Nvidia looking at acquiring Arm

[dogwitch]

11 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The question that hits me is why is arm for sale?  They should be doing well, and it looks like they’re going to be doing even better in the future.  Just holding the asset would be profitable.  Maybe there are problems with the parent company that put them in desperate need of ready cash.  It’s the only reason a good property like this even might be sold at all.

softbank own them. they dump company that are even making moey.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Wonder if Apple could swing a purchase if they were to open source the ARM ISA?

I think open sourcing the IP would devalue it too much to be worth buying. 

[Zodiark1593]

26 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I think open sourcing the IP would devalue it too much to be worth buying. 

There would probably be some risk assessment at play as far as how reasonable would Nvidia be with licensing, keeping in mind the amount of time and money Apple poured into making their CPU cores and software, and will be going into their Macs. I’d imagine that, barring perpetual licensing agreements, Apple has a lot at stake as to the future of ARM being potentially in the hands of Nvidia. 
 

Should it be determined that the acquisition would put Nvidia in the position to dictate much less favorable deals, then seeking to open source the ARM ISA may prove to be less risky to Apple over the long term as their investment in cpus and software would remain protected, and would provide free reign to expand on the ISA going forward. 
 

My guesses from what little I know. 

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Zodiark1593 said:

There would probably be some risk assessment at play as far as how reasonable would Nvidia be with licensing, keeping in mind the amount of time and money Apple poured into making their CPU cores and software, and will be going into their Macs. I’d imagine that, barring perpetual licensing agreements, Apple has a lot at stake as to the future of ARM being potentially in the hands of Nvidia. 
 

Should it be determined that the acquisition would put Nvidia in the position to dictate much less favorable deals, then seeking to open source the ARM ISA may prove to be less risky to Apple over the long term as their investment in cpus and software would remain protected, and would provide free reign to expand on the ISA. 
 

My guesses from what little I know. 

If they owned it they wouldn’t need to open source it, except that android would not be happy at all.  Need a different non tech holder I suspect or some sort of weirdness.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

There would probably be some risk assessment at play as far as how reasonable would Nvidia be with licensing, keeping in mind the amount of time and money Apple poured into making their CPU cores and software, and will be going into their Macs. I’d imagine that, barring perpetual licensing agreements, Apple has a lot at stake as to the future of ARM being potentially in the hands of Nvidia. 
 

Should it be determined that the acquisition would put Nvidia in the position to dictate much less favorable deals, then seeking to open source the ARM ISA may prove to be less risky to Apple over the long term as their investment in cpus and software would remain protected, and would provide free reign to expand on the ISA going forward. 
 

My guesses from what little I know. 

Hmmm,  buying it not to control it but so someone else doesn't.   If that was the case it would have to be solid legal requirement, otherwise of the two companies, Nvidia would not stand to gain a monopoly over competitors as it doesn't make phones however apple certainly would.   I've never seen any authority dictate such a condition before.  It would be new ground for all parties I think.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Nowak said:

I'm pretty sure the Switch is the only Tegra device to see any amount of success lol

The Nintendo Switch, and the nVidia Shield (used as a piracy device) are the only actual uses of the Tegra SoC. There also hasn't been any new customers since 2016 (which was Nintendo with the X1.) Pretty much all other use has been niche, like automobile infotainment and drones.

 

This again, goes back to the lack of customers wanting to deal with nVidia's proprietary, closed, designs where other vendors have known GPU parts like PowerVR and Adreno, which have superior Open Source drivers.

 

[Nowak]

10 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The Nintendo Switch, and the nVidia Shield (used as a piracy device) are the only actual uses of the Tegra SoC. There also hasn't been any new customers since 2016 (which was Nintendo with the X1.) Pretty much all other use has been niche, like automobile infotainment and drones.

 

This again, goes back to the lack of customers wanting to deal with nVidia's proprietary, closed, designs where other vendors have known GPU parts like PowerVR and Adreno, which have superior Open Source drivers.

