5 ms·

> 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 othe

> 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
      How is SoftBank selling ARM? (And how did Google acquire Motorola and then sell them off to Lenovo, for instance?) Is there a difference between how they acquired ARM and how Nvidia wants to acquire ARM that makes it a merger instead of an acquisition or something? I honestly don't know and am curious and think there's an interesting point here if how I'm interpreting your comment is correct.
Retric 5y ago
Arm and Nvidia are in direct competition today. ARM was 39% of the tablet GPU market in 2020 for example.
- paulmd 5y ago
  NVIDIA's chips count as part of that ARM marketshare, and in fact ARM itself does not manufacture chips at all, nor does NVIDIA design CPU ISAs.
  - microtonal 5y ago
    The grandparent was talking about GPUs. NVIDIA and ARM (Mali) both design GPUs.
    - comex 5y ago
      And they also both design CPUs. ARM just doesn't manufacture theirs themselves.
adamredwoods 5y ago
I wonder how this standard would have been applied to past mergers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_acquisitions#2010s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_ac...
- nerdponx 5y ago
  It should have been. CVS buying Aetna was a particularly sick joke.
impulser_ 5y ago
They compete more than ever. Google, Amazon, FB, Apple are all developing AI, CPU and GPU chips that compete directly with Nvidia using ARM You know why? Because working with Nvidia has become such a pain in the ass. That it's better just to do it yourself. They charge you 10x for a gpu that's a little better than their consumer GPU but won't sell you the consumer GPU because they want you to pay 10x. Now they will definitely do the same with ARM licensing.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  How do they stop companies from buying consumer GPUs? I have used some minor firmware tweaks to unlock full commercial capabilities out of Nvidia GPUs in the past. Perhaps that is against the tos and a large company couldn't get away with it like an individual can?
  - cmeacham98 5y ago
    If you're Google/Apple/etc, you don't want to be relying on some unofficial firmware tweak where the next driver update could completely brick your business and force you to never update the driver again.
  - mroche 5y ago
    > Perhaps that is against the tos and a large company couldn't get away with it like an individual can? A while back they made a change to the terms of the GeForce driver, barring it from deployment in datacenters except for blockchain processing. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-eula-to-prohibit-data-center-use/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge... https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/
    - Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
      Wasn't the ostensible justification here making the cards more available for the enthusiast gaming market they were (to some extent) intended for? That's an honest question, I can't fully recall.
jacquesm 5y ago
> that could be used as a rationale to block literally every merger. Even though that would hurt me businesswise I would happily sign for that future. And while we're at it: make it illegal for one company to hold shares in another. Just natural persons holding shares in companies would be fine.
- fauigerzigerk 5y ago
  This is entirely impractical. Companies wouldn’t even be able own subsidiaries in other countries that can legally act as employers or tax payers there. It would make it impossible for governments to own minority stakes in local subsidiaries of global corporations to veto some things. It would make it impossible to impose capital requirements on subsidiaries of big financial institutions. It would be impossible for larger competitors to rescue failing peers and keep them operating as a going concern. And it would very likely create the most suffocating oligopolies on a national level as well as on an industry level as competitors would find it extremely hard to enter markets with entrenched incumbents if the only way to do it was to build from scratch.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > Companies wouldn’t even be able own subsidiaries in other countries that can legally act as employers or tax payers there. So? That would enable local companies that occupy the same niche to do so. All these multinationals are not necessarily a good thing. > It would make it impossible for governments to own minority stakes in local subsidiaries of global corporations to veto some things. Only if you believe that those local subsidiaries should exist in the first place and that need not be the case. > It would make it impossible to impose capital requirements on subsidiaries of big financial institutions. There would be no such subsidiaries. > It would be impossible for larger competitors to rescue failing peers and keep them operating as a going concern. These could be structured as asset sales. And a whole lot of trickery that causes these peers to fail would go out the window. You are making the mistake of looking at the glass 'half empty', when in fact the better way to look at it is what we would get for it in return. Capitalism, but with a much more direct link between UBO and the companies they have a hand in, far less opportunity for nation state level wealth to end up concentrated with a very small number of people and less opportunity for companies to play shell games with their income. Capitalism, like money is a great invention. But like everything else when taken to extremes it is a net negative, in moderation it could well be uniformly good. But the whole externalization game needs to stop or it will harm us greatly.
killingtime74 5y ago
Market power, among other things are the requirement. No one cares if mom and pop store buys its neighbour. There’s a whole specialty called competition law.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> 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. Try it this way: How many other companies are likely to compete with them in the future? If the answer is a thousand, the loss of potential competition is not very significant. If the answer is less than ten, it is.

