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Qualcomm to Acquire Nuvia: A CPU Magnitude Shift
- arusahni 6y agoI initially read this as "NVidia". I'm still recovering from the shock.
- jannes 6y agoHappened to me too. I was already thinking about Qualcomm suddenly owning ARM (through Nvidia) and how anti-competitive that would be.
- shroom 6y agoThink everyone did :D
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m463 6y ago"all new phones will have 12-pin charging connectors" :)
- arusahni 6y ago"... and be dual-width"
- jabl 6y agoThat's kind of interesting considering Qualcomm spent plenty-o-millions not many years ago to develop the ARM64 Falcor core and Centriq server SoC, only to throw it all away just before it was supposed to hit the market.
- klelatti 6y agoThat was in response to the Broadcom bid I think? Corporate vandalism.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wyldfire 6y agoIt is a shame but I think they figured they had to go on a diet or risk an LBO.
- robocat 6y agoIs this a common scenario? Bet all capital on a new product, and get bought out at the low point in market valuation: before the product has shown promise and the market price has still not recovered? Edit: I am wondering about older companies more than startups (presumably it is more common for startups that look like failing but are actually on brink of success).
- wyldfire 6y agoI don't think it's common, no. In the 1980s I think it happened more often (because they had a lot of assets that weren't reflected in the valuation maybe?). But in Qualcomm's case they were arguably undervalued because of ongoing regulation/lawsuits regarding their licensing practices. IIRC they had shipped their Amberwing Centriq CPU but the reception was kinda lukewarm. AWS ended up introducing Graviton not long after - presumably AWS wouldn't have sourced Centriq if they had their own designs in the works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Centriq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Centriq
- imtringued 6y agoThat's how every ARM server project ends. This is not going to be different.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- modeless 6y agoI hope this means they are at least going to try to catch Apple. The complete lack of effort by them on the CPU side has been sad. Given hardware timelines, though, I'm sure any improvement is many years away.
- rektide 6y ago$1.4 billion. Wow. That's a lot of dough. I feel like 202x might be another decade where no new chip making companies emerge. I had great hopes for Nuvia becoming one of them. My first most primitive reaction is that this is like another PA Semi[1]: great talent & new prospects, fresh air, vanishing into one of the super-massive existing players. Qualcomm does some open source work, but most of the support comes from outside engineers reverse engineering their products or otherwise doing the work[2]. The Freedreno graphics driver for example allows their gpu to be used (OpenGL, Vulkan drivers), & has been a huge effort. That work mostly comes from Google engineers like Rob Clark (who started Freedreno iirc), Eric Anholt, Igalia engineers like Danil, & countless others[3]. In the wifi-router world, where Qualcomm also has a huge presence, we rely on hunting around for open-source code drops of what usually seems like pretty old but better than we've got code, such as this recent find[4], which is hopefully going to help us catch a couple years up in support level to what Qualcomm is doing today. Nuvia explicitly stated they wanted to chase hyperscaler market. And I think a lot of this was positioning. That hyper-scalers wanted good tech, would use good tech. Where-as a lot of the world, they want what they have but better, a lot of legacy concerns, hand holding. Nuvia wanted to build a new platform, a good, well supported platform, with next-gen technologies. We were all expecting open-source perhaps Rust-based firmwares & management systems, pursuant to latest OpenCompute Project specs &c. They were clear about targetting hyper-scalers, & big chips, but somehow the hope always was that they'd help reform & reshape computing & what was available to everyone. They certainly talked the good game, sounded real good on Twitter. Ah well. [1] https://venturebeat.com/2012/09/18/more-details-shake-loose-on-apples-a6-chip-including-a-500m-development-effort/ https://venturebeat.com/2012/09/18/more-details-shake-loose-... [2] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Qualcomm https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Qualcomm [3] https://github.com/mesa3d/mesa/commits/master/src/freedreno https://github.com/mesa3d/mesa/commits/master/src/freedreno [4] https://forum.openwrt.org/t/adding-openwrt-support-for-xiaomi-ax3600/55049/60 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/adding-openwrt-support-for-xiaom...
- Iolaum 6y agoDo I remember wrong that Nuvia higher ups have stated that they wanted to bring products to market rather than get acquired? P.S. I know such statements shouldn't be taken at face value anyway. Just curious.