 

There used to be quite a lot of Tegra devices but they dried up after the Tegra 3. Probably because the Tegra 3 kinda sucked.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The Nintendo Switch, and the nVidia Shield (used as a piracy device) are the only actual uses of the Tegra SoC. There also hasn't been any new customers since 2016 (which was Nintendo with the X1.) Pretty much all other use has been niche, like automobile infotainment and drones.

 

This again, goes back to the lack of customers wanting to deal with nVidia's proprietary, closed, designs where other vendors have known GPU parts like PowerVR and Adreno, which have superior Open Source drivers.

I really don't think open source drivers has anything to do with a lack of Tegra support in consumer devices.

 

The Adreno drivers you find in most smartphones are not open source. The default drivers Qualcomm provides in the BSP are closed source. It is actually one of the major reasons why some Android phones don't get updated for very long. There have been some projects like "Freedreno" which tries to solve this by reverse engineering the Adreno drivers and provide a free and open source version, but the same can be said for Tegra (supported by Mesa).

 

 

I think the reason why Tegra hasn't gotten much traction is because it was never all that competitive.

Back in the Tegra 2 days it was actually widely used and very successful. It was a top of the line SoC with the latest and greatest in pretty much all areas.

The Tegra 3 was less successful but still got quite a few design wins. I'd say that was pretty successful too since it ended up in Nexus devices, Sony devices, Microsoft devices, Asus devices, LG and HTC used them too.

It wasn't until Tegra 4 where things started going south. Nvidia started falling behind in areas such as modem technology since other vendors were using integrated modems (why they bought Icera) and because Nvidia hadn't gotten the whole big.LITTLE thing sorted out (no support for global task scheduling), in addition to the A15 cores just being a rather bad architecture (and despite this they used an A15 as the "little" core), and stuff like image processing falling behind... It ended up just being used in larger devices, not your typical phone at the time.

 

And then ever since Nvidia has mostly focused on larger, more power hungry chips and not smartphone chips. Since Android tablets never really took of, it's no surprised that Nvidia never got a solid foothold on the ARM SoC market. Tegra is successful in the markets where bigger and more power hungry chips makes sense. Things like laptops, tablets and cars.

 

 

Anyway, I don't think drivers has anything to do with Tegra's lack of success. I think it has more to do with the lack of success in fields where Tegra would make sense (mainly tablets). If Android tablets had become more popular, then I think Tegra would have been successful too.

[Guest]

On 7/23/2020 at 11:02 AM, Kisai said:

Considering that Apple basically helped create ARM in the first place, it would not surprise me if their contract gave them license to any/all IP that ARM develops containing ARM CPU cores. 

 

Likewise Intel has license to build ARM as well, they just don't outside of their FPGA business they acquired not that long ago.

https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/products/programmable/soc.html

 

So Intel would certainly have a reason to protest this, since it jeopardizes the FPGA business.

I really hope this means ARM doesn’t go the way of x86. Think of all the competition we could have had and the possibilities. Bright things for ARM since all the major OS have now been ported.

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Anyway, I don't think drivers has anything to do with Tegra's lack of success. I think it has more to do with the lack of success in fields where Tegra would make sense (mainly tablets). If Android tablets had become more popular, then I think Tegra would have been successful too.

 

Android tablets didn't become popular for precisely that kind of reasoning. They all universally sucked because they tried to "upscale" the Android phone experience to a larger screen, but since most Android phones are of a disposable garbage tier, people don't want to pay money for a good tablet only to have to throw it away when the OEM decides that it's too expensive to support old versions.

 

Meanwhile Apple : Hey did you know you can still use your iPad 8 years from now, wow! (and that's being generous.)