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
    How is SoftBank selling ARM? (And how did Google acquire Motorola and then sell them off to Lenovo, for instance?) Is there a difference between how they acquired ARM and how Nvidia wants to acquire ARM that makes it a merger instead of an acquisition or something? I honestly don't know and am curious and think there's an interesting point here if how I'm interpreting your comment is correct.

Retric 5y ago

Arm and Nvidia are in direct competition today. ARM was 39% of the tablet GPU market in 2020 for example.

paulmd 5y ago
NVIDIA's chips count as part of that ARM marketshare, and in fact ARM itself does not manufacture chips at all, nor does NVIDIA design CPU ISAs.
- microtonal 5y ago
  The grandparent was talking about GPUs. NVIDIA and ARM (Mali) both design GPUs.
  - comex 5y ago
    And they also both design CPUs. ARM just doesn't manufacture theirs themselves.

adamredwoods 5y ago

I wonder how this standard would have been applied to past mergers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_acquisitions#2010s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_ac...

nerdponx 5y ago
It should have been. CVS buying Aetna was a particularly sick joke.

impulser_ 5y ago

They compete more than ever. Google, Amazon, FB, Apple are all developing AI, CPU and GPU chips that compete directly with Nvidia using ARM You know why? Because working with Nvidia has become such a pain in the ass. That it's better just to do it yourself. They charge you 10x for a gpu that's a little better than their consumer GPU but won't sell you the consumer GPU because they want you to pay 10x. Now they will definitely do the same with ARM licensing.

jjeaff 5y ago
How do they stop companies from buying consumer GPUs? I have used some minor firmware tweaks to unlock full commercial capabilities out of Nvidia GPUs in the past. Perhaps that is against the tos and a large company couldn't get away with it like an individual can?
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  If you're Google/Apple/etc, you don't want to be relying on some unofficial firmware tweak where the next driver update could completely brick your business and force you to never update the driver again.
- mroche 5y ago
  > Perhaps that is against the tos and a large company couldn't get away with it like an individual can? A while back they made a change to the terms of the GeForce driver, barring it from deployment in datacenters except for blockchain processing. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-eula-to-prohibit-data-center-use/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge... https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/
  - Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
    Wasn't the ostensible justification here making the cards more available for the enthusiast gaming market they were (to some extent) intended for? That's an honest question, I can't fully recall.

jacquesm 5y ago

> that could be used as a rationale to block literally every merger. Even though that would hurt me businesswise I would happily sign for that future. And while we're at it: make it illegal for one company to hold shares in another. Just natural persons holding shares in companies would be fine.

fauigerzigerk 5y ago
This is entirely impractical. Companies wouldn’t even be able own subsidiaries in other countries that can legally act as employers or tax payers there. It would make it impossible for governments to own minority stakes in local subsidiaries of global corporations to veto some things. It would make it impossible to impose capital requirements on subsidiaries of big financial institutions. It would be impossible for larger competitors to rescue failing peers and keep them operating as a going concern. And it would very likely create the most suffocating oligopolies on a national level as well as on an industry level as competitors would find it extremely hard to enter markets with entrenched incumbents if the only way to do it was to build from scratch.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > Companies wouldn’t even be able own subsidiaries in other countries that can legally act as employers or tax payers there. So? That would enable local companies that occupy the same niche to do so. All these multinationals are not necessarily a good thing. > It would make it impossible for governments to own minority stakes in local subsidiaries of global corporations to veto some things. Only if you believe that those local subsidiaries should exist in the first place and that need not be the case. > It would make it impossible to impose capital requirements on subsidiaries of big financial institutions. There would be no such subsidiaries. > It would be impossible for larger competitors to rescue failing peers and keep them operating as a going concern. These could be structured as asset sales. And a whole lot of trickery that causes these peers to fail would go out the window. You are making the mistake of looking at the glass 'half empty', when in fact the better way to look at it is what we would get for it in return. Capitalism, but with a much more direct link between UBO and the companies they have a hand in, far less opportunity for nation state level wealth to end up concentrated with a very small number of people and less opportunity for companies to play shell games with their income. Capitalism, like money is a great invention. But like everything else when taken to extremes it is a net negative, in moderation it could well be uniformly good. But the whole externalization game needs to stop or it will harm us greatly.

killingtime74 5y ago

Market power, among other things are the requirement. No one cares if mom and pop store buys its neighbour. There’s a whole specialty called competition law.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> 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. Try it this way: How many other companies are likely to compete with them in the future? If the answer is a thousand, the loss of potential competition is not very significant. If the answer is less than ten, it is.