7 ms·

> The rational for purchasing Arm seems ridiculous to many, but Jensen’s vision is for the datacenter being a computer and Nvidia being the one to build it. Th

> The rational for purchasing Arm seems ridiculous to many, but Jensen’s vision is for the datacenter being a computer and Nvidia being the one to build it. The thing is, there are 3 companies that control the future of datacenter growth. Amazon, Microsoft and Google. They can move the industry to RISC-V if NVidia doesn't play ball, or convince Intel to manufacture on TSMC's process. Nvidia won't be in a particularly strong negotiating position. My understanding is that lots of ARM licenses are perpetual, or very broad. The existing players can just keep making ARM chips, what can NVidia do to extract more money from them, new instructions?

walterbell 6y ago
It took Arm 20 years to achieve current success with substantial inroads into networking, mobile, automotive, servers (AWS & others) and desktops (Apple Silicon imminent). This is not the time to give up and start over. There are society-wide opportunity costs.
mumblemumble 6y ago
> what can NVidia do to extract more money from them, new instructions? I don't know what those perpetual licenses look like, but, if there are any strings attached at all, perhaps Nvidia can tug on them in order to apply a little good old-fashioned embrace-extend-extinguish to ARM? Extend ARM with new instructions that offer performance improvements when you've bought 100% into Nvidia hardware, maybe, and then stifle competition by making them implement these features in order to claim ARM compatibility, thereby making it more difficult/expensive for anyone else to pair ARM CPUs with other companies' GPUs?
- michaelt 6y ago
  In a string-tugging fight between AWS and ARM, you'd bet on ARM?
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    I don't see a fight between AWS and ARM as a realistic scenario. In The Great British Bake-Off, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood were competing against neither the contestants nor the baking challenges. Their involvement was defining the scoring rubric and selecting the winners. Similarly, AWS is in competition with nobody in this context. AWS just influences the competitive landscape and chooses who wins by awarding contracts.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
China is having issues with Arm and has a strategic view to develop its domestic industry. This alone means that a significant challenger to Arm will rise.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Interesting point, I don't believe I've heard about Chinese ARM processor, but I do know that China has MIPS based processors, and they're using VIAs license to build x86 chips.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    There was a drama at ARM China recently. The fired, but de-jure still acting CEO was caught self dealing with his own obscure fund company, some times with clients' assistance. IMHO, it simply looked like he was was quietly moving out cash from the company.
  - whereistimbo 6y ago
    Well, China has Rockchip and HiSillicon, although HiSillicon lost the right to manufacture in TSMC sometimes ago. Not only VIA, both Intel and AMD has joint venture in China to produce homegrown Chinese x86 chips.
- ENOTTY 6y ago
  China is heavily investing in RISC-V. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that their challenger will use a RISC-V ISA.
baybal2 6y ago
> The thing is, there are 3 companies that control the future of datacenter growth. Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The are big players in Internet business, but they are not big enough consumers to benefit economically from owning chips. Even if they will be all combined, they will not be even a double digit of top tier Xeon buyers. And this is partly the reason why AMD was so keen on playing ball with them. AMD among other things was making a proprietary CPU for Amazon, which the later discarded. It was later rebranded Seattle, and thrown on the open market.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > but they are not big enough consumers to benefit economically from owning chips. AWS Graviton 2 (Arm) would like a word about that with you. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/
  - baybal2 6y ago
    I bet they will eventually wrap it up, as they can't keep up with AMD, and Intel RnD, and given the restarting of competition in X86, and thus falling prices. Pretty much the only way they could've done that economically, in relative terms, was at the time of obscenely high prices on high core count xeons.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      My take on this is that the Graviton stuff exists to solve the Catch-22 problem: AWS wants you running ARM stuff, so they need to provide an ARM platform for you to do it on. Current suppliers may not be providing anything cloudy enough from the enterprise management side of things, so AWS might have to roll their own for now. Once the ball is rolling, they can get 3rd party ARM chips or full servers in and stop with their own development on that side if they want to.
      - fanf2 6y ago
        Amazon has been putting their own chips into systems for years, after they bought Annapurna Labs - they have hardware virtualisation support in their network and storage chips, and now their own CPU. This does not seem to be a short-term tactic.

