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> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up. That's a very

by tw04 6y ago

> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up. That's a very real concern with Softbank (and why I questioned why regulators were allowing the acquisition in the first place). I don't think you can be any further from the mark implying that's Nvidia's plan. Nvidia wants ARM to flourish, they would have no interest in killing it or selling it off once acquired. They already use ARM tech in their Tegra CPUs, and in the "Smart" NICs they acquired with Mellanox. Additionally they pre-announced a datacenter focused ARM chip just last week. They would have absolutely nothing to gain and a ton to lose if they were to kill off ARM or gut the technical talent.

robert_foss 6y ago
ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider. The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way.
- tw04 6y ago
  >ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which vendor would prefer to buy IP from direct competitor rather than from a neutral provider. I would imagine plenty. Take a look at the list of vendors that sell Nvidia GPUs despite the fact that Nvidia sells directly into the market. >The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way. I don't know, Intel's recent announcement that they're going to start licensing their IP directly contradicts that. I don't think Intel would waste what will likely be a fairly large amount of money spinning up a new business unit without first doing some market research and ensuring there's demand for it.
  - smachiz 6y ago
    When you're thirsty, you buy from the person selling water. I don't think you'll find a lot of love lost between the OXMs and nvidia. I'm sure they would love more competitors in the space. We have people licensing Arm and building interesting CPUs (Ampere). I'm not sure that the NVIDIA acquisition would be good for the market or for Arm.
    - tw04 6y ago
      You haven't explained why Intel is entering the licensing business. If vendors have no desire to get their licensing from a company that competes in the space, there should be no demand for licensing from Intel, all of those OXMs should be going to ARM.
      - smachiz 6y ago
        You haven't demonstrated that anyone /is/ entering into contracts with Intel. Intel has done lots of things that it turns out people didn't want to do (with them).
        tw04 6y ago
        They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced (that I've seen) but we already know they were doing custom designs for Facebook/Amazon/MS so they would be logical first-takers.
        Judgmentality 6y ago
        > They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced I can't tell if you're saying you have insider information or you're just assuming they're getting customers with no evidence.
        smachiz 6y ago
        None of those are OXMs and are the end customer. That is totally different than what your original assertion was.
        tw04 6y ago
        So tell me what an OXM is? Because Amazon sells outpost, an appliance, to end users. And Annapurna (owned by Amazon) sells CPUs to all sorts of vendors, including Ubiquiti and Synology.
      - 6y ago
- Vvector 6y ago
  The companies that directly compete with Nvidia (AMD & Intel) are not ARM customers. ARM's biggest customers are mobile phones, which could benefit from an Nvidia GPU
  - jorvi 6y ago
    Considering how well Apple's M1 is performing, I suspect within 10 years the majority of new desktops and laptops sold will be ARM-based, with both Intel and AMD having to either adapt or languish.
    - karteum 6y ago
      Difficult to forecast within 10 years... maybe you are right, maybe it could be Alibaba/Allwinner/Rockchip with RISC-V designs ! :D
    - hellotomyrars 6y ago
      I think this is accurate if we see a substantial uptake of cloud/remote services for what are currently the most common high demand compute consumer devices (Game consoles + PC). ARM is already proving to be a winner in the datacenter as it becomes available so it seems all but inevitable. I think the overall trend is still accurate and in either case ARM + Nvidia is (or would be) a compelling provider of hardware but the segment of the market that needs/relies on X86 architecture does seem to be shrinking.
  - adrian_b 6y ago
