Nvidia looking at acquiring Arm

[Bombastinator]

31 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Holy crap I just realized something... Not sure if anyone has brought this up yet but what happens to Mali if Nvidia buys ARM?

My guess is that they would just stop development of Mali, which means SoCs would be left without a reference GPU to implement, and I doubt Nvidia will sell their GPU designs either.

 

So what happens then with GPUs for SoCs?

Qualcomm does their own thing with Adreno.

Samsung is working with AMD so they will be fine.

Apple makes their own GPUs.

What would companies like MediaTek and Rockchip do (I assume HiSilicon are screwed regardless)? They don't have their own GPU designs and rely on Mali at this point in time. Would they have to go to Imagination?

Interesting.  So a few people are guaranteed screwed by this.  Possible many more.  We’ll see what shakes out I guess. 

[Kisai]

On 8/3/2020 at 8:35 AM, LAwLz said:

Holy crap I just realized something... Not sure if anyone has brought this up yet but what happens to Mali (GPUs designed by ARM) if Nvidia buys ARM?

My guess is that they would just stop development of Mali (because why develop Mali and the Nvidia GPUs?), which means SoCs would be left without a reference GPU to implement, and I doubt Nvidia will sell their GPU designs either.

 

So what happens then with GPUs for SoCs?

Qualcomm does their own thing with Adreno.

Samsung is working with AMD so they will be fine, maybe (if the AMD collaboration works out well).

Apple makes their own GPUs.

What would companies like MediaTek and Rockchip do (I assume HiSilicon are screwed regardless)? They don't have their own GPU designs and rely on Mali at this point in time. Would they have to go to Imagination?

 

Presumably they would be required to either divest it, or sell it off (eg to another mobile SoC vendor that builds their own CPU's)

Adreno used to be owned by AMD (then ATI,) Adreno is an anagram of Radeon. So Qualcomm kinda took advantage of that AMD purchase to acquire that specific technology.

 

Like the thing that comes to mind is that without ARM developing it, it's basically a patent landmine, so the only SoC vendors that would likely use it would be MediaTek, as they already do sell chip designs, and their chips are in smartphones and smarttv's.

 

Samsung is still using Mali in their CPU's, even the high-end ones, and unless the rumors of them ending their CPU design business are true, they would still need low-end GPU cores for their low-end CPU SoC's in their trash-tier models.

 

In my opinion, a de-coupling of the Mali IP from the ARM IP would be a good thing. However, without some requirement to divest it, nVidia might just shut it down/depreciate it in favor of their own GPU IP's they put into the Tegra. Which means that if nVidia doesn't continue to license and develop ARM, all these third party SoC's are now stuck with whatever they have a license to for the foreseeable future.

[TetraSky]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/nvidia-reportedly-to-acquire-arm-holdings-from-softbank-for-40-billion/
 

Latest info on this I guess?

Honestly, I thought this was going to just be a rumour or something... But apparently, it seems like there's more to it.

[werto165]

5 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/nvidia-reportedly-to-acquire-arm-holdings-from-softbank-for-40-billion/
 

Latest info on this I guess?

Honestly, I thought this was going to just be a rumour or something... But apparently, it seems like there's more to it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2020/09/13/its-officialnvidia-acquires-arm-for-40b-to-create-what-could-be-a-computing-juggernaut/#54d8b8bf4973

 

 

[LAwLz]

It's amazing that SoftBank were able to find a buyer willing to overpay as much as they did. 

[AvMaverick]

On 7/23/2020 at 2:03 AM, porina said:

Intel are strong on CPUs, putting aside 14nm jokes,

 

 

 

14 nm +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[AvMaverick]

On 8/3/2020 at 9:05 PM, LAwLz said:

Holy crap I just realized something... Not sure if anyone has brought this up yet but what happens to Mali (GPUs designed by ARM) if Nvidia buys ARM?

My guess is that they would just stop development of Mali (because why develop Mali and the Nvidia GPUs?), which means SoCs would be left without a reference GPU to implement, and I doubt Nvidia will sell their GPU designs either.

 

So what happens then with GPUs for SoCs?

Qualcomm does their own thing with Adreno.

Samsung is working with AMD so they will be fine, maybe (if the AMD collaboration works out well).

Apple makes their own GPUs.

What would companies like MediaTek and Rockchip do (I assume HiSilicon are screwed regardless)? They don't have their own GPU designs and rely on Mali at this point in time. Would they have to go to Imagination?

I think NVidia will just work on dominating everything. Mali for phones, RTX for PCMR

[AvMaverick]

2 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

I think they will either stop the licensing deals or increase the licenses, and sell the complete chips with Nvidia GPUs to everyone (just like they do with graphics cards).

