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This is a good thing, from any way you look. The last thing we need is more consolidation, and less competition, in this space.
by voz_ 5y ago
This is a good thing, from any way you look. The last thing we need is more consolidation, and less competition, in this space.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoOn the other hand, a NVIDIA ARM acquisition could really spark RISC-V adoption. Maybe.
- Alupis 5y agoThere are very few positive signs Nvidia would be a good caretaker of ARM IP, continue to push new innovated and open designs and mass adoption. Nvidia's entire business and philosophy regarding their chip designs are kind of antithetical to what ARM was achieving.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoAll you have to see is NVIDIA's trashy effort on Linux and locking-down what-would-otherwise-be-open hardware from being usable by open-source drivers...
- GhettoComputers 5y agoAnd ARM had constantly updated Linux kernels and drivers from Qualcomm before didn’t they?
- monocasa 5y agoARM works very, very closely with the Linux kernel. The issues with updated code in the kernel isn't because of ARM CPU IP.
- necovek 5y agoARM has helped found Linaro (linaro.org) ~10 years ago to fix the problem with mainline Linux integration for all the participating SoC vendors. You should expect the following manufacturers to have good mainline support: https://www.linaro.org/membership/ https://www.linaro.org/membership/ I am sure your mileage will vary between vendors (I am pretty sure Qualcomm was NOT one of the founding members, but it's there now), but this at least signals an investment of money and resources.
- godelski 5y agoIt's funny because NVIDIA used to work well on Linux, way back in the day. Then they just decided to not care, then they decided to be hostile. Now they're backtracking but only because they are forced to. I thought the amount of ML would have made them backtrack, but it seems that it is more AMD and Steam.
- phire 5y agoThe quality of Nvidia's linux drivers hasn't changed much. They are about as good as they were 10 years ago. But everything else has changed around them. The quality of other drivers has improved, the linux ecosystem and what it expects out of drivers has changed, and the nvidia windows drivers have gotten features that the nvidia linux drivers don't.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- foepys 5y agoWasn't there a situation where the Linux ecosystem decided to use an API that Nvidia officially opposed and never wanted to support? Resulting in Wayland/KDE/GNOME (or similar) not running quite a lot of features on Nvidia? Something about Nvidia only supporting EGLstream while everybody else wanted GBM? It's very foggy in my mind, so I might be misremembering details.
- mijoharas 5y agoYou have the details precisely correct. Nvidia are finally moving to support GBM (iirc, it's because someone from KDE asked an nvidia engineer to help get something working with wayland+eglstreams, and he found out it was impossible, as the community had been saying for a while. Slight citation needed on that as I can't find a reference). Technically they have support in their latest 495 drivers, but I can speak from experience when I say it's not seamless for a user. (I have put a lot of effort into getting it to work and it recently broke again).
- mijoharas 5y agoI cannot agree with this more! I'm so frustrated, since I actually managed to get nvidia + wayland (sway) working on my laptop, and an update of some kind broke my external monitors this week (I haven't had time to roll everything back individually to figure out what yet). It's an incredibly frustrating experience, and I really wonder if nvidia realises the long-term impact they're having by alienating the tech crowd (i.e. the ones that give recommendations to friends, and decide what hardware their companies will buy).
- gjsman-1000 5y agoIt is important to remember that Hacker News and Phoronix and Linux kernel developers are within a communication bubble (like any forum). It may be because, in practice, NVIDIA looks at the size of us all... and yawns because we're tiny and because most tech reviewers still recommend them and most gamers still buy them. And they have a point - AMD has better Linux support, but NVIDIA's got CUDA (which has basically killed OpenCL and AMD's ROCm is less than a proof of concept in quality), DLSS, Raytracing, much better video encoders, a bunch of stuff that people are willing to put up with subpar Linux for.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoARM was never good for open hardware designs. It wasn’t better before what you think Nvidia will do either. Look at the state of Linux kernel updates on ARM chips.
