ARM Co-Founder Doesn't Think NVIDIA Owning the Company Would be in Its Best Interests

[erek]

"Hauser doesn't think the NVIDIA deal will follow through due to these aspects of the chip design ecosystem, with many Arm clients - such as Intel, Apple, Qualcomm, TSMC, Samsung, among others - being direct or otherwise indirect competitors to NVIDIA. Hauser thinks that Arm would be much better served through a British government intervention in bringing the company back towards the British fold: "The great opportunity that the cash needs of Softbank presents is to bring ARM back home and take it public, with the support of the British government." The Softbank acquisition occurred back in 2016 and cost the company some $24 billion; however, recent estimates from New Street Research LLP placed Arm's valuation at USD $44 billion if its IPO took off in 2021, and as much as $68 billion by 2025."

https://www.techpowerup.com/270643/...ng-the-company-would-be-in-its-best-interests

 

[5150Joker]

None of those clients he listed except Intel are NVIDIA’s competitors. What he thinks is irrelevant because he’s enjoying the money he got from ARMs sale to SB. Why should the British government pay an inflated price to get it back? What an idiot.

 

[erek]

None of those clients he listed except Intel are NVIDIA’s competitors. What he thinks is irrelevant because he’s enjoying the money he got from ARMs sale to SB. Why should the British government pay an inflated price to get it back? What an idiot.

think him being a co-founder might warp public perceptions and even though what he thinks might be irrelevant it's overriden due to his political clout?

 

[ChadD]

None of those clients he listed except Intel are NVIDIA’s competitors. What he thinks is irrelevant because he’s enjoying the money he got from ARMs sale to SB. Why should they British government pay an inflated price to get it back? What an idiot.

It clearly says direct or indirect. All of them are indirect competition for NV. NV makes more then just GPUs. They have had ARM SOC since 2008... they have never stopped building ARM chips. They go into NV products that compete directly.... and they all compete to power third party devices. NV has sold their ARM chips to companies like HP and Xiaomi for use in chromebooks... at the moment they sell xavier and orin SOC to BMW and Bosch for self driving systems. Do you think those other listed companies are not also pursuing those markets.

NV never passes regulatory approval... them buying arm would be Armageddon for the micro processor industry. Of course who knows perhaps if they did pick up ARM we could all expect to see MIPS powered everything but NV in a decade. lol

 

[Lakados]

Somebody needs to buy them Softbank is slowly killing them and while they do enjoy writing off those losses to avoid paying taxes, they aren't going to keep at it forever, than what? ARM is trying all sorts of new licensing schemes to try and bring money in and expand their audience but it's coming to a point where it is expensive to design a better chip and Apple, Amazon, and others are licensing and doing it far better but that only causes ARM to lose more. While their product is great, their business model is slowly failing so something has to give and NVidia owing it is a lot better than many of the alternatives.

 

[5150Joker]

It clearly says direct or indirect. All of them are indirect competition for NV. NV makes more then just GPUs. They have had ARM SOC since 2008... they have never stopped building ARM chips. They go into NV products that compete directly.... and they all compete to power third party devices. NV has sold their ARM chips to companies like HP and Xiaomi for use in chromebooks... at the moment they sell xavier and orin SOC to BMW and Bosch for self driving systems. Do you think those other listed companies are not also pursuing those markets.

NV never passes regulatory approval... them buying arm would be Armageddon for the micro processor industry. Of course who knows perhaps if they did pick up ARM we could all expect to see MIPS powered everything but NV in a decade. lol

Going by that logic any technology company purchasing ARM would become an indirect or direct competitor to those clients. Even if they did, why should regulators care? Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm etc aren’t tiny companies, they can continue licensing ARM designed by nvidia or go the RISC V route.

 

[ChadD]

Going by that logic any technology company purchasing ARM would become an indirect or direct competitor to those clients. Even if they did, why should regulators care? Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm etc aren’t tiny companies, they can continue licensing ARM designed by nvidia or go the RISC V route.

RISC-V is not an option anyone that thinks it is, is really fooling themselves. Software is the issue. We all learned from x86... once the software ecosystem is locked in, and optimized for the biggest player. Everyone else is doomed. AMDs only around cause Intel screwed up if where all being honest. I"m a huge AMD fan... but if Intel didn't shoot themselves in the foot 7 or 8 years ago, and then continue shooting of their toes one by one. AMD would have had to declare and have gotten sold off in pieces before ZEN ever launched.

