4 ms·

Bye bye ARM Mali =(

paulmd 6y ago
This is NVIDIA's "xbox one/PS4" moment. AMD has deals with console manufacturers, their clients pay for a huge amount of R&D that gets ported back into AMD's desktop graphics architecture. Even if AMD doesn't make basically anything on the consoles themselves, it's a huge win for their R&D. Now, every reference-implementation ARM processor manufactured will fund GeForce desktop products, datacenter/enterprise, etc as well. NVIDIA definitely needs something like this in the face of the new Samsung deal, as well as AMD's pre-existing console deals.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  If I was an nVidia shareholder I wouldn’t want ARM profits to subsidise GPU development. GPU profits should be able to cover their own R&D, especially given the obscene prices on the high end cards.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    Why not? The winning strategy since the 2000s have been to reinvest all profits into growing the business; not trying to chase juicy margins.
- fluffything 6y ago
  > Now, every reference-implementation ARM processor manufactured will fund GeForce desktop products, datacenter/enterprise, etc as well. That's like throwing pennies onto a pile of gold. NVIDIA makes billions of yearly revenue. ARM makes ~300 million. NVIDIA revenue is 60% of a GPU price. ARM margins in IoT/embedded/phone chips are thin-to-non-existent. If anything, NVIDIA will need to cut GPU spending to push ARM to the moon. And the announcement already suggest that this will happen.
  - janoc 6y ago
    ARM doesn't make any chips. They license IP (CPU cores and the MALI GPU) needed to build those chips to companies like Apple, Samsung, TI, ST Micro, Microchip, Qualcomm ... That margins on $1 microcontroller are "thin-to-non-existent" is thus completely irrelevant - those are margins of the silicon manufacturer, not ARM's.
    - fluffything 6y ago
      So what's the marging of ARM per chip bought? ARM's IP isn't free. It is created by engineers that cost money. Those chip sell for 0.10$, so ARM's margin's can't be more than 0.10$ per chip, otherwise seller would be operating at a loss.
- hajile 6y ago
  It's also constraining. Console makers dictated that RDNA must use a forward-compatible version of the GCN ISA. While AMD might have wanted to make some changes of some ideas that turned out to be less-than-optimal, they cannot because they are stopped by the console makers paying the bills.
joshvm 6y ago
Is the situation better with Mali? This seems something that might actually improve with Nvidia. I was under the impression that ARM GPUs are currently heavily locked down anyway (in terms of open source drivers). Nvidia would presumably still be locked down, but maybe we'd have more uniform cross platform interfaces like CUDA.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  Tegra open source support is great and actually supported by NVIDIA. Probably the best ARM GPU option for open source drivers. Mali support is done by outside groups (not ARM). Midgard and Bifrost models are well supported (anything that starts with a T or G, respectively). Support for older models is a little worse, but better than some other GPUs. Adreno support is done by outside groups (not Qualcomm) and is lagging behind new GPUs that come out considerably. PowerVR GPUs (Imagination) have terrible open source support.
  - rhn_mk1 6y ago
    Tegra the chipset is supported by Nvidia, but even then they are not a paragon of cooperation with the Linux community. They have their own non-mainlined driver, while the mainlined one (tegra) is done by someone else. They did contribute somewhat to the "tegra" driver at least.
janoc 6y ago
Frankly, good riddance.

Bye bye ARM Mali =(

This is NVIDIA's "xbox one/PS4" moment. AMD has deals with console manufacturers, their clients pay for a huge amount of R&D that gets ported back into AMD's desktop graphics architecture. Even if AMD doesn't make basically anything on the consoles themselves, it's a huge win for their R&D. Now, every reference-implementation ARM processor manufactured will fund GeForce desktop products, datacenter/enterprise, etc as well. NVIDIA definitely needs something like this in the face of the new Samsung deal, as well as AMD's pre-existing console deals.

mr_toad 6y ago
If I was an nVidia shareholder I wouldn’t want ARM profits to subsidise GPU development. GPU profits should be able to cover their own R&D, especially given the obscene prices on the high end cards.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Why not? The winning strategy since the 2000s have been to reinvest all profits into growing the business; not trying to chase juicy margins.
fluffything 6y ago
> Now, every reference-implementation ARM processor manufactured will fund GeForce desktop products, datacenter/enterprise, etc as well. That's like throwing pennies onto a pile of gold. NVIDIA makes billions of yearly revenue. ARM makes ~300 million. NVIDIA revenue is 60% of a GPU price. ARM margins in IoT/embedded/phone chips are thin-to-non-existent. If anything, NVIDIA will need to cut GPU spending to push ARM to the moon. And the announcement already suggest that this will happen.
- janoc 6y ago
  ARM doesn't make any chips. They license IP (CPU cores and the MALI GPU) needed to build those chips to companies like Apple, Samsung, TI, ST Micro, Microchip, Qualcomm ... That margins on $1 microcontroller are "thin-to-non-existent" is thus completely irrelevant - those are margins of the silicon manufacturer, not ARM's.
  - fluffything 6y ago
    So what's the marging of ARM per chip bought? ARM's IP isn't free. It is created by engineers that cost money. Those chip sell for 0.10$, so ARM's margin's can't be more than 0.10$ per chip, otherwise seller would be operating at a loss.
hajile 6y ago
It's also constraining. Console makers dictated that RDNA must use a forward-compatible version of the GCN ISA. While AMD might have wanted to make some changes of some ideas that turned out to be less-than-optimal, they cannot because they are stopped by the console makers paying the bills.

joshvm 6y ago

Is the situation better with Mali? This seems something that might actually improve with Nvidia. I was under the impression that ARM GPUs are currently heavily locked down anyway (in terms of open source drivers). Nvidia would presumably still be locked down, but maybe we'd have more uniform cross platform interfaces like CUDA.

CameronNemo 6y ago
Tegra open source support is great and actually supported by NVIDIA. Probably the best ARM GPU option for open source drivers. Mali support is done by outside groups (not ARM). Midgard and Bifrost models are well supported (anything that starts with a T or G, respectively). Support for older models is a little worse, but better than some other GPUs. Adreno support is done by outside groups (not Qualcomm) and is lagging behind new GPUs that come out considerably. PowerVR GPUs (Imagination) have terrible open source support.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  Tegra the chipset is supported by Nvidia, but even then they are not a paragon of cooperation with the Linux community. They have their own non-mainlined driver, while the mainlined one (tegra) is done by someone else. They did contribute somewhat to the "tegra" driver at least.

janoc 6y ago

Frankly, good riddance.