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The acquisition by nVidia is problematic from numerous fronts, not the least of which is the relevant concerns raised in the EU case that this would be leverage

The acquisition by nVidia is problematic from numerous fronts, not the least of which is the relevant concerns raised in the EU case that this would be leverage nVidia would use against its own competitors and monopolizing the ARM architecture for their own purposes. Arm as an independent company is better for the broader semiconductor industry because of widely their technology is licensed, and the current ease at which it does so. These are risked by any kind of an acquisition, let alone nVidia who is not famous for their generosity of their technology (CUDA, G-Sync, Linux drivers, DLSS, etc. are all proprietary). Contrast this with AMD's approach on such matters, where they offer theirs with liberal licensing and/or for free: FreeSync (which is just VESA Adaptive Sync),FSR, Linux drivers, their backing of OpenCL, and more. Edit: Added AMD counterpoints to nVidia.

qiqitori 5y ago
Hmm, plenty of other architectures to go to if ARM gets hard to license, IMO. In fact, there are already plenty of people using RISC-V who would have otherwise used ARM. Not sure if it's even beneficial for the semiconductor industry having ARM the way it is right now. I work in embedded systems and ARM doesn't offer much benefit to me, so maybe I'm biased.
- basilgohar 5y ago
  I'm not opposed to this. I'm all for a more open architecture. I think AMD's already got their foot in the door with regards to ARM, though. Moreover, ARM is already dominant in mobile- and low-power markets. It'd be great if they also explored alternative (and more open/libre) architectures like OpenPOWER and RISC-V, but I feel like they're not headed in that direction at this time – not sure what that would buy them in comparison to ARM. I think technical superiority has rarely been the deciding factor in architecture dominance – otherwise, x86 likely never would have dragged along this far.

qiqitori 5y ago

Hmm, plenty of other architectures to go to if ARM gets hard to license, IMO. In fact, there are already plenty of people using RISC-V who would have otherwise used ARM. Not sure if it's even beneficial for the semiconductor industry having ARM the way it is right now. I work in embedded systems and ARM doesn't offer much benefit to me, so maybe I'm biased.

basilgohar 5y ago
I'm not opposed to this. I'm all for a more open architecture. I think AMD's already got their foot in the door with regards to ARM, though. Moreover, ARM is already dominant in mobile- and low-power markets. It'd be great if they also explored alternative (and more open/libre) architectures like OpenPOWER and RISC-V, but I feel like they're not headed in that direction at this time – not sure what that would buy them in comparison to ARM. I think technical superiority has rarely been the deciding factor in architecture dominance – otherwise, x86 likely never would have dragged along this far.