- nirv 6y agoQuite sad news, to be honest. I hoped that Nuvia, given its great team of ex-Apple CPU architect engineers, would maintain its independence and become a full-fledged competitor in the desktop and server market. Instead, they sold to a company that is often described as "the Oracle of hardware companies" and "a law firm with a few engineers"[1][2][3]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18333270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18333270 [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-22/qualcomm-shares-drop-after-company-loses-u-s-antitrust-ruling https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-22/qualcomm-... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/71rjyx/why_exynos_is_not_used_by_samsung_in_the_us/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/71rjyx/why_exynos_...
- blinkingled 6y agoBut on the other hand they didn't have many other viable options did they? Their expertise is ARM and they need a BigCo to back their R&D and subsequently manufacturing. So that leaves them with Nvidia and Samsung as options.
- wmf 6y agoNo, I think they could survive independently on VC funding.
- blinkingled 6y agoHaving read HN I got the impression that VC funding isn't always a good thing either. How is VC funding at this level better? (It might well be I just don't have any insight.)
- wmf 6y agoI don't know which route is better (clearly the Nuvia team decided to accept the acquisition) but I think independence would have been possible.
- wyldfire 6y ago
- solarkraft 6y agoIs it true that this will uniquely position them to compete with Apple's processors while everyone keeps having to use the bog standard (and apparently not that amazing) Cortex cores? Are there other companies able to produce promising cores/any that could develop a serious M1 competitor? Was this acquisition mostly fueled by M1 hype (i.e. "Cortext chips are just fine")?
- ksec 6y agoReplying to distract myself from the Intel news. Nuvia has shown [1] they have designs with Pref Per Watts that rivals or exceed Apple's current A14. Normally these sort of pre-design and slides should be taken with a big pinch of salt from Startup. But this is from Gerard Williams, ARM Fellow and Architect of all current Apple CPU design. So i think they are plausible. The improvement in Single Thread Performance is what Qualcomm desperately needs for their SnapDragon SoC. It will also reboot their ARM on Server work now that Apple and Amazon has the ball rolling. Tremendous respect for CEO Steven Mollenkopf, retiring later this summer. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15967/nuvia-phoenix-targets-50-st-performance-over-zen-2-for-only-33-power https://www.anandtech.com/show/15967/nuvia-phoenix-targets-5...
- BugsJustFindMe 6y ago> Nuvia has shown [1] they have designs with Pref Per Watts that rivals or exceed Apple's current A14. Your linked article 1) doesn't mention A14, and 2) only contains a marketing image for something that didn't yet exist. It doesn't appear like they _showed_ anything. Did you mean to link to a different article?
- IanCutress 6y agoThe article was published pre-A14. The A14 results can be found elsewhere on the same website.
- BugsJustFindMe 6y agoAnd can Nuvia results be found anywhere, or is it just a marketing graphic?
- liminal 6y agoMicrosoft must be kicking themselves for not acquiring them
- gigatexal 6y agoQualcomm CPUs for both mobile and non-mobile should be even more compelling in the near future with this acquisition. Apple has a legit competitor here.
- tambourine_man 6y agoWhat are the chances of lawsuits in the near future? Not my area of expertise by a long shot, but Qualcomm and Apple are not strangers in court and acquiring a slew of ex-Apple CPU engineers is probably like trowing gas on that fire.
- wmf 6y agoThe lawsuit is already happening: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-14/nuvia-exec-sued-by-apple-says-it-poached-from-his-startup https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-14/nuvia-exe...
- tambourine_man 6y agoYeah, I remember that one and was referring to it as well. What I mean is, what are the chances of new ones in light of this acquisition? Or is this old one not settled yet and it’s still the same case?
- avrionov 6y ago> NUVIA was originally founded in February 2019 Do they hold the record for the fastest and most profitable exit?
- WatchDog 6y ago1.4B, not bad for 2 years of work.
- person_of_color 6y agoWhat sort of exit would a staff engineer get here?
- bitcoinmoney 6y agoSeems like it is a an acquihire. I know somebody who said he gets a modest amount. Seems like they sold out too quickly? Series C or D would be better. But they just had A and sold out without a product?
- person_of_color 6y agoDid they even tape out? They probably got equivalent to staff engineer rsu refresher.
- _chris_ 6y agoBut if you sell out after Series A you should have a ton of equity still left with little dilution? In this case, it looks like they did a $50M Series A and a $240M Series B. IIRC, 5x is respectable, but I can imagine the VCs might be on multipliers here and eat away quite a bit of the common stock.