Nah, that'll disrupt the flow ARM has. They'll put in their science, not the marketing. 

 

Purchases don't mean that they'll just eat it and destroy it. They might do some pricing changes for newer tech and add their R&D expertise, but not much will change. This isn't an advertising venture for them. This is them trying to have internal access to wider banks of customers.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

I think they will either stop the licensing deals or increase the licenses, and sell the complete chips with Nvidia GPUs to everyone (just like they do with graphics cards).

I don't think that will happen.

Stop licensing? They would have antitrust cases up their asses.

Increase licensing costs? I don't think people understand how overvalued ARM is compared to its profits. They would have to increase licensing costs by like 2000% to make their investment in any meaningful time, and if they do that they will scare their customers off or get get into FRAND problems.

Sell compete chips with Nvidia GPUs to everyone? Not sure what you mean exactly. ARM's strength is that they do not design the chips themselves. They let others do that. Qualcomm and Apple will not want to buy a complete chip from Nvidia with an Nvidia GPU.

 

 

My guess is that Nvidia bought ARM because of the datacenter and server market, and we will just have to hope they leave the cellphone market operate as it has so far.

Right now, Intel, and to a lesser degree AMD dominates the datacenter market. Some competitors using ARM has cropped up but Nvidia hasn't been able to compete there on the CPU side. My guess is that they bought ARM pretty much solely for the datacenter market. 

[igormp]

7 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

At the same time, they already bought melannox, which makes no sense in my humble opinion, but seems like they were able to get more traction in the enterprise segment. Also, they may get a few supercomputer contracts with the ARM acquisition.

It makes perfect sense for me tbh. Now they can easily offer more interesting solutions, such as more advanced processing on the NIC itself, or better integration from the GPU and NIC for data processing without needing the CPU at all. Adding their own CPU to the bunch would make it a complete solution for DCs.

[toyotavan]

Hopefully it doesn't change Raspberry Pi and similar open source devices (as well as the non profit brands operating them) and if it does it does so in a positive way!  

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, toyotavan said:

Hopefully it doesn't change Raspberry Pi and similar open source devices (as well as the non profit brands operating them) and if it does it does so in a positive way!  

The licensing agreements get important here.  My understanding is ARM licenses are fairly bombproof.  One never knows though.  If I was a manufacturer that has any product at all that competes with an Nvidia product I would be reading over that license very carefully and exploring other risc options.

[igormp]

23 minutes ago, toyotavan said:

Hopefully it doesn't change Raspberry Pi and similar open source devices (as well as the non profit brands operating them) and if it does it does so in a positive way!  

Well, some of those devices were already looking into RISC-V anyway due to the closed nature of ARM, so I don't think it'll change anything in the long run.

[alijon31]

look like HM Government is no getting involved as ARM NVIDIA deal as ARM is also involved with the MOD ( ministry of defence ) and may prevent a NVIDIA take over as sale has not been concluded. What happens when the secrets  acts becomes relevant. So take over may be on the edge of a collapse. Last thing MOD needs is a private company not vetted by them taking over and having access to secrets that they are not at liberty to be privy to.. 

[williamcll]

17 minutes ago, alijon31 said:

look like HM Government is no getting involved as ARM NVIDIA deal as ARM is also involved with the MOD ( ministry of defence ) and may prevent a NVIDIA take over as sale has not been concluded. What happens when the secrets  acts becomes relevant. So take over may be on the edge of a collapse. Last thing MOD needs is a private company not vetted by them taking over and having access to secrets that they are not at liberty to be privy to.. 

I mean both are NATO so I'm pretty sure a lot of military secrets are already shared.

I'm more interested in how much Apple now has to pay Nvidia for royalties 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, alijon31 said:

look like HM Government is no getting involved as ARM NVIDIA deal as ARM is also involved with the MOD ( ministry of defence ) and may prevent a NVIDIA take over as sale has not been concluded. What happens when the secrets  acts becomes relevant. So take over may be on the edge of a collapse. Last thing MOD needs is a private company not vetted by them taking over and having access to secrets that they are not at liberty to be privy to.. 

an the US is a particularly scary place to trust with much of anything atm.  I nearly had a panic attack today just reading the news.  Dec 18 is apparently the next point where stuff can hit the fan, then Jan 2.

[linuxChips2600]

On 7/23/2020 at 4:39 PM, igormp said:

About APIs, OpenCL is a pain to program for, that's why people try to steer away from it.

Can confirm; just tried to implement matrix multiplication in OpenCL and I got three identical matrices lolz.