 

Like I said earlier in the thread, only two real customers: Nintendo Switch, and Kodi boxes (used for piracy) , and the pirates just used nVidia Shield boxes that nVidia makes based on the X1. Pretty much every "watch unlimited TV" type of box that was being sold on eBay 3 years+ ago were these boxes because they were the only ones that were responsive, while it was available on some much crappier SoC's, those SoC's didn't let you really do anything but watch video.

 

Likewise SmartTV's based on Android have largely been shunned by the TV manufacturers. The boxes that the cable companies have been using for the IPTV services are less powerful than what KODI boxes have shipped with. Shaw and Comcast use the Arris XG1v4.

 

And these boxes are all universally horrible energy wasters:

https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/16/pay-tv-dvrs-waste-energy-mislead-consumers/

 

 

[yian88]

Doubt it will happen but if it will its going to be the end of ARM domination because Nvidia sucks and everyone is going to move to RISC-V hopefully. Could also mean end of Google android domination and reentry of huawei into mobile markets unless Huawei can be banned from using RISC-V.

[Kisai]

On 7/24/2020 at 10:55 AM, yian88 said:

Doubt it will happen but if it will its going to be the end of ARM domination because Nvidia sucks and everyone is going to move to RISC-V hopefully. Could also mean end of Google android domination and reentry of huawei into mobile markets unless Huawei can be banned from using RISC-V.

I doubt it.

 

The entire thing about RISC-V is that it's "open source" which means you can basically do whatever you want with it. The bad thing about RISC-V is that it's "open source", and there is zero chance of any CPU vendor making a completely compatible RISC-V CPU with each other.

 

So you're not going to see an Intel vs AMD scenario with RISC-V any more than you would ARM, but at least ARM is a known quantity with OS's like Windows and Linux that will only work with the ISA published, and the tools will not support proprietary extensions to the ISA. RISC-V is more of an unknown quantity, and where's it's so far shown up are in embedded parts. Development tools are difficult to use because there's just nothing out there that is standard, as the entire ISA is not yet "complete". It's still very chicken-and-egg.

 

Hence you see Windows-on-ARM using Microsoft's own CPU. MacOS and iOS on ARM using Apple's own CPU. Unless Google is going to produce their own CPU's or re-brand Qualcomm's CPU's as well, Android will keep being a crapshoot if anything you buy will still get updates 2 years later let alone run anything in 2 years.

[Lord Vile]

On 7/24/2020 at 3:16 AM, Donut417 said:

My guess is they used selected parts of the ARM design. They probably just licensed it to have a basis for how to design a CPU. 

 

 

On the other side of this. I wonder if Nvidia will get more serious about their Tegra CPU's if this deal pans out. 

They use the ARM instruction set but the chips are custom.

 

TBH I could see it going public and a bunch of companies taking minority stakes. Apple, google and co can't take full control because of conflicts of interest etc but they could probably take 10 or 20% each to stop anyone having a controlling stake. 

[porina]

15 hours ago, Kisai said:

The entire thing about RISC-V is that it's "open source" which means you can basically do whatever you want with it. The bad thing about RISC-V is that it's "open source", and there is zero chance of any CPU vendor making a completely compatible RISC-V CPU with each other.

I haven't looked at it in too much detail, but to my understanding RISC-V is highly modular. If you need more of one thing than another, you can add more of that thing than another, but they still all share the same core instruction set. So I don't think RISC-V will fragment in a bad way. If anyone wants to make more generic CPUs out of it, they'll pick a baseline and code can probe for additional features.

[RejZoR]

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

I doubt it.

 

The entire thing about RISC-V is that it's "open source" which means you can basically do whatever you want with it. The bad thing about RISC-V is that it's "open source", and there is zero chance of any CPU vendor making a completely compatible RISC-V CPU with each other.

 

So you're not going to see an Intel vs AMD scenario with RISC-V any more than you would ARM, but at least ARM is a known quantity with OS's like Windows and Linux that will only work with the ISA published, and the tools will not support proprietary extensions to the ISA. RISC-V is more of an unknown quantity, and where's it's so far shown up are in embedded parts. Development tools are difficult to use because there's just nothing out there that is standard, as the entire ISA is not yet "complete". It's still very chicken-and-egg.

