NVIDIA in Advanced Talks to Acquire Arm from SoftBank

[Prime2515102]

While the courts did find Samsung set unreasonable license fees, these cases were more about patent infringement between the two of them so likely doesn't apply here.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electronics_Co.

Yes, I know it is Wikipedia, but good enough for this.

If you look at the reference for that (#40) that was a decision made in a Dutch court. BUT... it was over 3G and was decided because it's an industry standard. This probably does apply in the US also because it's an ITU standard (International Telecommunication Union) and certain things have to be agreed upon internationally obviously.

Otherwise, they could get everyone onboard and they go into production, trucks go on the road to deliver the products and suddenly, "Oh, sorry, we changed our minds. The license fees just went up thirty fold." The holder of a patent for a big enough tech could potentially destroy an entire nation's economy that way if enough other companies were on board (although, at least in the US, it would never happen because it would be blatant monopolistic practice).

x86 is completely proprietary though so I don't think Intel, AMD, and VIA would have any such obligations except under their own agreements with each other.

I would think anyway. I'm going to do some more reading on this stuff, learning about law is fun! lol I think I missed my calling...

 

[qcmadness]

NVIDIA does not process the money to acquire ARM unless Softbank is paid with far less than they paid for ARM (US$32B in 2016).

 

[geon2k2]

I wonder how this will play with Apple moving to ARM. Apple doesn't like Nvidia, I think it clearly showed when they went with AMD for all their MacBook and Mac graphics cards (not entirely sure about Mac Pros). But there was a story that Apple didn't like how closed Nvidias drivers were or something before they ditched them for AMD. I would be interesting to know what Apple thinks about their ARM move now, if Nvidia actually acquires it.

Who knows how this Apple move will go, but right now they are all in on it. Depending on whether this turns out to be a good move, Apple will be dependant on Nvidia, not just on ARM. So it could just be a smart investment to eventually basically shake out Apple for as much as they can. Which, Apple has more than $ 100 billion just sitting there in the bank and that's an older number I heard.

IMHIO, if apple doesn't move in and outbid nvidia, they'll be in a very bad position.

Either way for consumers this is very bad news, as both nvidia and apple are closed companies, which want to profit with closed interfaces and ecosystems and don't give anything to the community without requiring an arm and a leg in return.

 

[agent_x007]

I think NV is expecting quite the profit from Ampere cards, and that is the reason why talks are taking place now. This deal IS NOT going to happen this year.
I'd say it will be a year from now at the earliest, end of next year or beginning of 2022 is more likely though (assuming gov. guys "green lit" it).

At that point in time (assuming Ampere is "good enough"), NV should have enough cash to buy ARM (or at least have a majority stake on it).
^100% speculation

 

[Ashtr1x]

I hope this BS gets cancelled out and SoftBank starts thinking with mind rather than eyes. Stupidity at peak. Japan already lost a lot of Manufacturing to China and they only have a few top corporations to keep them going, even Saudi is invested heavily into the N.A companies or EU companies or any bigshots. Selling ARM is suicidal, I will repeat again that Toshiba sold their Memory technology to a consortium KIOXIA where big companies call shots, Losing another big tech to other companies is very bad. Betting on that retarded WeWork bit them hard but selling these for cash to appease investors and look good in graphs is not a good decision. Esp with Apple moving to ARM (due to Intel's delay and their BGA only machines are very thin and light for First Party apps plus their OS marketshare is just 10% same for their Revenue cut from Macs, around 9.x%, plus they put a TON into TSMC plus their own R&D which is why they do not because of some magical unicorn ARM is going to take over the world) it's a big thing for SoftBank and UK as well.

