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Trump Issues Order to Block Broadcom’s Takeover of Qualcomm
- busterarm 9y agoGood. Broadcom is far too happy to release undocumented garbage.
- gowld 9y agoIs Qualcomm better?
- bhouston 9y agoQualcomm gpus have so many webgl bugs and they never get fixed via driver updates. I have run into 3 different ones in my three.js work. Now getting acquired by broadcom probably wouldn't have changed things.
- petecox 9y agoIt is curious that Qualcomm continues to develop their own closed source driver instead of throwing their weight behind Rob Clark's Freedreno initiative. Broadcom at least pay someone to develop a FOSS driver for the VideoCore IV and V, as found in the rPi.
- wtallis 9y agoThe situation has historically been the exact opposite for WiFi drivers, where Broadcom is the obstinate closed-source vendor and Qualcomm-Atheros is the most open-source friendly vendor in that market.
- petecox 9y agoInteresting times for upstream Linux support; Qualcomm also hopes to acquire NXP - the chipmakers inside the etnaviv-driven Purism phone.
- paranoidrobot 9y agoNXP is also the company inside a pretty huge range of smartcard systems (eg travel cards, credit cards, etc)
- hedora 9y agoAtheros and Intel are by far the best WiFi options for Linux. However, Atheros lean heavily on a giant closed baseband processor blob that does most of the heavy lifting. I’m not sure how true this is of the Intel chipsets.
- busterarm 9y agoiwlwifi (and iwn on the BSD side) have always non-free.
- wtallis 9y agoAtheros only started using proprietary firmware with their 802.11ac generation. (Some of the older USB adapters also needed firmware but there's open firmware available.) Intel's been using proprietary firmware blobs basically forever. Everybody uses proprietary firmware for their 802.11ac adapters. Mediatek has gotten some interest because the firmware for some of their 802.11ac chips is fairly minimal and doesn't get in the way of substantially improving the open-source drivers.
- throwaway2048 9y agoAtheros -WAS- great, before qualcomm took them over, open source drivers, great chipsets and even open source firmware. Post qualcomm takover, their new chipsets are all heavily locked down, and only functional with a huge closed source driver-esque firmware megablob that is buggy and preforms poorly. You cant even set your mac address anymore. Tying qualcomm to the atheros reputation for open source friendly chipsets is an insult.
- stefan_ 9y agoI mean, they are paying.. one guy. And god knows he has done a better job than their 10s of in-house developers, but then again this is also an ancient chip and Broadcom doesn't even do graphics silicon anymore. Curiously Qualcomm have been submitting more and more, big, patches for the MSM subsystem, the Linux in-kernel part of the Freedreno graphics driver. I think someone has finally woken up and told management that Linux doesn't take two drivers for the same hardware, and once that reverse-engineered stuff was in the tree, you are royally fucked because you now have to play by the rules of whoever is maintaining it if you want to have any hope of upstreaming your proprietary driver. This is pretty much the situation for the Vivante polluters. They have been so ridiculously ungrateful for the Linux stuff that makes the chips run for the SoC companies that want to integrate their silicon that by now there is a reverse-engineered driver (Etnaviv) in the tree. They are shut out. And on a longer timescale, the same is coming up for ARM and it's Mali (Lima project).
- jdoliner 9y agoI sincerely hope that this was Trump's reasoning for the ban. He was so sick and tired of having to muddle through Broadcom's undocumented garbage that he just got fed up and decided to spike their acquisition.
- dictum 9y ago"FAILING Broadcom keeps churning out illegal garbage. Loser Dems call it "undocumented silicon" - complete BS. Sad!" (I'm wary of redditifying HN but I just had to let this out.)
- busterarm 9y agoMake Chipsets Great Again
- aargh_aargh 9y agoI choose to believe this is the latest battle in Trump's fight against undocumented foreigners.
