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The press release directly and prominently answers this question multiple times. It suggests that under Nvidia the new Arm would be disincentived to innovate i

The press release directly and prominently answers this question multiple times. It suggests that under Nvidia the new Arm would be disincentived to innovate in any area that negatively affects Nvidia businesses. Given that Arm is a critical supplier for many industries, this could result in consumer harm via “reduced product quality, reduced innovation, higher prices, and less choice” Also, I don’t believe the FTC mission is to increase US tax revenue, so that aspect seems irrelevant.

dcow 5y ago
And why is SoftBank any more positioned to be a champion of ARM quality? I just don’t see how it would not be in Nvidia’s interest to promote a healthy ARM any more or less than any other owner. Is the goal for ARM to become independent again? Are Nvidia’s competitors making ARM graphics cards and SoCs?
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  AMD decides it wants to make something like the TX1. Do you think that could happen if Big N owned ARM? Would the M1 series have progressed as quickly knowing the bad blood between Apple and Nvidia? Softbank probably isn't the best management but its neutral.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Yes to both, if it’s not competitive they’ll use RISC-V or another architecture.
    - dralley 5y ago
      Changing architectures is no small thing regardless of how many times Apple has done it.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        You’re right. I don’t even count the new M1 as an architecture change, they switched to mobile like how C2D came from pentium M, their software market in ARM was already mature and it would be significantly harder. At the same time, they made Rosetta and switched to x68 and ARM around the same time, only ARM won.
  - dcow 5y ago
    If ARM is truly too important to the economy to be owned by a “selfish” business, shouldn't we just declare it public domain and move on? Why can’t Nvidia’s competitors who they’d try to abuse and squeeze go use some other ISA? Is ARM really that good, or is it just popular?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Traster 5y ago
      A company doesn't need to be owned by the govenrment (which I assume is what you mean) for the government to guarantee it is free from being bought out by it's competitors. Whatsapp/Instagram were great examples of this - where the leader in a sector managed to buy its primary competition. As far as I understand it no one can credibly claim Instagram's growth has been prioritized relative to Facebook - why? Becuase Facebook prioritizes facebook. This isn't a question of "will the economy collapse if X buys Y" it's a question of "Which will yeild the best outcome, Y being acquired by X or no". The exact definition of "best outcome" is where the entire battleground though. It is quite difficult to see who actually could acquire ARM though - because of ARM's quite unique position, any of the potential acquirers are either customers (Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm) who would be vertically integrated to beat out competitors or direct competitors (AMD, Intel). I think almost the only people who could buy ARM at this point would be TSMC.
      - khuey 5y ago
        Why does ARM need to be acquired by someone? If Softbank wants to unload it why can't they do an IPO?
        jpetso 5y ago
        Mostly because Jensen Huang was willing to pay a nice premium over what the market would otherwise offer. There are some cough synergies cough that Nvidia could have instrumented for higher profits, Jensen had a clear and enthusiastic vision about how to get there. Softbank can still sell ARM to anyone including the public market, they just won't get as much money for them that way. Presumably.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Why does ARM need to be owned by anyone? If they are profitable, then there's no need to participate in M&A except for polishing C level resumes.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Exactly, last i checked the important part of free market was producing products consumers enjoy and generating revenue, not corporate scheming and strong-arming competitors
