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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
by 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 agoAMD 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 agoYes to both, if it’s not competitive they’ll use RISC-V or another architecture.
- dralley 5y agoChanging architectures is no small thing regardless of how many times Apple has done it.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoYou’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 agoIf 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?
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- Traster 5y agoA 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 agoWhy does ARM need to be acquired by someone? If Softbank wants to unload it why can't they do an IPO?
- jpetso 5y agoMostly 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.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoFor the market to stay competitive, ARM must stay independent - we have enough oligopolies and monopolies already
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- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoWhy 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.
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- ClumsyPilot 5y agoExactly, 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 agoBecause 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 agoIt 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 agoIntel and AMD already have a monopoly on x86-x64, and both make GPUs and CPUs. Nvidia only makes GPUs.
- Tostino 5y agoThey 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 agoOr, 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 agoTerrible enough to power one of the best selling consoles of all time despite its shortcomings.
- posguy 5y agoNvidia's Jetson series computers and their various SOCs (as seen in the Nintendo Switch (Nvidia Tegra), Tesla's cars, etc) are not just GPUs.