- Amygaz 9y agoDocumented or undocumented, it doesn't matter, as long as they are foreigner, even if they are born in the US, they should be on the oder side of the wall
- dang 9y agoThis comment breaks the HN guidelines. Would you please read them and keep this kind of thing off this site in the future? We're hoping not to go up in flames like so much of the internet. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Analemma_ 9y agoThis is the right decision, but is it normal for M&As to be blocked by executive order rather than by a DOJ decision, or is this a Trump thing?
- tlb 9y agoIt has happened 4 times before, once by the current administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States#Notable_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen...
- kyrra 9y agoMy previous employer (Sourcefire) was blocked from being bought by Checkpoint by CFIUS. Though the president didn't sign an order, the deal got a lot of scrutiny and likely would have been blocked. https://www.securityfocus.com/news/11382 https://www.securityfocus.com/news/11382 I wonder how many cases there were like this.
- jopsen 9y ago> Trump acted on a recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. Seems legit. I know we all love to bash Trump, but he might not be entirely evil. Sometimes he's not treated fairly, that said it's all well deserved that's for sure :)
- robbiet480 9y agoRumour about Intel fighting the merger just broke a couple of hours ago... https://www.recode.net/2018/3/12/17107910/intel-broadcom-qualcomm-chipmaker-acquisition-rival-facebook-ar-redditmeredith-museum-failure https://www.recode.net/2018/3/12/17107910/intel-broadcom-qua...
- sqdbps 9y agoMore like 3 days ago: https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-considers-possible-bid-for-broadcom- https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-considers-possible-bid-fo...
- sova 9y agoIt's good news. State-sponsored 5G in the USA would be great, and unprecedented. Hopefully we can agree on that.
- tlb 9y agoWhy? Obviously we all want faster mobile data, but how do you think the government will improve on what telcos would do on their own?
- throwawaygov3 9y agoWell, the difference is that I can’t vote AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon out in four years.
- arenaninja 9y agoI have a hard time seeing how government would do a better job. When I didn't like my 4G coverage by T-Mobile I switched to AT&T, higher price but far better coverage. What recourse do you have against a government gone rogue except to wait 4 years? It sounds to me like you're describing a step backwards
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hedora 9y agoI switched to tracfone. They’re run by a mexican firm at least as big and evil as any of the US telcos, but you can choose to use any one of the big three networks, and for about a third of less of what I paid before, so it must be dumping less $$$ into the ethical sink hole that is the cell phone industry. I strongly recommend sonic.net and unwired ltd if they have coverage where you are (sf, north and east bay, mostly) I wish municipal broadband was the rule in the US instead of the exception. It’s much easier to vote your local mayor out than it is to vote the president and majority of congress out, especially over a local government service issue.
- 9y ago
- OrganicMSG 9y agoAm interested that they also blocked the sale of Lattice, as I just started teaching myself the icestorm toolchain for coding their fpgas.
- thinkloop 9y ago> "There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Broadcom Ltd." by acquiring Qualcomm "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," Trump said in the order released Monday evening in Washington. > The government said it feared Broadcom would cut investment in research and development in order to increase short-term profits. That could allow Chinese companies to become the dominant supplier, the U.S. said. The definition of "national security" keeps getting looser over the years.
- andybak 9y ago"What's good for General Motors is good for America"? And let's not talk about where the term "Banana Republic" originated. Moving away from the US - thus it has always been. The good old East India Company springs to mind.
- seorphates 9y agoThat doesn't seem too far off the mark. On the craftiness of nation states scale that's maybe, what, a 2?
- maxander 9y agoI suspect the issue is that, if whole classes of chips that are important for military purposes (wireless communications, for example) are made exclusively by China, they could put in backdoors and other traps that would compromise U.S. military hardware. I haven't seen anyone discuss this angle openly, though, so either I'm off base somehow or it's not something the U.S. wants to loudly discuss (because they're likely doing it too.)
- tooltalk 9y agoNobody is looking at it from that angle because Broadcomm is not a Chinese company. So, yes, you are way off on this. The Trump admin is essentially running on exophobia to push all their trade policies (eg, steel tariff where Canada and Mexico are the top exporters.