  - doikor 5y ago
    Because Softbank made some really bad investments and needs money. (It made 12 billion loss with a 57 billion revenue last year) I guess the other option is to list it on some stock exchange.
- effie 5y ago
  It does not need to be. Softbank owning ARM is the status quo, the devil we know, and they have a track record of not running ARM availability/quality into the ground. They don't seem to have motivation to do so. Also, they are invested in telecommunications, so having healthy and strong ARM position for mobile devices is in their interest. NVIDIA, on the other hand, is suspicious. It is in their interest to use and manipulate ARM to release/restrict products in such a way that will strengthen their already strong market position with accelerators, and push down its competitors like AMD and Intel.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Intel and AMD already have a monopoly on x86-x64, and both make GPUs and CPUs. Nvidia only makes GPUs.
    - Tostino 5y ago
      They were terrible at the CPU game with their Tegra line. Not sure if that's still going on. I'd rather Nvidia be kept away from Arm at all costs.
      - dcow 5y ago
        Or, they realized they're terrible and instead of trying to be terrible again they're trying to be not terrible this time by acquiring people that actually know what they're doing? A good ARM Tegra sounds like a product that would benefit the market and thus consumers.
      - Grazester 5y ago
        Terrible enough to power one of the best selling consoles of all time despite its shortcomings.
    - posguy 5y ago
      Nvidia's Jetson series computers and their various SOCs (as seen in the Nintendo Switch (Nvidia Tegra), Tesla's cars, etc) are not just GPUs.
ralph84 5y ago
> the new Arm would be disincentived to innovate in any area that negatively affects Nvidia businesses If the standard is "they don't compete against each other now, but would be disincentivized to compete against each other in the future," that could be used as a rationale to block literally every merger.
- NewJazz 5y ago
  Don't both ARM and NVIDIA design CPUs and GPUs? Seems like they compete against each other now.
- kibwen 5y ago
  > that could be used as a rationale to block literally every merger Don't you threaten me with a good time. Imagine, companies actually forced to collaborate via the ordinary mechanism of contract arrangements rather than by assimilation into a horrifying megaconglomerate.
  - pas 5y ago
    A merger is a contract :) The problem is when some companies form a cartel of sort (with our without contracts) anyway. The same way Intel was not licensing x86, but since AMD already had it they were both incentivized to keep users on x86 and keep arm out. (Of course the nvidia-arm acquisition is more about nvidia trying to build an army, oh pardon, portfolio. As Intel and AMD already have. They acquired Mellanox, plus they have GPUs and CUDA chips. Intel and Apple kind of have everything of course. AMD has Radeon, but AMD is probably still trying to catch up financially. There's also Qualcomm with their snapdragons and modems. And there are probably others, but the important thing is that snapdragons are arm based. And while selling high-end ML and gamer/miner cards is certainly not bad, but nvidia is probably trying to expand into a different market too, let's say high-volume but older semi tech.)
    - kibwen 5y ago
      Indeed, but while most contract arrangements need to be explicitly re-upped, a merger is permanent; a subsumed company cannot un-merge itself, because it no longer exists as an independent entity. This fact incentivizes both sides to remain competitive, because each side knows that they are replaceable if they don't keep costs down and quality up relative to their competitors. Furthermore, while a cartel is the worst-case scenario between two independent companies, cartel-like behavior is the only scenario for two merged companies; it's unfathomable that any subsumed company could decide not to do whatever its new owner tells it to.

