3 ms·

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 d

by 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.

by paulmd 6y ago

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.