- 9y ago
- cylinder 9y agoHah... Trump just gave a warm reception to Broadcom ceo at the oval office only four months ago, as a reward for moving their HQ from Singapore to the US! Great to see that commitment rewarded
- chapill 9y agoWhen someone visits your home, they are your guest, and they treat it as a privilege to be there. If they don't, you kick them out and don't invite them back. It was Broadcom CEOs privilege to be a guest in the White House, not the other way round.
- sqdbps 9y agoWill Broadcom still move their HQ to the US? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-m-a-broadcom/singapore-based-broadcom-to-redomicile-to-us-by-april-3-idUSKCN1GO15X https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-m-a-broadcom/sin... And will Intel buy any of the companies involved? https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-considers-possible-bid-for-broadcom- https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-considers-possible-bid-fo...
- adventured 9y agoYes, it's practically guaranteed Broadcom will still relocate to the US. For at least two reasons. 1) The domicile issue nearly prevented Broadcom from acquiring Brocade previously. They're going to continue to get blocked, as CFIUS gets more aggressive. There's zero benefit to remaining in Singapore for Broadcom. Their corporate income tax rate is barely lower than the US now as well. 2) Broadcom may want to attempt another shot at acquiring Qualcomm later, or perhaps another large US tech trophy. They won't be able to do that from Singapore.
- helthanatos 9y agoThis is good, as it seemed Intel was about to buy broadcom after it bought Qualcomm. Considering they're all the main competitors for chipsets and such, this prevents [complete monopolization] of those markets. These companies remaining under different companies at least lets fail and succeed with their own style
- nodesocket 9y agoFrom what I've heard the Intel to buy Broadcom rumor was absurd and never going to happen.
- dmode 9y agoWhat nonsense. Now any unilateral measures can be imposed in the name of “national security”.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoIf national security doesn't work, interstate commerce has been working pretty well for both parties whenever it suits them too.
- oh_sigh 9y agoHow is the situation now different than it has been in the past?
- TylerE 9y ago"Now"? Patriot act, et. al.
- BenSahar 9y agoWith the dearth of positive news coming out of this administration, I'll take this win. That a boy, Trump.
- antoncohen 9y agoBut Broadcom is an American company. Avago was spun out of HP in 1999 (American). They were acquired by KKR and Silver Lake Partners in 2005 (both American). Listed on the NASDAQ in 2009. Bought CyOptics in 2013 (American). Bought LSI in 2013 (American). Bought PLX in 2014 (American). Bought Emulex in 2015 (American). And finally bought Broadcom in 2015, closing in January 2016 (American). Then they renamed themselves Broadcom. They moved their legal address from Singapore to Delaware in 2017. Sure their current CEO (Tan Hock Eng) was born in Malaysia, but he has been an executive at various American companies for decades. They are American all the way down.
- c1utch1 9y agoNot true. Moving your legal address to the US doesn't make it a US company. The headquarters is currently in Singapore.
- steviecleveland 9y agoWasn't Broadcom founded by a few UCLA folks in the early 90's?
- oldgradstudent 9y agoBroadcom was acquired by Avago, which then changed its name to Broadcom.
- ryanhuff 9y agoYes. The founders still have some involvement in the company that acquired Broadcom a couple of years ago.
- adventured 9y agoThey're owned by American capital, they're controlled and influenced by a lot of American interests, sure. They're not domiciled in the US any longer. That's a critical legal aspect for CFIUS as it pertains to national security and jurisdiction. It'd be like if Yahoo and SoftBank controlled the majority of Alibaba presently (SoftBank for its part still has 29%). That still wouldn't give them control of Alibaba due to the broader context of China. The fact of the matter would be, Alibaba would still a Chinese corporation that operates under Chinese law.
- exabrial 9y agoBoth of the companies need a lot of competition. Nice.