    Qualcomm is a direct competitor of NVIDIA (e.g. for automotive and robotics) and an important ARM customer. Until now the competing products of NVIDIA and Qualcomm differed in NVIDIA having worse CPUs and better GPUs and Qualcomm having better (ARM-designed) CPUs and worse GPUs. I do not find it believable that in the future NVIDIA would ever provide Qualcomm with better CPUs than those of NVIDIA products. Given NVIDIA's desire of dominating the datacenters, it is also hard to believe that they will give to all other companies who will attempt to design server CPUs new ARM cores at the same time when they will be available for the internal NVIDIA design teams.
- tokyojoe 6y ago
  Power consumption is a key application requirement for mobile. I don’t know that GPU’s are designed to run on the smell of an oil rag which the ARM processor cores do.
  - plekter 6y ago
    Mobile GPUs (Imagination PowerVR, Qualcomm Adreno, Arm Mali, Apple's GPU) are exactly that.
  - volta83 6y ago
    Doesn't NVIDIA ship the CPU for the Nintendo Switch? Not as low power as mobile phones, but not completely far away either.
- volta83 6y ago
  > ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, Why? > which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider. The same customers that buy NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA interconnects, support NVIDIA's software, etc. You seem to be suggesting that this "somehow" matters, but are not explaining "why" do you think this matters. AFAICT if AMD wants to ship a data-center node, it needs Mellanox interconnect, and has to buy that from NVIDIA, pretty much in the same way that NVIDIA ships AMD CPUs with their DGX boxes. There are dozens of thousands of pattents that all these companies need to buy from each other on a regular basis to function. I don't see how this particular change makes the status quo worse.
tokyojoe 6y ago
This reminds of the analyst who predicted AMD’s acquisition of ATI would kill off Intel. Nothing of the sort happened. If a chip supplier like Nvidia buys ARM and uses its products, it will ultimately have an outsize say over ARM’s product (actually IP) roadmaps. That’s not going to make ARM’s current customers happy. Nvidia want to diversify- that’s why they’ve targeted ARM. They don’t need the technology- it’s readily available to licence. Arm is valued at $40 billion on c. $ 2 billion in annual sales while Nvidia is valued at > $300 billion on $ 16 billion in sales. With a valuation of 300 billion, why buy ARM and almost certainly damage the ARM business model which is as an independent processor IP provider? And how will Huawei (and China), big ARM licensees, react to ARM being owned by a US company given the bad blood in that area. For ARM, it’s a strategic disaster IMV. Better to stay independent!
- volta83 6y ago
  > why buy ARM and almost certainly damage the ARM business model which is as an independent processor IP provider? That's the 40 billion dollar question, isn't it. Why are they doing this? I don't know, I guess they know something that I don't. What do you know that we don't ? :D > For ARM, it’s a strategic disaster IMV. Better to stay independent! How do you arrive at this conclusion? For all we know NVIDIA might (1) invest a lot more money into ARM, (2) improve their ecosystem, (3) start licensing their IP to third parties as well using a similar model to ARM, (4) start contributing more to open source like ARM does, etc.
  - tokyojoe 6y ago
    You have not given a single strategic imperative for the Nvidia acquisition. They have full access to the IP. The real issue here is Nvidia are hugely overvalued thanks to the vagaries of the US tech stock market and the ‘irrational exuberance’ that surrounds it. Just a short while ago, Tesla was valued at over $800 billion, Apple has topped a trillion and now Nvidia on $16 billion sales at >$300 billion. As a result that have a while loymtvof stock value burning a hole in their pocket and are looking for something to buy. Unfortunately, ARM is in the frame. When you make an acquisition, you have to ask whether it positions the combined business uniquely, will is cannibalise existing business (in this case almost certainly because ARM’s great appeal besides its IP and eco-system is that it is independent), will it move the stock price in the right direction, will it improve EBIT, what are the synergies etc etc. A typical M&A will invoke dozens of considerations like this. More investment into ARM? They own the mobile phone space - Apple, Samsung and almost every other brand (many in China where I worked for a few years). They’ve seen off Microchip in the general purpose 32 bit uC space and dominate IoT applications, Bluetooth etc. There’s nothing stopping Nvidia copying the existing ARM model right now. They don’t need to buy ARM to do that. Nvidia stock price will moderate down (as will all semiconductor companies in the coming months as the chip shortages abate) and with it a more realistic valuation. (What do I know? Been involved in a few M&A’s. ;) )

