
AI. Check.
Internet of things. Check.
World class. Check.
BINGO.
Nvidia has announced it will buy UK chip-designer Arm. A Monday statement from Nvidia and Arm’s current owner SoftBank says the transaction will be valued at $40bn. Nvidia is not buying Arm's Internet-of-Things services, we note. Arm will remain headquartered in the UK and its brand and business model will persist. Arm, which …
I discovered exactly how reduced that instruction set is the other day when looking at the compiled code for one of my pixel shaders.
It turns out there isn't even an instruction for subtracting two numbers. Instead the compiler generated a negate instruction followed by an add instruction.
I reckon he's betting big on graphcore in the way that only somebody with the smallest possible understanding of the dynamics of the semiconductor industry would.
If he was serious he would be bribing TSMC to set up a Fab in the UK and offering state-aid by the bucketload - just like a couple of small countries do to build broad yet world-class semiconductor ecosystems
AI “will expand computing to every corner of the globe. Someday, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet — the internet-of-things — thousands of times bigger than today’s internet-of-people,”
To be read in the voice of Big Brother from the 1984 Apple ad.
Please, somebody shoot him .. or me.
Nvidia's *REVENUE* was only $11 billion last year. ARMs was under $2 billion.
So 10% of that share ~$1.3 billion, and from that you have to cover $21 billion in future profits?
Methinks they'll exit their position as fast as they can while the Fed is propping up the stock market before the fed funny money bubble pops.
It's only $ 12 bn cash, the rest is stock, which given how tech stocks have performed this year, is a bargain for nVidia. SoftBank had to sell because even more of Son's bets have soured recently: this month a whole heap of his options went bad which is why investors took fright.
Softbank paid $32 billion for ARM, I think they overpaid. How did they think they were going to add value to ARM beyond all its licensees already?!
My view is this is a stock play for them, Fed will have to keep pumping dollars in because Corona Virus isn't tackled, so they will have no choice. Softbank will sell off portions as best they can and move the investments elsewhere.
Perhaps more into big pharma:
Trump's hired that Fox News "Dr Pundit" to push "Covid herd immunity". He'll spread it so widely it mutates so much that USA will never have an effective vaccine. It'll be like the Flu, you'll be a year behind on the vaccine forever chasing the latest strain. Each year having to pay out for the newest vaccine to reduce your chance of death.
If you develop vaccines, that turns a one off catastrophe into a ongoing revenue stream with captive customers.
It's difficult for me to believe that Trump told Bob Woodward the truth on tape, and yet didn't also tell his Fox News 'friends' in his many private meetings with them. Are you seriously telling me he confessed to Bob Woodward, yet continue to push the lie to his buddies at Fox News? I don't believe so. I think he told them the truth too.
Fox News really engineered this situation. Remember "its only the flu" to delay action, and the "cure is worse than the disease" to end the lockdown too soon? Now you know that Trump must have told the truth about the death rate and infection rate to his Fox News buddies, it makes you wonder why they spent do much effort undermining disease control.
Fox ran with the lie to their viewers instead of revealing the truth.
Softbank are taking nVidia stock at their current silly inflated value.
The reason stocks are so inflated is because the Fed is printing money like crazy to help prop up the stock market.
The reason the Fed is printing money like crazy is because of Covid.
The reason the Fed will continue to print money is because Coronavirus is intentionally being spread because of a Fox New pundit promoting a false "herd immunity narrative"
The reason Pharma will do well out of it is because, the more it spreads the more it mutates, the less chance you can control it with a vaccine.
Softbank are a business, at the end of the day, they can probably see that too.
What part of it do you want me to cover up? Because in that version I omitted the word "Trump" that clearly triggered you.
" is because Coronavirus is intentionally being spread"
...by fucking morons, inept leaders, and people not completely understanding the gravity of the situation and doing dumb things like working from home for the afternoon (having spent the morning in the office).
There. Fixed that for you.
Still don't see what it really has to do with Nvidia and ARM though.
So how low a mortality rate must a virus have before we let it spread naturally? The more we delay the spread, the longer it hangs around, threatening our liberties and economies. Herd immunity ends the pandemic.
A recent headline says the WHO claim the mortality rate is 0.6. So if 0.6% of the world population dies from Covid, that's less than the % that normally die every year, and this virus has been spreading for over 9 months already.
Who benefits if we prevent it spreading? Someone who wants to sell us perpetual vaccines and immunity passports.
THERE. WILL. NEVER. BE. NATURAL. HERD. IMMUNITY. FROM. THIS. VIRUS.
It will not and cannot happen. We already know that natural immunity to this virus fades in MONTHS, not years or decades.