 

Hence you see Windows-on-ARM using Microsoft's own CPU. MacOS and iOS on ARM using Apple's own CPU. Unless Google is going to produce their own CPU's or re-brand Qualcomm's CPU's as well, Android will keep being a crapshoot if anything you buy will still get updates 2 years later let alone run anything in 2 years.

When you're in a position of Apple where you absolutely dictate everything and you have full control over ecosystem, they could basically make up their own architecture from ground up or use RISC-V and modify it beyond anything it is right now and it would work great. Because whoever would want to make apps or features for their ecosystem, they'd have to design things for that architecture. It's just on Apple at that point to release whitepapers, API documentation and stuff like that so people understand it before they make things for you.

 

I frankly don't think Android has that luxury when they can't even provide reliable long term updating policy/system and make up real standards across all vendors using Android as each does something on their own beyond the most fundamental core of it.

 

I think it's just weird situation if SoftBank actually sells ARM. So many vendors rely on this architecture I don't think anyone will be allowed to shut the thing down and make it proprietary thing that can't be used by anyone else. It just wouldn't work and even be allowed imo. If it somehow will, then we're upon really bizarre times. But I don't think it'll happen.

[ARikozuM]

I summon the Forbidden One, EXODIA!!!

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

When you're in a position of Apple where you absolutely dictate everything and you have full control over ecosystem, they could basically make up their own architecture from ground up or use RISC-V and modify it beyond anything it is right now and it would work great. Because whoever would want to make apps or features for their ecosystem, they'd have to design things for that architecture. It's just on Apple at that point to release whitepapers, API documentation and stuff like that so people understand it before they make things for you.

 

I frankly don't think Android has that luxury when they can't even provide reliable long term updating policy/system and make up real standards across all vendors using Android as each does something on their own beyond the most fundamental core of it.

 

I think it's just weird situation if SoftBank actually sells ARM. So many vendors rely on this architecture I don't think anyone will be allowed to shut the thing down and make it proprietary thing that can't be used by anyone else. It just wouldn't work and even be allowed imo. If it somehow will, then we're upon really bizarre times. But I don't think it'll happen.

There’s also the point that arm is british.  Might be considered a strategic asset so the government might get involved.

[Raytsou]

On 7/23/2020 at 6:28 AM, gabrielcarvfer said:

They have their positives: top notch researchers and give some cool rulers to their employees.

 

I have one of those, they were giving them out at career fair my freshman year of college.

[porina]

A new twist! Apparently the person at the head of Arm China decided he didn't want to get fired and broken off from Arm HQ, which will be difficult to resolve as he holds the Arm China company documents.

 

Article also claims Arm had approached Apple for a possible sale, but Apple weren't interested.

 

[Video Beagle]

@porina  what does "JV" mean in that article?

[porina]

8 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

@porina  what does "JV" mean in that article?

Joint Venture. Due to Chinese law, you can't have a fully foreign company in China. So they have to make a new Chinese company in China, which is only part owned outside China.

[Bombastinator]

So a China didn’t even bother to buy arm they just took it. Cute.

[spartaman64]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

So a China didn’t even bother to buy arm they just took it. Cute.

idk it just looks like a guy going rogue since chinese investors are trying to get rid of him also

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

idk it just looks like a guy going rogue since chinese investors are trying to get rid of him also

So something going on but we don’t know what.  Apparently he may or may have not grabbed “some” ARM IP?

[Video Beagle]

6 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Apparently he may or may have not grabbed “some” ARM IP?

from the article I read, it's not IP but like administrative stuff...the company seal or some such...that by holding it he's in charge...it honestly sounded very archaic/ceremonial...i may have misunderstood, mind you.