The latest rumor I have heard is that Samsung is looking at a minority share with a larger group of investors as partners in a deal... likely driving the price out of Nvidias reach. (Even without another player driving up the cost... I really don't see how Nvidia could swing a 50-60 billion dollar cash deal... softbank isn't looking for more Tech investments a stock deal is a non starter)

Regulation will care about NV buying them (and Samsung or any other current licence holder).... as they would be concerned ARM would stop design for sale cores. Our entire mobile industry, and a huge portion of every other chip using market is using ARM ISA, and for the most part ARM designed cores. Why would NV continue developing new Cortex cores if they completed a purchase ? They wouldn't of course.... they also probably wouldn't licence their own core designs either. They would be looking to sell finished chips cause that is what they do... ARM is unique as they don't sell ARM branded Silicon to anyone. They are truly just a design house. A manufacture purchasing them would more then likely end that part of ARMs business (which is their core business). So it would be logical no one at ARM or their founders would consider NV a great owner.

The best thing that could happen for everyone would be soft bank holding them for another year or two and issuing a ARM IPO... and at this point that is the only official thing Softbank has had to say on ARM btw. Outside of rumors a ARM IPO in 2022 or 23 is the current plan.

 

[5150Joker]

RISC-V is not an option anyone that thinks it is, is really fooling themselves. Software is the issue. We all learned from x86... once the software ecosystem is locked in, and optimized for the biggest player. Everyone else is doomed. AMDs only around cause Intel screwed up if where all being honest. I"m a huge AMD fan... but if Intel didn't shoot themselves in the foot 7 or 8 years ago, and then continue shooting of their toes one by one. AMD would have had to declare and have gotten sold off in pieces before ZEN ever launched.

The latest rumor I have heard is that Samsung is looking at a minority share with a larger group of investors as partners in a deal... likely driving the price out of Nvidias reach. (Even without another player driving up the cost... I really don't see how Nvidia could swing a 50-60 billion dollar cash deal... softbank isn't looking for more Tech investments a stock deal is a non starter)

Regulation will care about NV buying them (and Samsung or any other current licence holder).... as they would be concerned ARM would stop design for sale cores. Our entire mobile industry, and a huge portion of every other chip using market is using ARM ISA, and for the most part ARM designed cores. Why would NV continue developing new Cortex cores if they completed a purchase ? They wouldn't of course.... they also probably wouldn't licence their own core designs either. They would be looking to sell finished chips cause that is what they do... ARM is unique as they don't sell ARM branded Silicon to anyone. They are truly just a design house. A manufacture purchasing them would more then likely end that part of ARMs business (which is their core business). So it would be logical no one at ARM or their founders would consider NV a great owner.

The best thing that could happen for everyone would be soft bank holding them for another year or two and issuing a ARM IPO... and at this point that is the only official thing Softbank has had to say on ARM btw. Outside of rumors a ARM IPO in 2022 or 23 is the current plan.

That’s not realistic for nvidia to spend so much money on ARM only to do a 180 on the business model and offer finished chips only. What is more likely is they would accelerate ARM nvidia cores to compliment their AI and server designs and keep consumer designs open for license (eg everything else). They’re not stupid like Intel and regulators would probably ensure nvidia can’t cut licensing off. They could however ask for higher licensing fees which would be fine.

As for Samsung trying to thwart NVIDIA from buying ARM, that’s highly unlikely. Samsung has problems of their own right now after failing in the Chinese phone market and lack of purchases for their other electronics, the last thing they want is to antagonize a foundry customer or take on the burden of ARM.

Besides ARM designs have fallen behind Apple who has a perpetual license and they’ve run into IP issues in China which puts a massive dent on the value of the company. In addition, they have a failing business model so they need a cut throat and innovative parent company like NVIDIA to take them over.

 

[Snowdog]

None of those clients he listed except Intel are NVIDIA’s competitors. What he thinks is irrelevant because he’s enjoying the money he got from ARMs sale to SB. Why should the British government pay an inflated price to get it back? What an idiot.

Samsung and Qualcomm are competitors to NVidia ARM SoCs. It's just that that NVidia hasn't had much success with their third party SoC sales recently, outside of the Nintendo Switch.

He hasn't had anything to do with ARM in over a decade. He had nothing to do with the sale to Softbank, and he also opposed that sale as well.

 

[erek]

ARM Co-Founder Hermann Hauser: 'It's In Nvidia's Interests To Destroy Arm' (newstatesman.com)

 

[juanrga]

NV never passes regulatory approval... them buying arm would be Armageddon for the micro processor industry. Of course who knows perhaps if they did pick up ARM we could all expect to see MIPS powered everything but NV in a decade. lol

It is rumored that the sale is already made and will be announced soon.

MIPS64 is an old, bloated, and inefficient ISA compared to ARM64.

 

[ChadD]

It is rumored that the sale is already made and will be announced soon.

MIPS64 is an old, bloated, and inefficient ISA compared to ARM64.

