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Quick summary on why it matters that Nvidia abandons ARM takeover: 1. ARM doesn't own any factories. Its entire workforce publishes blueprints for making chips
by lewisjoe 5y ago
Quick summary on why it matters that Nvidia abandons ARM takeover:
1. ARM doesn't own any factories. Its entire workforce publishes blueprints for making chips (like a software company where the entire asset is intellectual)
2. Buying this type of intellectual asset, means owning and controlling a technology.
3. This also means, all the other customers who depend on this tech (Apple, Samsung, Amazon, pretty much all big tech companies) are now at a disadvantage with NVIDIA as a competitor.
4. China heavily depends on ARM (Huawei, the company's biggest tech manufacturer rely on ARM)
5. This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China
6. Since ARM is basically like a software company, it's better to not be owned by a hardware maker. That way, it can prioritize demand from several hardware makers instead of being directed to cater to one market)
So, all-in-all this is a good thing :)
- UncleOxidant 5y agoWhy don't the ARM users form a consortium to own ARM?
- ginko 5y agoQualcomm did suggest that: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in-arm-as-regulators-threaten-nvidia-deal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...
- londons_explore 5y ago> This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China But IP is very hard to control the supply of, especially one like this where hundreds of companies have a copy of the IP. If the US won't license it on fair terms, China will just stop enforcing IP laws and allow anyone to copy it for free.
- criley2 5y agoWith all due respect to China, licensing on fair terms has never been a requirement for state-sponsored intellectual property theft.
- bennysomething 5y agoBut goods infringing IP can presumably be prevented from import into western markets?
- hughrr 5y agoThat’s fine until your entire planet runs on ARM IP made in china. China pulls the plug then we’re all in trouble. What would happen is another mutually assured destruction stalemate.
- ayende 5y agoExcept that the response would be that any product with that IP will be banned from EU/USA. That is a huge hit to take.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoWell suffering sanctions and being left without foundamental technology is already a huge hit
- londons_explore 5y agoBut it's pretty hard to know what devices even contain that IP... Does that Amazon Basics optical gaming mouse contain an ARM CPU? It would probably take weeks of decapping the chip and reverse engineering the CPU to be sure, and even then, figuring out if that CPU is licensed or not is non-trivial. Is customs really going to do that for every item that comes through the border?
- imron 5y ago> This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China Good thing ARM China already decided to go its own way [0]. 0: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-...
- option_greek 5y agoWow that's an interesting read. So anyone who holds a rubber stamp of a company can steal the whole company? That's some screwed up legal system.
- duxup 5y agoThe judiciary in China isn’t independent, or consistent. I suspect the reason for the decision is just a handy reason to give.
- gorjusborg 5y agoMy impression is that the CCP's idea of justice is whatever benefits the CCP. This doesn't differ too much from other nations except in degree and in their ability or willingness to hide that fact.
- jl6 5y agoI squinted, but I can’t see any way to draw a moral equivalence between the Chinese justice system and, say, the UK justice system. There’s a fundamental and massive difference in approach to the rule of law.
- gorjusborg 5y agoI'm from the U.S.. I initially was going to say that CCP really only cares about its own interests. Then I thought about my own country's actions and policies for a moment before posting (Guantanamo, labor and privacy laws, the 'medical system', and 'education system'). My revised thought was that the main difference is in whether the country still even pretends to seek justice for its citizens. I do think there are differences, especially in degree, but the general motivations and actions seem similar enough.
- jsiepkes 5y ago> 5. This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China China has already hijacked the ARM branch in China[1] and taken over ARM's IP. [1] https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century-arm-china-has-gone-completely-rogue-operating-as-an-independent-company-with-their-own-ip/ https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-cent...
- greatpatton 5y agoSeems that it's not as simple as mentioned here: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-accusations-of-ip-theft-by-its-arm-china-subsidiary https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-acc...
- ksec 5y agoThe article is a very very strange read. ( At least the tone of it, may be under legal threat ) Yes, ARM China didn't steal any ARM UK's IP. But ARM China is also no longer under the control of ARM UK, practically speaking. And the New IP offered by ARM China are also independent of ARM UK. I am wondering if the deal with ARM China and ARM UK are the same as AMD's JV, where China currently has AMD Zen's IP. Given the people involved I would not be surprised. ARM UK are also well aware of the RISC-V threat, which China is currently pouring all the resources into it. I would not be surprised if you see a free high performance RISC-V IP offered by China just to destroy the ARM market along with some other x86 market. The threat is real. But then again HN will rejoice because it is free and RISC-V.
- Taniwha 5y agoChina? already done https://riscv.org/news/2021/10/alibaba-announces-open-source-risc-v-based-xuantie-series-processors-pandaily/ https://riscv.org/news/2021/10/alibaba-announces-open-source... New Zealand too ..... https://github.com/MoonbaseOtago/vroom https://github.com/MoonbaseOtago/vroom
- ssl232 5y ago
- fennecfoxen 5y agoI am an NVIDIA employee in an unrelated part of the business and not inclined to comment in depth on these matters and this is not an NVIDIA opinion or official but i thought it worth mentioning I don’t see the distinction? NVIDIA is fabless too?? (Heck, so is AMD I think)
- fredoralive 5y agoNvidia doesn't licence its designs to other companies for incorporation into their own chip designs, ARM does. That is the main distinction I think, and why people want it to be a neutral third party.
- maxwell86 5y agoIIUC, part of the deal was that NVIDIA would license its designs via ARM.