walterbell 6y ago

It took Arm 20 years to achieve current success with substantial inroads into networking, mobile, automotive, servers (AWS & others) and desktops (Apple Silicon imminent). This is not the time to give up and start over. There are society-wide opportunity costs.

mumblemumble 6y ago

> what can NVidia do to extract more money from them, new instructions? I don't know what those perpetual licenses look like, but, if there are any strings attached at all, perhaps Nvidia can tug on them in order to apply a little good old-fashioned embrace-extend-extinguish to ARM? Extend ARM with new instructions that offer performance improvements when you've bought 100% into Nvidia hardware, maybe, and then stifle competition by making them implement these features in order to claim ARM compatibility, thereby making it more difficult/expensive for anyone else to pair ARM CPUs with other companies' GPUs?

michaelt 6y ago
In a string-tugging fight between AWS and ARM, you'd bet on ARM?
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I don't see a fight between AWS and ARM as a realistic scenario. In The Great British Bake-Off, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood were competing against neither the contestants nor the baking challenges. Their involvement was defining the scoring rubric and selecting the winners. Similarly, AWS is in competition with nobody in this context. AWS just influences the competitive landscape and chooses who wins by awarding contracts.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

China is having issues with Arm and has a strategic view to develop its domestic industry. This alone means that a significant challenger to Arm will rise.

mrweasel 6y ago
Interesting point, I don't believe I've heard about Chinese ARM processor, but I do know that China has MIPS based processors, and they're using VIAs license to build x86 chips.
- baybal2 6y ago
  There was a drama at ARM China recently. The fired, but de-jure still acting CEO was caught self dealing with his own obscure fund company, some times with clients' assistance. IMHO, it simply looked like he was was quietly moving out cash from the company.
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  Well, China has Rockchip and HiSillicon, although HiSillicon lost the right to manufacture in TSMC sometimes ago. Not only VIA, both Intel and AMD has joint venture in China to produce homegrown Chinese x86 chips.
ENOTTY 6y ago
China is heavily investing in RISC-V. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that their challenger will use a RISC-V ISA.

baybal2 6y ago

> The thing is, there are 3 companies that control the future of datacenter growth. Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The are big players in Internet business, but they are not big enough consumers to benefit economically from owning chips. Even if they will be all combined, they will not be even a double digit of top tier Xeon buyers. And this is partly the reason why AMD was so keen on playing ball with them. AMD among other things was making a proprietary CPU for Amazon, which the later discarded. It was later rebranded Seattle, and thrown on the open market.

viraptor 6y ago
> but they are not big enough consumers to benefit economically from owning chips. AWS Graviton 2 (Arm) would like a word about that with you. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/
- baybal2 6y ago
  I bet they will eventually wrap it up, as they can't keep up with AMD, and Intel RnD, and given the restarting of competition in X86, and thus falling prices. Pretty much the only way they could've done that economically, in relative terms, was at the time of obscenely high prices on high core count xeons.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    My take on this is that the Graviton stuff exists to solve the Catch-22 problem: AWS wants you running ARM stuff, so they need to provide an ARM platform for you to do it on. Current suppliers may not be providing anything cloudy enough from the enterprise management side of things, so AWS might have to roll their own for now. Once the ball is rolling, they can get 3rd party ARM chips or full servers in and stop with their own development on that side if they want to.
    - fanf2 6y ago
      Amazon has been putting their own chips into systems for years, after they bought Annapurna Labs - they have hardware virtualisation support in their network and storage chips, and now their own CPU. This does not seem to be a short-term tactic.