SoftBank to sell Arm Holdings to Nvidia; Update: It was just officially announced!

[Zodiark1593]

19 hours ago, Fatih19 said:

Maybe it's all a 5D chess move. Once they bought ARM, they'll stop selling license to Apple unless Apple include their GPU.

Pretty sure Apple wasn’t stupid enough to pour billions into their ARM compatible designs without some sort of perpetual licensing agreement already in place, especially with Macs moving to said CPUs. I’ve been wrong before though.

 

[Brooksie359]

18 hours ago, JoseGuya said:

And isn't Apple like a founder of ARM? They could have some benefits from that

They were according to Wikipedia. It was a joint venture between Apple and two other companies in 1990. 

[Results45]

Man this consolidation of semiconductor companies is really shrinking the playing field.

 

On the not-so-bad side of things I guess we'll see ever more competing options on the APU front ~ foldables, desktops, consoles, AR-VR headsets, workstations, and servers/supercomputers.

 

Who doesn't want to have Nintendo consoles with ray-tracing, Xbox Series S performance crammed into a folding smartphone, or a 64-core ITX build clocked at 6 Gigahertz?

 

Though I definitely see potential for increased market manipulation and making suppliers, middle-men, and individual consumers suffer in the name of doubling profit margins. Stuff like consolidating lobbying efforts against anti-trust/anti-consumer lawsuits, stifling Right to Repair by limiting replacement parts to the millions of independent repair technicians worldwide, making it harder to root software, or outright forcing the market in certain directions when it could be much more diverse and competitive.

 

Honestly a lot of good and bad can happen and I have no doubt that a healthy amount of both will come to pass. I guess it's the uncertainty that irks me.

 

Hopefully open standards like RISC-V and a more democratized consumer marketplace in the form of initiatives like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Render Token, 3D Token, 3D printing* marketplaces, small & mid-sized business cooperatives, and distributed manufacturing (like Folding@Home, but with freelance & short-term contract professionals and adaptable mini production lines at home) help counter any efforts to monopolize the consumer market.

 

 

*range of materials now includes plastics, metals, composites, proteins, and cells

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 9/13/2020 at 4:11 AM, PineyCreek said:

From what I've heard it's an "early agreement" for 40B USD...

 

 

So it seems you were right in the ballpark.

 

Which takes me to... ~$40 billion? For ARM?

[RejZoR]

On 9/13/2020 at 4:21 AM, SupaKomputa said:

They sense the future is ARM. They can be the next Intel.

Now we have 3 way CPU-GPU manufacturer.

Intel - Xe

AMD - Radeon

Nvidia ARM - GTX

This is most likely the reason why they went for ARM. Currently they depend on either AMD or Intel to sell their GPU offerings, they can't run on their own. Even if it's not for gamers and end consumers, they need to secure the enterprise segment and if they can do that with ARM CPU's and their GPU's, that's exactly what AMD and Intel already have and NVIDIA doesn't. Enterprise generally doesn't care if it's x86 or ARM for as long as it works. And NVIDIA is aiming to offer a complete package. It's also very likely they will challenge Qualcomm on the mobile front with some sort of NVIDIA mobile chipset and that might be interesting to watch, clash of Snapdragon and future Tegra... And with that, they also open the gates to console world. Who says a console can't run ARM CPU and NVIDIA GPU? Decision to buy ARM is a long term investment for NVIDIA. And I think it just might pay off for them.

[SupaKomputa]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

This is most likely the reason why they went for ARM. Currently they depend on either AMD or Intel to sell their GPU offerings, they can't run on their own. Even if it's not for gamers and end consumers, they need to secure the enterprise segment and if they can do that with ARM CPU's and their GPU's, that's exactly what AMD and Intel already have and NVIDIA doesn't. Enterprise generally doesn't care if it's x86 or ARM for as long as it works. And NVIDIA is aiming to offer a complete package. It's also very likely they will challenge Qualcomm on the mobile front with some sort of NVIDIA mobile chipset and that might be interesting to watch, clash of Snapdragon and future Tegra... And with that, they also open the gates to console world. Who says a console can't run ARM CPU and NVIDIA GPU? Decision to buy ARM is a long term investment for NVIDIA. And I think it just might pay off for them.