If Nvidia really ends up in control of ARM it won't matter. Everyone but Apple will dump ARM. If it isn't mips it will be something else. Once ARM is no longer neutral... and once NV nixes the designing of licenceeable end product designs. Which we all know would happen with in a few years of them taking over. The industry won't have any choice. ARM won't be a viable option anymore.

 

[LazyGamer]

If Nvidia really ends up in control of ARM it won't matter. Everyone but Apple will dump ARM. If it isn't mips it will be something else. Once ARM is no longer neutral... and once NV nixes the designing of licenceeable end product designs. Which we all know would happen with in a few years of them taking over. The industry won't have any choice. ARM won't be a viable option anymore.

Nvidia could go any which-way, I think. Compare this to IBM with Red Hat or Microsoft with Github... and Nvidia may just bring more performance options to stock ARM cores and graphics, which would be welcome. IIRC, the stock stuff from ARM is workable but weak compared to custom designs, even outside of Apple's excellent work.

Of course, if the industry does decide to move away from ARM, I hope it's RISC-V. With fab building being all the rage, having an actually open ISA would be nice, as it'd allow more exotic parts to be designed and brought to production at a far lower cost of entry.

 

[ChadD]

Nvidia could go any which-way, I think. Compare this to IBM with Red Hat or Microsoft with Github... and Nvidia may just bring more performance options to stock ARM cores and graphics, which would be welcome. IIRC, the stock stuff from ARM is workable but weak compared to custom designs, even outside of Apple's excellent work.

Of course, if the industry does decide to move away from ARM, I hope it's RISC-V. With fab building being all the rage, having an actually open ISA would be nice, as it'd allow more exotic parts to be designed and brought to production at a far lower cost of entry.

For sure perhaps Nvidia could be a good steward of ARM. I doubt it highly as I don't see the advantage for them as far as designing cores and designs to licence to the mediateks of the world. Still your right their are examples of big players getting their fingers in things that don't seem to jive. Of course I would say the MS example makes perfect sense.... as MS moved all their code to that platform, and are active encourages of developer ecosystems. In the case of IBM and Red Hat that is also a pretty logical acquisition as IBM does and always has offered Red Hat based systems. Its not like Red Hat was really ever in competition with IBM, there may have been a small bit of overlap but in general they served 2 very different markets.

We'll have to wait and see what happens I guess. My concern is the only advantage for Nvidia that I see with buying ARM is to try and sell NV hardware.... and fostering competition for that seems counter intuitive. Not because NV is evil or anything... just why buy ARM just to spend money designing product for your competition which every other ARM soft licence would become the instant NV had a NV ARM soc to sell into a market. Apple would be the only ARM licence holder not in direct competition with NV the day NV takes over.

 

[LazyGamer]

the only advantage for Nvidia that I see with buying ARM is to try and sell NV hardware

I think that pushing their ecosystem would be a big part of it. In particular, being able to offer up 'GeForce' GPUs for ARM parts could be killer; that technology might flow to phones, where Tegra wasn't a great fit. Nvidia could also push ARM to be more competitive with x86 on the high-end on a broader scale than Apple is doing. If anyone gets ARM (or literally any other ISA) to be competitive with x86 on the desktop, it'll probably be Apple to do it first, but Nvidia could push standard ARM SoCs to do it for Netbooks and Chromebooks and the like, and do it with graphics that are actually competitive in that space.

 

[ChadD]

I think that pushing their ecosystem would be a big part of it. In particular, being able to offer up 'GeForce' GPUs for ARM parts could be killer; that technology might flow to phones, where Tegra wasn't a great fit. Nvidia could also push ARM to be more competitive with x86 on the high-end on a broader scale than Apple is doing. If anyone gets ARM (or literally any other ISA) to be competitive with x86 on the desktop, it'll probably be Apple to do it first, but Nvidia could push standard ARM SoCs to do it for Netbooks and Chromebooks and the like, and do it with graphics that are actually competitive in that space.

They can already do that... in fact they already do do that. Nvidia is a ARM licence holder.... their ARM chips power the switch and their shield devices, the NV drive platform and AI research SOC boards. That they haven't been able to sell it to anyone else says all we need to know on the subject. NV has priced themselves out of the market. Buying ARM gives them the ability to either make it impossible for their competition to exist, earning them sales. Or make it more expensive to licence ARM and ARM GPUs.... there by making their current offerings more likely to win contracts.