- turminal 5y agoYou seem to be making a lot of bad faith arguments in this comment section. Why are you defending this deal so ferociously?
- GhettoComputers 5y agoWhat is in bad faith? It’s assumed that ARM support is good now. I’d like to see more Tegra type chips, an open ARM device with updates Linux drivers from the manufacturer. I’d love to be pointed to a better one if you have it. I think what nvidia does with Linux GPUs is awful, but it is very different how they treat their ARM processors. Please point me to good open ARM processor manufacturers that uploads good Linux updates, I’ll be happy to be wrong that the Jetson really isn’t the best.
- necovek 5y agoAll the SoCs available from https://www.96boards.org/ https://www.96boards.org/ should have good mainline Linux support. "Good manufacturers" today contribute directly to the upstream kernel, and frequently through Linaro kernel trees first.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoWould you recommend any of these boards over a Jetson? I’m glad these exist but most of the specs look awful, and I’ve tried rockchip in pine hardware and it sucks.
- necovek 5y agoI don't have much experience with the latest and greatest, and it surely depends on the types of workloads you plan to put on them. Rockchip has a number of differently performing chips (RK3399Pro seems to perform well in comparison with Jetson: https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/05/15/toybrick-rk3399pro-board-shown-to-outperform-jetson-nano-sbc/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/05/15/toybrick-rk3399pro-b..., https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2019/12/05/rk3399pro-vs-raspberry-pi-4-vs-jetson-nano-ai-and-deep-learning-capabilities/ https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2019/12/05/rk3399pro-vs-ras...). Pine only recently introduced a RK3399-based board (non-Pro, basically lacking an NPU) version, so you might want to go with them for availability reasons.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoWhich is why the parent said that it would be good for RISC-V processors, not for ARM processors.
- fooey 5y agoYeah, just look at what they did with GSync
- mhh__ 5y agoAs a partial subscriber to the idea that ARM is probably better than RV64 for high performance that probably might not be all that good.
- 015a 5y agoEh. Who are the biggest consumers of ARM's IP? Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm? Apple could move to RISC-V (over another two decades), but even if they did, their move wouldn't actually benefit the RISC-V community (and moreover, they'd probably just do their own ISA; at ultra-vertically integrated gigacorporation scale, why not?) Samsung & Qualcomm? What's the assertion, that Nvidia would let ARM's ISA languish so much they'd be forced to move? Hasn't Qualcomm already been doing that, just with the actual chips; and no one seems to care? Except the people who run iPhone vs Android benchmarks of course.
- rswail 5y agoAnd Linux on the desktop will defeat Windows' monopoly on the desktop. RISC-V adoption will be driven by the capability of RISC-V and it being a competitive choice compared to ARM and others. NVIDIA acquiring ARM wouldn't spark RISC-V, it would reduce ARM adoption. Neither is a good outcome.
- dcow 5y agoSince when do Nvidia and ARM compete?
- detaro 5y agoNvidia competes with other ARM customers.
- dcow 5y agoBut not with ARM… so instead of Softbank making royalties Nvidia makes them. I’m struggling to understand how this merger would eliminate competition, consolidate the market, and put consumers at risk of harm.
- detaro 5y agoYou really don't see how NVidia controlling what price their competitors have to pay for ARM technology and when they get access to it at all could have an impact on the market?
- dcow 5y agoRight now SoftBank controls that price. If they could raise it and make more money off of ARM and piss on the market then why aren't they doing it? They’re a business trying to maximize profits after all, it’s in their interest regardless of who’s competing for what.
- detaro 5y agoSoftbank doesn't benefit if it weakens one of their licensees. NVidia would benefit from weakening other ARM licensees, even if that would hurt ARM income.
- dcow 5y agoI do see how this might be a conflict, thank you for pointing it out. In general I’m not convinced that those competitors couldn't just leave and use some other instruction set. If ARM is too important to business to be owned by a selfish company, then declare it public domain already…
- nickff 5y agoIt seems like it might be bad for computers, but good for embedded.