Center_and_Cloud_Applications.html http://www.cavium.com/newsevents_Cavium_Introduces_ThunderX_... [2] http://ark.intel.com/products/93790/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-8890-v4-60M-Cache-2_20-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/93790/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-...
- creshal 10y ago
  > Why hasn't the single core performance advanced that much (if you discount the advance of memory speed) since 2004 (Pentium 4 era). It has, but you have to use AVX and other new instruction sets. Singlethreaded, a fifth-gen Core m5 tablet CPU can be as fast as a first-gen Core i Xeon workstation CPU, and a sixth gen i7 desktop CPU can be twice as fast as both: https://admin.tao.at/post/evolution-of-cpu-efficiency/ https://admin.tao.at/post/evolution-of-cpu-efficiency/ (Sadly I don't have any Pentium 4s left to compare on. And of the Core2 generation only laptops.)
  - flamedoge 10y ago
    It seems like a lot of new tech went into AVX and increasing both width and number of vector registers. Kind of makes you doubt whether single-threaded performance is just a mask for wider execution pipe underneath.
- redtuesday 10y ago
  Are you sure about the single thread performance? Because the jump from Pentium 3 to Pentium 4 was not that large, but the jump from Pentium 4 to Core 2 Duo (2006) was. All the jumps after that (Nehalem etc.) were larger than the jumps we have nowdays, and the jump to Sandy Bride (2011) was really large. Only since then has the single thread performance stagnated. Cinebench R10 32 bit single thread scores: Intel Pentium 4 660 - 3.60 Ghz - 2245 Points AMD Athlon X2 6000+ - 3.00 Ghz - 2848 Points Intel Core2 Duo E8400 - 3.00 Ghz - 3647 Points AMD Phenom II X6 1075T - 3.00 Ghz - 3820 Points AMD FX 8320E - 3.20 Ghz - 4056 Points Intel Core i7 950 - 3.06 Ghz - 4353 Points Intel Core i7 3930 - 3.20 Ghz - 6268 Points Intel Core i7 5960X - 3.00 Ghz - 6950 Points
  - StillBored 10y ago
    I'm not sure that cinebench is a good single thread benchmark because its basically a benchmark of how many vector ops you can run in parallel. But using it allows people to print pretty charts like you have there, as will benchmarks doing AES encryption, or any other "special purpose" instructions that have been added to the CPU in recent history. A better traditional single thread benchmarks might be spec int base minus libquantum. That tests things like how good the branch predictors are relative to pipeline depth, how fast dependent instructions or pointer chasing can be handled, etc.
    - redtuesday 10y ago
      Yes, I was not really sure how representable Cinebench is, hence my question how sure the parent is. But the benchmarks were easy to come by (back when I posted them already a while back). The only other benchmark I could find that had CPUs from Pentium 4 up to Haswell was Geekbench. Would love to see someone do a benchmark like that (would do it myself if I had enough spare money), with equal clock and memory bandwith etc. EDIT: after reading the critique about libquantum on wikipedia I'm even more interested in the benchmarks. "In the SpecInt2006 benchmarks, the 462.libquantum benchmark is highly vectorizable. The baseline computer for all benchmarks is a 1997 Sun Ultrasparc server computer. Whereas most of the spec sub-benchmarks turn in a performance improvement of about 5x to 80x times faster than the Ultrasparc, the particular 462.libquantum sub-benchmark turns in a result that is up to 4082 times faster than the Sun Ultrasparc .[3] This suggests that for this sub-benchmark, most of the improvements over the Ultrasparc are due to vectorizing compiler improvements, NOT due to CPU hardware improvements, since 1997."
phire 10y ago
Intel has already sold off their successful line of ARM chips ages ago and instead focused on domination via the x86 architecture (Which only Intel and AMD are licensed to make). I'm not sure Intel would want to also take full control of ARM chips regardless of Antitrust regulations. Whoever buys ARM can keep collecting the licensing fees, perhaps even increase the fees a bit. No platform is particularly tied to ARM in the long run, they just use it because ARM chips are cheap, fast and power efficient. If Intel tried to change the ARM licensing deals in monopolistic ways, then everyone would simply move to new chips. For example, Android has always been reasonably platform agnostic with their Java layer and Apple have been introducing platform independant binaries.
perseusprime11 10y ago
Why is it Anti-trust? Intel makes chips and ARM does not make chips.
- scott_s 10y ago
  But they both design chips. And combined, they design most of the chips in the PC, server, mobile and tablet market.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Control of the intellectual property. Intel already controls what's in most desktops since Apple ditched PowerPC. No competition there across the globe. Tablets and mobiles were the challengers eating into that market share. ARM dominates there with its I.P. in almost everything that's mainstream with over 10 major companies licensing the I.P. for their own chips. If Intel owned that, they'd control the I.P. behind most of their rivals. Finally, there's the server situation where, although more ISA competition, x86 still dominates. Letting Intel have ARM would certainly be an antitrust situation given the sheer dominance Intel's I.P. would have at that point.
gumby 10y ago
Buying ARM wouldn't help Intel, that's why. I assume you ask this question because ARM is absolutely killing Intel on mobile CPUs. Worse, Intel has tried to get into that space and ARM has handed Intel its head more than once. So this is not a dumb question. But ARM makes a trivially small amount per CPU manufactured, making it up on volume. Intel takes a large amount of both revenue and profit on each piece silicon that goes out. And you can see the result: Intel's market cap is still 5X ARM's ($160 Bn to 30 Bn). As an individual investor ARM is (was -- assuming this buyout goes through) probably a better investment than Intel since Intel is struggling to find new markets to expand into, with most of its revenue coming from a dead end business (PCs) while ARM is being pulled by many people into new, growth businesses. But because of its business model, an ARM acquisition would dilute Intel's results (its margin would drop). For smaller companies it's OK to "eat your own lunch." This was in fact Sun's principle (which didn't work out for them so well) and Apple's (which has, so far). But when you get to be huge, it's hard to move the needle in a way that appeals to investors. Look at Apple: they have a crummy iPad business that, were it standalone, would be one of the phenomenal businesses of the decade. But when mixed in with the rest of Apple, it's simply blah. == Separately, I remain astonished that Intel killed its StrongARM business line. They definitely had the best ARM on the market and it played, I think, to their strengths. I think they were just afraid that it attacked their brand, which at the time was very expensive CPUs. But they could be dominating the mobile market now.
- jldugger 10y ago
  > As an individual investor ARM is (was -- assuming this buyout goes through) probably a better investment than Intel since Intel is struggling to find new markets to expand. Well, ARM doesn't have those pesky chip fabs on their balance sheets, that's the licensee's problem. Accordingly, they have a profit margin of 30 percent, compared to INTC's 20.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]