by tw04 6y ago

robert_foss 6y ago

ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider. The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way.

tw04 6y ago
>ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, which vendor would prefer to buy IP from direct competitor rather than from a neutral provider. I would imagine plenty. Take a look at the list of vendors that sell Nvidia GPUs despite the fact that Nvidia sells directly into the market. >The ecosystem business model that defines Arm simply doesn't have any space for them being perceived as biased this way or that way. I don't know, Intel's recent announcement that they're going to start licensing their IP directly contradicts that. I don't think Intel would waste what will likely be a fairly large amount of money spinning up a new business unit without first doing some market research and ensuring there's demand for it.
- smachiz 6y ago
  When you're thirsty, you buy from the person selling water. I don't think you'll find a lot of love lost between the OXMs and nvidia. I'm sure they would love more competitors in the space. We have people licensing Arm and building interesting CPUs (Ampere). I'm not sure that the NVIDIA acquisition would be good for the market or for Arm.
  - tw04 6y ago
    You haven't explained why Intel is entering the licensing business. If vendors have no desire to get their licensing from a company that competes in the space, there should be no demand for licensing from Intel, all of those OXMs should be going to ARM.
    - smachiz 6y ago
      You haven't demonstrated that anyone /is/ entering into contracts with Intel. Intel has done lots of things that it turns out people didn't want to do (with them).
      - tw04 6y ago
        They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced (that I've seen) but we already know they were doing custom designs for Facebook/Amazon/MS so they would be logical first-takers.
        Judgmentality 6y ago
        > They absolutely have people signing up, none of it has been publicly announced I can't tell if you're saying you have insider information or you're just assuming they're getting customers with no evidence.
        smachiz 6y ago
        None of those are OXMs and are the end customer. That is totally different than what your original assertion was.
        tw04 6y ago
        So tell me what an OXM is? Because Amazon sells outpost, an appliance, to end users. And Annapurna (owned by Amazon) sells CPUs to all sorts of vendors, including Ubiquiti and Synology.
    - 6y ago
Vvector 6y ago
The companies that directly compete with Nvidia (AMD & Intel) are not ARM customers. ARM's biggest customers are mobile phones, which could benefit from an Nvidia GPU
- jorvi 6y ago
  Considering how well Apple's M1 is performing, I suspect within 10 years the majority of new desktops and laptops sold will be ARM-based, with both Intel and AMD having to either adapt or languish.
  - karteum 6y ago
    Difficult to forecast within 10 years... maybe you are right, maybe it could be Alibaba/Allwinner/Rockchip with RISC-V designs ! :D
  - hellotomyrars 6y ago
    I think this is accurate if we see a substantial uptake of cloud/remote services for what are currently the most common high demand compute consumer devices (Game consoles + PC). ARM is already proving to be a winner in the datacenter as it becomes available so it seems all but inevitable. I think the overall trend is still accurate and in either case ARM + Nvidia is (or would be) a compelling provider of hardware but the segment of the market that needs/relies on X86 architecture does seem to be shrinking.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  Qualcomm is a direct competitor of NVIDIA (e.g. for automotive and robotics) and an important ARM customer. Until now the competing products of NVIDIA and Qualcomm differed in NVIDIA having worse CPUs and better GPUs and Qualcomm having better (ARM-designed) CPUs and worse GPUs. I do not find it believable that in the future NVIDIA would ever provide Qualcomm with better CPUs than those of NVIDIA products. Given NVIDIA's desire of dominating the datacenters, it is also hard to believe that they will give to all other companies who will attempt to design server CPUs new ARM cores at the same time when they will be available for the internal NVIDIA design teams.
tokyojoe 6y ago
Power consumption is a key application requirement for mobile. I don’t know that GPU’s are designed to run on the smell of an oil rag which the ARM processor cores do.
- plekter 6y ago
  Mobile GPUs (Imagination PowerVR, Qualcomm Adreno, Arm Mali, Apple's GPU) are exactly that.
- volta83 6y ago
  Doesn't NVIDIA ship the CPU for the Nintendo Switch? Not as low power as mobile phones, but not completely far away either.
volta83 6y ago
> ARM can't flourish under Nvidia, Why? > which customer would prefer to buy IP from a potential competitor rather than from a neutral provider. The same customers that buy NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA interconnects, support NVIDIA's software, etc. You seem to be suggesting that this "somehow" matters, but are not explaining "why" do you think this matters. AFAICT if AMD wants to ship a data-center node, it needs Mellanox interconnect, and has to buy that from NVIDIA, pretty much in the same way that NVIDIA ships AMD CPUs with their DGX boxes. There are dozens of thousands of pattents that all these companies need to buy from each other on a regular basis to function. I don't see how this particular change makes the status quo worse.

tokyojoe 6y ago

This reminds of the analyst who predicted AMD’s acquisition of ATI would kill off Intel. Nothing of the sort happened. If a chip supplier like Nvidia buys ARM and uses its products, it will ultimately have an outsize say over ARM’s product (actually IP) roadmaps. That’s not going to make ARM’s current customers happy. Nvidia want to diversify- that’s why they’ve targeted ARM. They don’t need the technology- it’s readily available to licence. Arm is valued at $40 billion on c. $ 2 billion in annual sales while Nvidia is valued at > $300 billion on $ 16 billion in sales. With a valuation of 300 billion, why buy ARM and almost certainly damage the ARM business model which is as an independent processor IP provider? And how will Huawei (and China), big ARM licensees, react to ARM being owned by a US company given the bad blood in that area. For ARM, it’s a strategic disaster IMV. Better to stay independent!

volta83 6y ago
> why buy ARM and almost certainly damage the ARM business model which is as an independent processor IP provider? That's the 40 billion dollar question, isn't it. Why are they doing this? I don't know, I guess they know something that I don't. What do you know that we don't ? :D > For ARM, it’s a strategic disaster IMV. Better to stay independent! How do you arrive at this conclusion? For all we know NVIDIA might (1) invest a lot more money into ARM, (2) improve their ecosystem, (3) start licensing their IP to third parties as well using a similar model to ARM, (4) start contributing more to open source like ARM does, etc.
- tokyojoe 6y ago
  You have not given a single strategic imperative for the Nvidia acquisition. They have full access to the IP. The real issue here is Nvidia are hugely overvalued thanks to the vagaries of the US tech stock market and the ‘irrational exuberance’ that surrounds it. Just a short while ago, Tesla was valued at over $800 billion, Apple has topped a trillion and now Nvidia on $16 billion sales at >$300 billion. As a result that have a while loymtvof stock value burning a hole in their pocket and are looking for something to buy. Unfortunately, ARM is in the frame. When you make an acquisition, you have to ask whether it positions the combined business uniquely, will is cannibalise existing business (in this case almost certainly because ARM’s great appeal besides its IP and eco-system is that it is independent), will it move the stock price in the right direction, will it improve EBIT, what are the synergies etc etc. A typical M&A will invoke dozens of considerations like this. More investment into ARM? They own the mobile phone space - Apple, Samsung and almost every other brand (many in China where I worked for a few years). They’ve seen off Microchip in the general purpose 32 bit uC space and dominate IoT applications, Bluetooth etc. There’s nothing stopping Nvidia copying the existing ARM model right now. They don’t need to buy ARM to do that. Nvidia stock price will moderate down (as will all semiconductor companies in the coming months as the chip shortages abate) and with it a more realistic valuation. (What do I know? Been involved in a few M&A’s. ;) )