Nvidia already developed support for ARM.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-gpus-now-work-with-arm-processors-magnum-open-source-io-accelerates-data-workloads-for-ai/

[BobtheWrecker]

13 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Ummm. NO. Apple just licenses tech from ARM. Not sure what portions of ARM Apple uses, but they use a portion and pretty much have designed their own CPU. 

 

They were, though. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, Apple was working on what would become the Newton MessagePad. They initially wanted to use the AT&T Hobbit CPU, but eventually sent out Larry Tesler (the man who had previously worked at Xerox, and invented the concept of copy-pasting) to find a good alternative option. They eventually settled on the British computer company Acorn's ARM design. Acorn wanted to spin off ARM, so Apple came in at an opportune time to start a joint venture with Acorn and VLSI (a chip maker that worked with both Apple and Acorn). It helped ARM gain a foothold in the market, now that a big US company was involved. However, Apple sold its shares over the 90s, as it was nearing bankruptcy. That money kept the doors open, and probably also partially financed the NeXT buyout which brought back Steve Jobs, and the NeXTStep technologies that would be integrated into the Mac OS with OS X.

 

As for them, bugger all will change. They have a perpetual ISA license, and that's all they need. They won't need to knock on NVIDIA's door for new licenses for core designs, as they do that themselves. NVIDIA would be insane to try and be petty towards Apple, as it could decimate them in the courts.

[EJMB]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

So it seems you were right in the ballpark.

 

Which takes me to... ~$40 billion? For ARM?

Yeah...it was bought at around $31 billion back in 2016 so a relatively small growth after over 4 years.

[yian88]

RIP ARM, the way ARM used to make chip designs for everyone was really neat but now with nvidia leading it might get messy, who knows what the deal was, i hope they can continue with the same management and design model where they license to almost anyone.

I bet that if nvidia touches anything it will be the licensing model and higher prices, in worst case.

In best case scenario they leave them as they are now and help co-develop geforce mobile GPU-s instead of Mali nonsense, but then again the prices could be raised to where it wont make sense, since there is only Adreno, mali and power vr and maybe soon AMD with samsung on the gpu side, but mostly its adreno/mali, take mali out of the game and you have 2 expensive options adreno with average perf, and nvidia mobile with good performance but twice the cost of next best offer.

[straight_stewie]

HOORAY! 

I was really worried there for a second that it would be split up amongst an amalgamation of whatever companies wanted a slice. That would, of course, have ended terribly for ARM, and for consumers. (companies often want a slice of a company either to steer it towards their interests or to steal it's technology and optionally kill the company afterwards.)

At least with a singular owner ARM stands a chance of survival.

[thorhammerz]

Wonderful time to use equity in their takeover bid too, with their stonk at/near ATHs .

[porina]

I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Arm seems a good fit with nvidia in product terms. I do think nvidia has missed opportunities in recent years from not also controlling a CPU architecture like AMD and Intel do. It's not the same licencing someone else's vs having your own.

 

For the consumer side I don't expect this to have much impact in the short term, but it could have a bigger impact in enterprise offerings looking forward. You can then get an nvidia solution, not just nvidia GPUs as part of a solution. Having said that, maybe there will be more activity in the SOC space with this acquisition.

 

I also think that Apple will be indirectly their biggest ally in that, as weird as it may sound. With Apple making the switch away from x86 to Arm for their Macs, there are going to be ever more people developing on Arm.

 

[Nena Trinity]

So can we expect Nvidia to make a desktop ARM PC with expandable RAM slots & PCI-E slots? 

 

Currently we may get a Nvidia ARM powered laptop with amazing RTX graphics chip. :3

[Mark Kaine]

Timy Sweeney taking notes

 

[porina]

13 minutes ago, Nena Trinity said:

So can we expect Nvidia to make a desktop ARM PC with expandable RAM slots & PCI-E slots? 