The ONLY way this virus goes away is with a vaccine, because that's the only way herd immunity will EVER be achieved.
Meanwhile, this virus doesn't just kill outright (and direct mortality rate is closer to 2% than 0.5%). This virus is doing damage that will cause lifetime health problems for survivors.
Look, if you want to off yourself, go for it. But there are easier ways than spreading this virus.
The Fed, along with most central banks, has had excessively loose monetary policy for over ten years now. Yes, it's got even looser this year, but tech companies have been taking advantage of it for years.
Softbank has been in a hole since a couple of its big bets: Uber and WeWork didn't go as well as planned. nVidia is just one of the many companies taking advantage of Softbank's fire sale and cheap debt. So, it was Softbank's own failings that have forced it to sell ARM.
It was shown years ago that people who watch Fox News are generally less well informed than people who watch no news. They've had quacks on there for years. But on the other side of the street you've got well-educated middle class dweebs in California up in arms about vaccination in general: spikes in measles infections have nothing to do with the Orange Idiot in Chief. Or, for that matter, the Federal Reserve.
But that is obvious. No US company would fail to do basic due diligence when purchasing a UK-based technology company. .... DavCrav
And if they were so negligent, would it be prosecuted diligently as criminal neglect for which they would be liable to pay market regulators [for they always love a piece of the action]/shareholders/investors punitive compensation, or would they dispute that requirement and try to wriggle free from their responsibility and accountability and flame and blame everyone/someone else for their failure and misfortune and incur further exorbitant pecuniary penalties/costs in the process?
One would almost think they would thinking to take and make out everyone but themselves are great fools and useless tools ..... which is not a good look to be peddling/pumping and dumping.
There's a reasonably good writeup by the BBC this morning, which also includes comment from - shall we say - somewhat less than ecstactic Hermann Hauser and Tudor Brown. Can't say I'd heard of Tudor before this. My bad.
I didn't like the original Softbank deal, but selling the company to nVidia - which directly competes with some of ARM's customers and is a US firm subject to the whims of the current administration - has the potential to be so much worse.
M.
and is a US firm subject to the whims of the current administration - has the potential to be so much worse.
On the other hand...
"and is a UK based firm subject to the whims of the current administration, with it's cavalier approach to international treaty obligations, has the potential to be so much worse."
"How long before ARM is added to the list of technologies that China is not allowed to use?"
They don't need to be - without the fabs to produce the cutting edge designs, China are already effectively prevented from using ARM's latest designs as China is limited to using 28nm+ fabs. While there are some very low volume options at 16nm, they are unlikely to provide any significant volume in the immediate future (i.e. 2020/2021)
While ARM is still a little way ahead of RISC-V in terms of optimisations for older 28nm+ designs, its likely to either slow ARM customers moving to RISC-V or stop them completely until the sanctions are lifted. As two thirds of the revenue in semiconductors is in the <28nm space, this likely benefits ARM long term.
guess who has a design centre in Cambridge?
Yes folks, the company that everyone (well almost everyone) wants to sue out of business.
Apple.
I'd guess that the business of suing Apple might be worth more than the GDP of some countries.
Don't ya just love lawyers... (not)
BS.
BBC coverage is focusing on least important issues on purpose. This is a major issue for the anti trust and the British Authority should block the agreement. But, if the BBC article is a signal of the attitude they'll meet in the UK I suspect that the British authorities will will turn a blind eye or will just play a mock role.
Forget the current administration, consider NVidia's current CEO. This is a company that has burned many bridges. There is a reason why Apple stopped using NVidia for their computers, and it had nothing to do with the defective NVidia chips on Apple laptops. The company has a history of being a bully. Of all the companies that considered to buy ARM, NVidia is perhaps the worst. I hope both the British and America regulators put a stop to this.
I didn't like the original Softbank deal, but selling the company to nVidia - which directly competes with some of ARM's customers and is a US firm subject to the whims of the current administration - has the potential to be so much worse. ..... Martin an gof
Especially so if ever it be discovered a RAT trap ..... and Profitable Pirateable Proprietary Intellectual Property Magnet ....... for Private Magnate Centres of Stealthy Excellence. ..... Future Ideas Factories.
All ursecrets now belong to us ?????
Although of course they really don't, for the original secrets holders will only tolerate for a limited period of time such as they would consider as sub-prime second and third party use and/or abuse and misuse.
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That's a radical statement. Care to elucidate?
They say that the licensing model will persist, and beside that, chip makers already have licenses, several of which are architecture licenses which allow them to extend the architecture, and are for perpetuity.
This means that Arm devices are here to stay, and in case you didn't notice, already have Linux ported to them.
