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So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access to confidential information on

So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access to confidential information on Arm's customers' businesses (plans, volumes etc). Hmmm.

HelenGrerne 2y ago
[dead]
whizzter 2y ago
It kinda makes sense though, ARM has been creeping upwards over the years and yet afaik outside of Ampere no ARM server supplier has become serious (outside of inhouse variants such as Amazon Graviton). So combining ARM and Ampere operations doesn't hurt any current big customers in the mobile field (apart from perhaps Qualcomm but they're in lawsuit mode there anyhow). They also make sure to make the ARM alternative available to smaller customers (As an option besides AMD and Intel servers) instead of being gobbled up by f.ex. Oracle (making the big server ARM implementations inhouse to 2 of the big platform operators). Not to mention the silver lining, combining the ops will give it more credence in the enterprise market that seems to have damn good margins (some have attributed AMD's resurgence and Intel's troubles to Intel slipping in server sales).
- klelatti 2y ago
  Largely agree. Arm / Softbank is in a tricky place if there are no credible customers in a given market. Does it just sit on its hands or actually get out there and build some chips! It has helped fund or help some startups that were using Arm designs to get into new markets (eg Annapurna Labs) but sometimes that doesn't work out at all (Nuvia!) And to be fair I think Rene Haas has been fairly upfront about changing their approach.
SecretDreams 2y ago
Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services?
- klelatti 2y ago
  Somewhat but not competing with its customers has been a central part of Arm's proposition for three decades, for good reason. There are at least a lot of competitors for Nvidia's design. Your options if you want to build a server core are a lot more limited.
- re-thc 2y ago
  > Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services? Different in that ARM only 'designed'. It's more like a framework / library / tool (a very feature complete 1). The Nvidia case is more similar to having a self-install and then a cloud hosted version of the same software.
alberth 2y ago
Isn’t Ampere essentially the only company making server grade ARM chips. And all the rest of ARM customers are making mobile/desktop. So Ampere is going after a completely different segment that the rest of ARM customers aren’t addressing.
- jsheard 2y ago
  They're the only company selling server grade ARM chips but others are rolling their own for internal use, such as Amazons Graviton line. That's Ampere's problem really, their biggest potential customers are so big that they can afford to cut out middlemen like Ampere.
  - _huayra_ 2y ago
    Even if Ampere could afford to undercut the internal development of these hyperscalar ARM chips (which to my knowledge they cannot), there is more value in in-housing ARM chips like Amazon / Microsoft are doing: you can more easily try out wacky ideas in chip / firmware design. Often times these companies might have an idea for how to save power / tweak cores in a weird way on a CPU, but have a chicken-and-egg problem with not knowing exactly how much it'll reduce COGS. Not knowing that and having to negotiate with a vendor (who will often want to charge more for the feature) means that it's difficult to do unless it's an obvious slam-dunk. By bringing chip development in-house, adding new features skews more towards a political decision that requires less rigorous financial calculations (e.g. "how much power will this save relative to the vendor_cost++ and our own developer cost?" for 3rd-party chips). It basically allows these cloud providers to ship new features more quickly in their CPUs.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Yeah and you can solve exactly your problems without worrying about anyone else.
  - wmf 2y ago
    Yeah, Ampere's only customers appear to be Oracle Cloud and some hobbyists. I was kind of expecting Oracle to buy them.
tarkin2 2y ago
Isn't Arm now venturing into the product, rather than just specification, market and so this acquisition could help Arm?

HelenGrerne 2y ago

[dead]

whizzter 2y ago

It kinda makes sense though, ARM has been creeping upwards over the years and yet afaik outside of Ampere no ARM server supplier has become serious (outside of inhouse variants such as Amazon Graviton). So combining ARM and Ampere operations doesn't hurt any current big customers in the mobile field (apart from perhaps Qualcomm but they're in lawsuit mode there anyhow). They also make sure to make the ARM alternative available to smaller customers (As an option besides AMD and Intel servers) instead of being gobbled up by f.ex. Oracle (making the big server ARM implementations inhouse to 2 of the big platform operators). Not to mention the silver lining, combining the ops will give it more credence in the enterprise market that seems to have damn good margins (some have attributed AMD's resurgence and Intel's troubles to Intel slipping in server sales).

klelatti 2y ago
Largely agree. Arm / Softbank is in a tricky place if there are no credible customers in a given market. Does it just sit on its hands or actually get out there and build some chips! It has helped fund or help some startups that were using Arm designs to get into new markets (eg Annapurna Labs) but sometimes that doesn't work out at all (Nuvia!) And to be fair I think Rene Haas has been fairly upfront about changing their approach.

SecretDreams 2y ago

Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services?

klelatti 2y ago
Somewhat but not competing with its customers has been a central part of Arm's proposition for three decades, for good reason. There are at least a lot of competitors for Nvidia's design. Your options if you want to build a server core are a lot more limited.
re-thc 2y ago
> Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU services? Different in that ARM only 'designed'. It's more like a framework / library / tool (a very feature complete 1). The Nvidia case is more similar to having a self-install and then a cloud hosted version of the same software.

alberth 2y ago

Isn’t Ampere essentially the only company making server grade ARM chips. And all the rest of ARM customers are making mobile/desktop. So Ampere is going after a completely different segment that the rest of ARM customers aren’t addressing.

jsheard 2y ago
They're the only company selling server grade ARM chips but others are rolling their own for internal use, such as Amazons Graviton line. That's Ampere's problem really, their biggest potential customers are so big that they can afford to cut out middlemen like Ampere.
- _huayra_ 2y ago
  Even if Ampere could afford to undercut the internal development of these hyperscalar ARM chips (which to my knowledge they cannot), there is more value in in-housing ARM chips like Amazon / Microsoft are doing: you can more easily try out wacky ideas in chip / firmware design. Often times these companies might have an idea for how to save power / tweak cores in a weird way on a CPU, but have a chicken-and-egg problem with not knowing exactly how much it'll reduce COGS. Not knowing that and having to negotiate with a vendor (who will often want to charge more for the feature) means that it's difficult to do unless it's an obvious slam-dunk. By bringing chip development in-house, adding new features skews more towards a political decision that requires less rigorous financial calculations (e.g. "how much power will this save relative to the vendor_cost++ and our own developer cost?" for 3rd-party chips). It basically allows these cloud providers to ship new features more quickly in their CPUs.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Yeah and you can solve exactly your problems without worrying about anyone else.
- wmf 2y ago
  Yeah, Ampere's only customers appear to be Oracle Cloud and some hobbyists. I was kind of expecting Oracle to buy them.

tarkin2 2y ago

Isn't Arm now venturing into the product, rather than just specification, market and so this acquisition could help Arm?