dcow 5y ago

And why is SoftBank any more positioned to be a champion of ARM quality? I just don’t see how it would not be in Nvidia’s interest to promote a healthy ARM any more or less than any other owner. Is the goal for ARM to become independent again? Are Nvidia’s competitors making ARM graphics cards and SoCs?

bobsmooth 5y ago
AMD decides it wants to make something like the TX1. Do you think that could happen if Big N owned ARM? Would the M1 series have progressed as quickly knowing the bad blood between Apple and Nvidia? Softbank probably isn't the best management but its neutral.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Yes to both, if it’s not competitive they’ll use RISC-V or another architecture.
  - dralley 5y ago
    Changing architectures is no small thing regardless of how many times Apple has done it.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      You’re right. I don’t even count the new M1 as an architecture change, they switched to mobile like how C2D came from pentium M, their software market in ARM was already mature and it would be significantly harder. At the same time, they made Rosetta and switched to x68 and ARM around the same time, only ARM won.
- dcow 5y ago
  If ARM is truly too important to the economy to be owned by a “selfish” business, shouldn't we just declare it public domain and move on? Why can’t Nvidia’s competitors who they’d try to abuse and squeeze go use some other ISA? Is ARM really that good, or is it just popular?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Traster 5y ago
    A company doesn't need to be owned by the govenrment (which I assume is what you mean) for the government to guarantee it is free from being bought out by it's competitors. Whatsapp/Instagram were great examples of this - where the leader in a sector managed to buy its primary competition. As far as I understand it no one can credibly claim Instagram's growth has been prioritized relative to Facebook - why? Becuase Facebook prioritizes facebook. This isn't a question of "will the economy collapse if X buys Y" it's a question of "Which will yeild the best outcome, Y being acquired by X or no". The exact definition of "best outcome" is where the entire battleground though. It is quite difficult to see who actually could acquire ARM though - because of ARM's quite unique position, any of the potential acquirers are either customers (Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm) who would be vertically integrated to beat out competitors or direct competitors (AMD, Intel). I think almost the only people who could buy ARM at this point would be TSMC.
    - khuey 5y ago
      Why does ARM need to be acquired by someone? If Softbank wants to unload it why can't they do an IPO?
      - jpetso 5y ago
        Mostly because Jensen Huang was willing to pay a nice premium over what the market would otherwise offer. There are some cough synergies cough that Nvidia could have instrumented for higher profits, Jensen had a clear and enthusiastic vision about how to get there. Softbank can still sell ARM to anyone including the public market, they just won't get as much money for them that way. Presumably.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Why does ARM need to be owned by anyone? If they are profitable, then there's no need to participate in M&A except for polishing C level resumes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Exactly, last i checked the important part of free market was producing products consumers enjoy and generating revenue, not corporate scheming and strong-arming competitors
- doikor 5y ago
  Because Softbank made some really bad investments and needs money. (It made 12 billion loss with a 57 billion revenue last year) I guess the other option is to list it on some stock exchange.
effie 5y ago
It does not need to be. Softbank owning ARM is the status quo, the devil we know, and they have a track record of not running ARM availability/quality into the ground. They don't seem to have motivation to do so. Also, they are invested in telecommunications, so having healthy and strong ARM position for mobile devices is in their interest. NVIDIA, on the other hand, is suspicious. It is in their interest to use and manipulate ARM to release/restrict products in such a way that will strengthen their already strong market position with accelerators, and push down its competitors like AMD and Intel.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Intel and AMD already have a monopoly on x86-x64, and both make GPUs and CPUs. Nvidia only makes GPUs.
  - Tostino 5y ago
    They were terrible at the CPU game with their Tegra line. Not sure if that's still going on. I'd rather Nvidia be kept away from Arm at all costs.
    - dcow 5y ago
      Or, they realized they're terrible and instead of trying to be terrible again they're trying to be not terrible this time by acquiring people that actually know what they're doing? A good ARM Tegra sounds like a product that would benefit the market and thus consumers.
    - Grazester 5y ago
      Terrible enough to power one of the best selling consoles of all time despite its shortcomings.
  - posguy 5y ago
    Nvidia's Jetson series computers and their various SOCs (as seen in the Nintendo Switch (Nvidia Tegra), Tesla's cars, etc) are not just GPUs.

ralph84 5y ago

> the new Arm would be disincentived to innovate in any area that negatively affects Nvidia businesses If the standard is "they don't compete against each other now, but would be disincentivized to compete against each other in the future," that could be used as a rationale to block literally every merger.

NewJazz 5y ago
Don't both ARM and NVIDIA design CPUs and GPUs? Seems like they compete against each other now.
kibwen 5y ago
> that could be used as a rationale to block literally every merger Don't you threaten me with a good time. Imagine, companies actually forced to collaborate via the ordinary mechanism of contract arrangements rather than by assimilation into a horrifying megaconglomerate.
- pas 5y ago
  A merger is a contract :) The problem is when some companies form a cartel of sort (with our without contracts) anyway. The same way Intel was not licensing x86, but since AMD already had it they were both incentivized to keep users on x86 and keep arm out. (Of course the nvidia-arm acquisition is more about nvidia trying to build an army, oh pardon, portfolio. As Intel and AMD already have. They acquired Mellanox, plus they have GPUs and CUDA chips. Intel and Apple kind of have everything of course. AMD has Radeon, but AMD is probably still trying to catch up financially. There's also Qualcomm with their snapdragons and modems. And there are probably others, but the important thing is that snapdragons are arm based. And while selling high-end ML and gamer/miner cards is certainly not bad, but nvidia is probably trying to expand into a different market too, let's say high-volume but older semi tech.)
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Indeed, but while most contract arrangements need to be explicitly re-upped, a merger is permanent; a subsumed company cannot un-merge itself, because it no longer exists as an independent entity. This fact incentivizes both sides to remain competitive, because each side knows that they are replaceable if they don't keep costs down and quality up relative to their competitors. Furthermore, while a cartel is the worst-case scenario between two independent companies, cartel-like behavior is the only scenario for two merged companies; it's unfathomable that any subsumed company could decide not to do whatever its new owner tells it to.