Nvidia is worst corporate to get ARM into, Apple is also same so is Qualcomm, Samsung. They all compete with each another, Nvidia does a little of ARM but giving this big tech to any of them is nightmarish. Already saw what big M&A's harbor, cancer at peak like Disney now owns Fox production 20th Century Fox, giving them > 45% of Hollywood they dictate a lot on how money comes seeing them others copy Universal made that Fast and Furious, Sony with their garbage Jumanji, Spiderman etc. WB with Superhero nonsense. ATT bought out WB completely and they make and distribute as well. We know how EA is worst for their takeovers and ruining studios. Big M&A must never happen, DoJ does nothing, Adminstration does nothing, Congress does nothing to stop them. Only SoftBank can do it, they have to think properly and they are very much Neutral in this ARM than any company that is wanting to buy them atop Nvidia will have to use debt, I hope this gets really cancelled out. Even Apple doesn't want to buy it, and it would face Regulatory scrutiny heavily for sure.

Ngreedia will ruin it badly. And this whole BS of ARM is super powerful BS is getting boring now, esp with all that drama I will quote myself again on that garbage ARM vs x86 talk always.

Qualcomm abandoned their entire plans, they canned their prized Centriq which was heralded as the Messiah of ARM on Servers with Cloudflare doing all the PR bs nonsense on how glorious Centriq is along with being an Azure frontrunner as well and then, we had the lead person who was chief of that project itself left the company entirely. Qcomm put all their full custom SoC design engineers on that project and entirely canned with zero impact. Graviton 2 AWS is nothing to sneeze at as it loses to the x86 parts for similar compute, it's only useful for low end EC2 instances and Amazon always wants to improve their profit cuts so investing in their own IP, exploring that option is not expensive for them at all.

Ampere's Altera 128C 250W is still yet to show and they again have that Cloudflare as customer LOL, cannot wait to see how Milan is going to decimate that and how Cloudflare is again going to drop them, people forget how IBM Power9 and upcoming Power10 are still there and that's not even competing with the 99-98% of the DC market which is owned by 94% Intel 4-5% AMD. Wonder who are those "more" players we have in the industry building ARM server processors fighting for that 1% Marvell I guess, ThunderX2 perhaps how great it was vs ThunderX but loses to the Xeon SKL & EPYC. Soon that ThunderX3 will be coming on 7nm and going to smash EPYC7742 I guess. Ah Kunpeng 920 7nm by Huawei it is along with Hygon built at SMIC.

Even Linus Torvalds thinks ARM cannot take over servers at all. Apple's Rosetta2 ARM-x86 translation layer, everyone will see how their new processors are going to be, and the aspect of making the software from scratch, Apple pays millions to Adobe and other Software giants to make the applications as First Party. That's why Macs have higher battery with them along with i Devices and any third party software results in drop of that.

Maybe I should come and see these ARM posts after 10 years probably along with the AT forums where ARM Apple processors are heralded as Alien technology and taking over the world by getting the useless x86 technology by the superior ARM masterrace.

 

[chodaboy19]

What are the chances this can clear anti-trust review as a step 1 for starters?

 

[TechLurker]

From Nikkei, seems like SoftBank intends to keep majority stake in ARM even if they sell it, probably taking a controlling stake in NVIDIA or whomever they sell the IP to, effectively owning both.

 

[ARF]

From Nikkei, seems like SoftBank intends to keep majority stake in ARM even if they sell it, probably taking a controlling stake in NVIDIA or whomever they sell the IP to, effectively owning both.

Given how nVidia's CEO refused this kind of thing to AMD back in 2006, I don't think it will happen now either.

 

[Thefumigator]

Apple is ditching all AMD GPU for in house silicon too. Basically they want ALL the money to themselves. Now thinking about it, the only time Apple tried to be open and used x86 was when their PowerPC CPU got destroyed by Intel's Core uArc.

Yes, Apple also got mad with their cpu lineup before. They claimed that their (IBM) PowerPC dual G5 system was "the most powerful server/computer in the world". Their spot commercial in the UK was banned because of false claims, the proof showed the dual Opteron64, that was at the time the "the most powerful server/computer in the world", just some time before intel's core uArc release.

 

[Assimilator]

I think this will happen, assuming SoftBank doesn't make any stupid moves that cause NVIDIA to leave the negotiating table. Money won't be an issue assuming the price is right, NVIDIA has ~16 billion USD in cash, any bank would be thrilled to give them a loan.