There is NOTHING stopping anyone from right now purchasing Nvidia ARM SOC... and building chrome books. Accept that NO oems see the value in it. Nvidia has simply been unable to earn a lot of business for their CPU division. So again the only advantage in buying ARM for them is to either kill or stifle competition. It gives them nothing they don't already have. They save a small licence fee..... but amortize 50-60 billion against that I hardly think a purchase of ARM makes sense unless they intend to kill off Mediatek and make life difficult for Qcom and Samsung, who are winning those chromebook and phone contracts Nvidia has never been able to score with a level playing field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra

 

[Iratus]

Boooo, he’s right though, I’m still pissed off at the buyout in the first place. ARM had been one of my best investments.

They’d be a great purchase, but he’s right they are better on their own. There’s a massive advantage for independence in their business model.

 

[Lakados]

They can already do that... in fact they already do do that. Nvidia is a ARM licence holder.... their ARM chips power the switch and their shield devices, the NV drive platform and AI research SOC boards. That they haven't been able to sell it to anyone else says all we need to know on the subject. NV has priced themselves out of the market. Buying ARM gives them the ability to either make it impossible for their competition to exist, earning them sales. Or make it more expensive to licence ARM and ARM GPUs.... there by making their current offerings more likely to win contracts.

There is NOTHING stopping anyone from right now purchasing Nvidia ARM SOC... and building chrome books. Accept that NO oems see the value in it. Nvidia has simply been unable to earn a lot of business for their CPU division. So again the only advantage in buying ARM for them is to either kill or stifle competition. It gives them nothing they don't already have. They save a small licence fee..... but amortize 50-60 billion against that I hardly think a purchase of ARM makes sense unless they intend to kill off Mediatek and make life difficult for Qcom and Samsung, who are winning those chromebook and phone contracts Nvidia has never been able to score with a level playing field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra

In fairness it would be hard to compete against Intel or Samsung in that price range for the ChromeOS. Those two can churn that stuff out 24/7 at one of their plants and produce something worthwhile for that platform. NVidia doesn’t have the luxury of a vast manufacturing infrastructure they could build a chip for the $300 Chromebook market but at what cost to their other divisions? Every product they put out means that many fewer of something else, for something that is large volume and low margin I’m not sure there is any financial gain for NVidia to go after that product space.

 

[5150Joker]

NVIDIA owning ARM means they can dictate future designs that wield their proprietary technology and charge high license fees for it. It’s a good business move, how is this not obvious? Anyway it seems like the deal is near finalization or should be and we’ll hear an announcement soon enough.

 

[LazyGamer]

They can already do that... in fact they already do do that. Nvidia is a ARM licence holder.... their ARM chips power the switch and their shield devices, the NV drive platform and AI research SOC boards. That they haven't been able to sell it to anyone else says all we need to know on the subject. NV has priced themselves out of the market. Buying ARM gives them the ability to either make it impossible for their competition to exist, earning them sales. Or make it more expensive to licence ARM and ARM GPUs.... there by making their current offerings more likely to win contracts.

There is NOTHING stopping anyone from right now purchasing Nvidia ARM SOC... and building chrome books. Accept that NO oems see the value in it. Nvidia has simply been unable to earn a lot of business for their CPU division. So again the only advantage in buying ARM for them is to either kill or stifle competition. It gives them nothing they don't already have. They save a small licence fee..... but amortize 50-60 billion against that I hardly think a purchase of ARM makes sense unless they intend to kill off Mediatek and make life difficult for Qcom and Samsung, who are winning those chromebook and phone contracts Nvidia has never been able to score with a level playing field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra

Can't really disagree; was mostly trying to see the potential positives of the move given the reporting that it's almost finalized.

 

[ChadD]

In fairness it would be hard to compete against Intel or Samsung in that price range for the ChromeOS. Those two can churn that stuff out 24/7 at one of their plants and produce something worthwhile for that platform. NVidia doesn’t have the luxury of a vast manufacturing infrastructure they could build a chip for the $300 Chromebook market but at what cost to their other divisions? Every product they put out means that many fewer of something else, for something that is large volume and low margin I’m not sure there is any financial gain for NVidia to go after that product space.

Some truth there for sure. Of course Qcom chips are purchased and used, as are Mediatek (and I understand NV has no need to compete for that part of the market).
IMO the main reason NV never went all the way with the SOC creating phone/chromebook chips ect.... is they have no wish to devalue their GPU stuff even $1. The like being able to charge 5x what its worth for a AI focused mini itx SOC board. They could probably strip some of the AI stuff out of their GPUs and come up with a more general purpose SOC.... and who knows perhaps they will. Of course if they buy arm and they also do that... its even more reason for everyone else to switch to something non ARM.

If you are Samsung or Qcom why would you hope a direct competitor that now holds ownership of the IP your chips are based on will continue to be a kind licencor and not jack up the rent so to speak. I can't imagine a scenario where NV buys ARM where those 2 companies plan long term to stick with ARM. There going to have to make plans to break free... not over night but long term for sure.