- 310260 5y agoThey say that now... It could even very well be the case. However, there are plenty of ways to manipulate those licensing agreements to work more in Nvidia's favor than they do today.
- maxwell86 5y agoThey've been saying that from the beginning. There are billions of ARM devices, the ability to sell a GPU to each is worth money.
- kasabali 5y agoAbility to forcibly sell a gpu to each is worth even more money (ie. see lawsuit on how Quallcomm bundle their modem on every SoC for a premium)
- uxp100 5y agoAMD spun their manufacturing off as Global Foundries, so yes. And yeah, I’m not sure this distinction the poster is making between arm as like a software company and NVIDIA like a hardware company makes much sense. Arm makes IP (in the chip design sense). NVIDIA makes IP and combines it with IP from Arm and others, and produces some product designs based on the chip, which NVIDIA tests and writes software for. But ODMs make the products and fabs make the chips. I really don’t think calling some of this like software and some like hardware is very explanatory, at least partially because NVIDIA writes a lot of software, and because I think the person reading that description might come away with the impression that arm just produces the architecture, and not actual core designs (which NVIDIA, Denver aside, uses).
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>Since ARM is basically like a software company It's is not. Being a fabless designer of hardware IP doesn't make them "basically a SW company". It's still very much a HW IP company any way you slice it.
- ChrisRR 5y agoPeople understand software better than they under HDL designs. To most people, they're pretty comparable
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoWell, we can always clarify things for people who don't understand HW as good as SW, but for correctness we have to call a spade a spade and not help spread misinformation just because it sounds easier to understand than the facts, for the less informed users.
- yccs27 5y agoSoftware and hardware IP companies are indeed not the same, so we should be more precise about the ways in which they are similar. * Their work is in both cases a mix of design and engineering. * Both produce goods that are reproducible at zero cost, and are protected (only) by intellectual property laws. So while ARM definitely does not produce software, their work is somewhat comparable.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago> Their work is in both cases a mix of design and engineering. > Both produce goods that are reproducible at zero cost, and are protected (only) by intellectual property laws. You forgot fabrication. Unlike SW IP where as long as it compiles it's ready to ship but stays virtual, ARM's IP must be manufacturable into physical things you can touch by the major fabs therefore must be grounded in the processes and cell libraries that those fabs can manufacture. Unlike a SW company, they can't just freely innovate whatever shiny new IP they want without concern for the silicon manufacturing processes, therefore it's closer to HW than SW, as all their IP is eventually manufactured into real things you can touch and therefore must follow the manufacturing constrains. If you follow their news announcements, they constantly talk about their partnership with Samsung and TSMC to adapt their IP to each of their upcoming process nodes, so their their customer like Apple or Qualcomm can just buy the IP and plop it into their design knowing it's already been validated for Samsung/TSMC and can reliably be sent to the fab. So ARM is still very much a HW IP company.
- Nokinside 5y agoThere are significant inaccuracies in this take (2) "controlling tech" All big players: Apple, Nvidia, Samsung, Amazon, Qualcomm, Intel, .. have so called Architectural license with heavily crafted clauses in them that make them free from Arm control except for some minor details. They use just the instruction set and make their own microarchitecture. (3) Arm China was robbed from Arm. The CEO stopped taking orders and just kept IP and is running company like their own. Chinese courts did nothing. China does what it wants inside China. (5) No difference. There are too many cross-atlantic IP and design tool connections. Arm must comply completely to US government sanctions. (6) Just like Nvidia. Both fabless hw IP companies. Difference is that Nvidia sells chips, Arm sells IP. Nvidia wanted Arm because they want to sell Nvidia IP to others. Nvidia has Arm architecture license, they don't need Arm IP to use Arm.
- A_non_e-moose 5y ago> (3) Firstly, Arm China was robbed from Arm. The CEO stopped taking orders and just kept IP and is running company like their own. Chinese courts did nothing. China does what it wants inside China. Did ARM cut off any new IP access from ARM China? Seems like a logical next step. And how is ARM China going to continue innovating? On their own?
- Nokinside 5y agoYes. Arm China is now AnMou Technology. They have "two wheels" strategy. ARM CPU architecture development for local customers and new Core Power architecture.
- selestify 5y agoAccording to [1], the IP theft narrative is not actually true. > There is an ongoing dispute between ARM and ARM China. > > But the accusations that ARM China had stolen ARM IP and was relaunching it under its own banner? Those don’t appear to be true. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-accusations-of-ip-theft-by-its-arm-china-subsidiary https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-acc...
- newsclues 5y agoYour points 1 and 6 seem to conflict. NVIDIA isn’t a hardware manufacturer.
- xaxaxb 5y agoThere should be quick summaries for all posts like this. +1
- uxp100 5y agoThis summary is not very good. Not wrong, but misleading I guess? Seems sort of confused about how arm and fabless semiconductor companies interact?
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- mytailorisrich 5y agoArm is a British company, currently owned by Softbank, a Japanese company. This means that in practice the US can already cut off supply to China. See for example ASML: they are a Dutch company. So the US government only needed a friendly word with the Dutch government for the Dutch government to ban ASML from exporting certain advanced processes to China. For the British government I'm sure there would be no need to call... A text would suffice ;) (leaving aside all the drama with ARM China already because of those issues...)
- na85 5y ago5 at least is a non factor since the Chinese government doesn't play by the rules of intellectual property anyway.
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