 

Currently we may get a Nvidia ARM powered laptop with amazing RTX graphics chip. :3

If you're thinking of an x86 competitor, it is hard for me to see that happening. Look at MS' attempts in the past to get people to buy non-x86 Windows devices. How did that work for them? I think that'll be a barrier too far. Where nvidia could go is into consumer areas where users don't need to worry about OS compatibility. Think chromebooks, game consoles (portable or otherwise), embedded systems. Could they have a go at the smartphone SOC market? I'd love a gaming focused chip, big on GPU. Would be great in a gaming tablet which is an area I think is overlooked.

[Master Disaster]

On 9/13/2020 at 5:14 AM, JoseGuya said:

And isn't Apple like a founder of ARM? They could have some benefits from that

Nope. ARM was created by the British micro firm Arcorn (ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine) and was used in many home micro computers and VERY heavily in the education sector in the UK throughout the 80s and 90s.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, porina said:

If you're thinking of an x86 competitor, it is hard for me to see that happening.

On the consumer side maybe not, but it's likely going to have pretty big impacts in the server market.

 

And who knows, maybe in the consumer space someone like Nvidia can develop a compelling entire platform now.

 

1 hour ago, porina said:

Look at MS' attempts in the past to get people to buy non-x86 Windows devices.

Their attempts have never been more than "putting one toe in the water" with low spec tablets and laptops, that's not something anyone with sense would put development efforts into. Wouldn't be surprised that if a serious, complete, modular and powerful platform was developed it would attract more development.

[Arika]

maybe we'll start to see Tegra powered Android phones instead of just qualcomm

[Video Beagle]

56 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nope. ARM was created by the British micro firm Arcorn (ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine) and was used in many home micro computers and VERY heavily in the education sector in the UK throughout the 80s and 90s.

As was explained above, Apple was a co-founder of the company ARM, along with Acorn and the chip manufacturer, but not of the processor itself.

[Vishera]

On 9/13/2020 at 5:10 AM, williamcll said:

Cool but does that mean I will get a nintendo RTX?

As matter of fact the Switch uses an Nvidia GPU as part of the Tegra X1 SOC,but the GPU is Maxwell.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

4 hours ago, EJMB said:

Yeah...it was bought at around $31 billion back in 2016 so a relatively small growth after over 4 years.

~$31 billion? For ARM?

[porina]

2 hours ago, Kilrah said:

On the consumer side maybe not, but it's likely going to have pretty big impacts in the server market.

The reply I made was specifically talking about desktops as we know them. Maybe there could exist developer systems in that style, but I can't see it going mainstream. I did separately mention that the likely use cases were other areas. Basically, non-Windows areas.

[cj09beira]

20 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Thats the thing. ARM is the future of mobile. Phones, Tablets, and much more will continue to use ARM for years and years. There is no Phase out. Nvidia sees that ARM is going to become a huge thing in the future. If anything you're going to see more ARM devices. Microsoft has been pushing Windows. First they had the Surface RT, which didn't do well, their Windows Phones, which again didn't do well, now they have a Surface Tablet that is ARM, but offers the ability to run some x86 Apps. I mean look at Apple, they have effectively told Intel to pound sand and are now going to use their own ARM CPU's to build their computers. ARM is here to stay. 

at the same time much of the work to allow for arm also opened up the room for other architectures, thus things like risk v have a good shot at it.

 

 

i really dislike these kinds of mergers, if nvidia's other acquisitions are any example, i fear for the arm ecosystem, while the big markets like the phone market and server will probably be fine, i wonder what will happen to the smaller ones, all those cool small devices running arm, your teensy's of the world

[Kroon]

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Nope. ARM was created by the British micro firm Arcorn (ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine) and was used in many home micro computers and VERY heavily in the education sector in the UK throughout the 80s and 90s.

 

What are you talking about?

 

This is taken from ARMs homepage:

Quote

The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology.

 

Source: https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b/processors-ip-blog/posts/a-brief-history-of-arm-part-1

 

So yes Apple is co-founder of ARM.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, Kroon said:

 

What are you talking about?

 

This is taken from ARMs homepage:

 

Source: https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b/processors-ip-blog/posts/a-brief-history-of-arm-part-1

 

So yes Apple is co-founder of ARM.

Apple is a co founder of Arm Holdings, the company set up in the 90s however Apple played no role in the creation of ARM as an architecture. We had computers in classrooms as early as 1982 in the UK which had ARM CPUs in them.