What this means for the CPU market is.... difficult to say. At face value this would be incredibly lucrative for NVIDIA considering Arm's revenue from smartphones manufacturers... but... Intel has very recently demonstrated that Lakefield is viable, and then there's the whole "cutting off Huawei" thing...

NVIDIA is definitely making this move in order to become more than just a GPU company but I wonder what their long-term plan is - obviously at some point they intend to leverage Arm's CPU expertise in their GPUs and vice versa... but what form exactly would that take? And will they be able to avoid falling into the typical rut that companies with distinct specialties do when they effectively merge (like AMD and ATI), whereby the time trying to figure out merging allows competitors to catch up and surpass them? Or will they plow a ton of time and money into some Arm CPU + NVIDIA GPU hybrid that has the benefits of neither but the drawbacks of both?

There's just too many variables to speculate in any meaningful way.

And why is everybody screaming "antitrust"? NVIDIA and Arm are currently targeting completely different segments of the market, there is no monopoly created if the former buys the latter. NVIDIA may be buying Arm's de facto monopoly but I don't recall that being against antitrust law.

From Nikkei, seems like SoftBank intends to keep majority stake in ARM even if they sell it, probably taking a controlling stake in NVIDIA or whomever they sell the IP to, effectively owning both.

The word "majority" doesn't appear anywhere in that article.

 

[Hardware Geek]

I wonder how this will play with Apple moving to ARM. Apple doesn't like Nvidia, I think it clearly showed when they went with AMD for all their MacBook and Mac graphics cards (not entirely sure about Mac Pros). But there was a story that Apple didn't like how closed Nvidias drivers were or something before they ditched them for AMD. I would be interesting to know what Apple thinks about their ARM move now, if Nvidia actually acquires it.

Who knows how this Apple move will go, but right now they are all in on it. Depending on whether this turns out to be a good move, Apple will be dependant on Nvidia, not just on ARM. So it could just be a smart investment to eventually basically shake out Apple for as much as they can. Which, Apple has more than $ 100 billion just sitting there in the bank and that's an older number I heard.

I find the entire concept of apple not liking nvidia because of a closed/proprietary ecosystem to be hilariously ironic.

I hope they go the IPO route, because that would be a great stock to own long term.

 

[sergionography]

I really like this because it would put Nvidia on somewhat equal footing as AMD and Intel. And competition is good, especially when it's all here in America.

 

[R0H1T]

Given how nVidia's CEO refused this kind of thing to AMD back in 2006, I don't think it will happen now either.

Yeah too bad for them ARM is a hell of a lot more valuable than Nvidia right now, like AMD was back in the day!

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Anything nVidia gets their hands on, my wallet starts to shiver with fear.

 

[stimpy88]

Knowing how nobody likes to work with nVidia, this is probably not going to end well if they do manage to buy ARM.

 

[remixedcat]

I suspect this has much to do with it. Or a way to cut China off from it.

Good hope that happens. Better that way if Nvidia has it rather than a hellish company like oracle or HP lol

 

[schuck6566]

Apple is ditching all AMD GPU for in house silicon too. Basically they want ALL the money to themselves. Now thinking about it, the only time Apple tried to be open and used x86 was when their PowerPC CPU got destroyed by Intel's Core uArc.

Not doubting the usefulness of ARM design. But it is also too early to call this end of x86.

There is no strict RSIC vs CISC as most designs try to learn from what the others are doing better. x86 will it superior abosolute performance and compatibility will still dominate the HPC market for the foreseeable future.

So,U think Apple is going to come up with a discrete graphics solution & toss AMD/Nvidia out with the bath water? Hmmm,How'd that work for Intel? Oh,Wait! They're STILL working on a viable discrete graphics card. Are they just going to make tablets & phones? How many Apple workstations do you think will be sold using the graphics built in? There's a reason cards like the Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 are still being made,it's called heavy work loads.