- anilshanbhag 9y agoIf you look at CNBC video on the deal (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/12/us-tells-broadcom-it-confirmed-security-concerns-in-qualcomm-deal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/12/us-tells-broadcom-it-confirm...) which talks about the Government concerns there are two parts: 1) Its a foreign company takeover. This will not hold as Broadcom is domiciling in the US soon. 2) Broadcom has publicly stated that it intends to do private equity style management. They are going to add $100B in debt - which might make them cut R&D. For its size, Qualcomm spends significantly more on R&D and has been a pioneer of many technologies. CFIUS contends this is a natural security concern. Any reduction in US R&D spend on key technologies like 5G will lead to China filling the void.
- greglindahl 9y agoCIFUS doesn't exist to force US companies to spend money on R&D.
- anilshanbhag 9y agoCIFUS advises the President on deals by foreign companies which are threats to national security. They strongly feel this deal falls in this bucket.
- mevile 9y agoIs there a free market argument in favor of the take over? Seems like almost nobody wanted this. How did the market go wrong here?
- adventured 9y agoThe market is made of fallible humans with their individual goals, agendas, egos, whatever. It's not an organism of its own. There's nothing about market systems that typically prevent stupid decisions. The market system, in theory and often in practice, delivers consequences from stupid decisions (see: IBM's current weakened condition and recent 23 straight quarters of contracting sales, while they blow all their profit on share buybacks and further concede the cloud biz - which they were early on - to AWS/Azure/Google). There are no systems that do not consist of fallible humans. Whether we're talking traditional Socialism, Communism, Fascism, mixed systems, quasi free market, laissez faire.
- ananthraghavan 9y agoThe takeover going through is the logical conclusion of free markets - a monopoly is very profitable for shareholders. All signs pointed to the market wanting this deal to go through, there was a Bloomberg article a couple weeks ago saying that half the votes counted indicated that all of Broadcom's candidates for the board would win.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- russellbeattie 9y agoWell... I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
- fiveFeet 9y agoThis whole episode showed how important Qualcom is for United States national security. It still looks like a potential acquisition target with a price tag set by Broadcom. If Intel acquires Broadcom (thus making it an American company) then it may go after Qualcom. Otherwise, Intel or someone with deep pockets may also try to acquire Qualcom directly.
- mankash666 9y agoThe better term is "national interest". Qualcomm is a world leading wireless technology innovator and it's domicile and ownership in the US is in the national interest. Manufacturing has already been lost to China, so has solar tech. China also edges US in areas where regulation is hairy, like genetic hybrids, cloning, etc. Henceforth, it's important to guard American leadership in technologies where it leads
- mpfundstein 9y agoThanks! I wish Europe would realize that as well...
- mobilefriendly 9y agoSorry that's a myth, Chinese growth isn't a zero sum game. In fact U.S. manufacturing has never been stronger: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-output-has-doubled-in-three-decades-2016-03-28 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outp...
- mankash666 9y agoYou've proven American manufacturing increased output despite outsourcing. You didn't prove that outsourcing hasn't cost America leadership in domains, and jobs. Until recently, the armed forces weren't able to procure clothing manufactured in the US, per federal law. That's how dire certain domains have gotten
- Camillo 9y agolol, what? Look at the graph in the article, output is only slightly above 2000 levels. What portion of the world's consumption of manufactured goods is made by the US? What portion of the US's own consumption? Those would give a better estimate of relative strength. If you make most of the product in China, then bring it to the us to put the final touches on it (https://imgur.com/PuyCZ https://imgur.com/PuyCZ), the final product counts as "US manufacturing output". Does that mean the US manufacturing sector is as strong as ever? Oh, the production of electronics is up! You make the IC in Taiwan, the circuit board and the power supply in China, the display in Korea, the case in China again, but you put them all together in an assembly line in the US. And because there's more people and more demand for gizmos, you can say that you make twice as many widgets now! Does that really mean American manufacturing has gotten "stronger"?
- Thinpad 9y agoI believe Jacobs family at the top were not going to let this M&A happen at any cost, especially giving control over to Hock Tan. They are very shrewd business folks (Jews aren't they), unfortunately, the heir to the empire turned out to be a bit more than play boy resulting in business going south.