As an example, look at Raspian running on a Pi-4. I could quite happily use that as a desktop system.
What may change is the cost of non-perpetual licenses. Some companies may find the cost of their license renewals increasing or becoming unavailable, but too much of the latter will kill the business.
I wonder if the Nvidia legal people have found a way (deep down in the small print) to revoke those perpetual licences? That really would stir things up.
Not so difficult to guess.
They'll slow down the evolution and let the design slowly fade into obsolescence
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Yes, I know that Nvidia have in the past been a bit of a problem with regard to their graphics processors, but that particular clip is from 2012. But some things have changed, and at least for some of their older GPU architectures they are providing some documentation, and do have half decent binary drivers now (their offerings used to be crap, and well ot of date).
But ARM is a completely different market. They have a high mark up on their GPUs, and need to protect their revenue stream. They cannot take the same model and apply it to ARM designs.
Firstly, they do not currently control the manufacture of the devices, and they only have the initial use license fee and a very small per-core license fee.
Secondly, there are already licensees who have the rights in perpetuity to take their existing designs and re-implement and modify them. This means that even if they decide to take future core designs private, that will not stop existing designs evolving. If they do this, they run the risk of fracturing the market, and as they need high volumes to be able to continue to get revenue on the low per-core license few.
Third, if they decide to limit or increase the cost of new licenses and license renewals, this will give the chip companies a reason to invest in other architectures like RISC-V and even MIPS (companies like themselves!)
Remember, the only thing that really makes ARM processors stand out is their low component count and power, licensing terms and ubiquity. The architecture has always been relatively simple, even with some of the newer designs. There is no reason at all to suppose that given the right impetus, other simple designs could not be produced. ARM have a head start, but there are a lot of people out there who could devote a lot of resources to try to catch up using already existing or new work. It's just that at the moment it's not worth it.
Nvidia will not want to take the technology private. It's not worth $40bn in cash and stock just to have another private design. The value is in volume and market penetration.
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The main reason ARM was spun off from Acorn Computers to become an independent company was that Apple (who wanted to use ARM in their Newton hand-held) did not want to be dependent on a competitor (however tiny). Having NVIDIA control ARM can lead to similar sentiments from ARM licensees that compete with NVIDIA.
I would prefer ARM to be neutral with no single instance (company or person) owning more than 20% of the company.
On the other hand, don't forget that one of the very first licences went to Intel (via DEC), who came up with the StrongARM processor (later XScale?) which was a huge step up in performance from the 600 and 700 series chips Acorn were then shipping in RiscPCs, and (I believe) also introduced the 32-bit addressing mode. My StongARM-containing RiscPC is still running...
Arguably it was the deal with DEC that started the whole licencing model that has done so well for ARM over the years.
But still, back then they were a very minor player in the grand scheme of things and hardly a threat to anyone. Nowadays the opposite is true and I'm not at all certain that nVidia has the best long-term interests of ARM at heart.
M.
I recently learnt that Malcolm Bird had an earlier business plan to spin ARM out before Apple got interested so the eventual timing of it was down to Newton but the main reason was Acorn not consuming enough ARM processors to recoup investment costs (and it was Robin Saxby's later plan they went with).
If in a year Arm still have their own brand and control their own finance, HR and legal I'll keep calling them British and a Cambridge company and Simon Segars can keep calling himself CEO!
Well yeah. It got off to a bad start when, less than a week after Theresa May assured us no more core technologies would be sold to foreign interests, ARM's sale to Softbank was approved. Which I think has pretty much sealed ARM's fate.
Just Cadbury's all over again, as others have mentioned.
Would you prefer random interventions in company ownership by Trump?
In case you hadn't noticed the British government didn't own ARM. So to stop it being sold at a huge mark-up was basically depriving its owners of their property. Had the government invested money in it and kept a "golden share", it would be a different thing.
"In case you hadn't noticed the British government didn't own ARM. So to stop it being sold at a huge mark-up was basically depriving its owners of their property."
The British government has in the past barred the sale of companies to overseas entities under the auspices of "national security" (they were mainly defence companies)
So what would the national security excuse be for ARM?
There are also roundabouts to the swings (thinking about it which one of those is supposed to be the bad one?)
Our economy does very well for foreign investment. Because we've maintained an open economy that doesn't arbitrarily stop people from either buying into companies or selling out to get their money back when they want to. Obviously if you block sales, then people are going to be less willing to risk their money in the first place - as they risk not being able to get it back when they need it.
We could obviously change this, but it wouldn't be without costs.
Our economy does very well for foreign investment.
Quite so ...
It is no secret to anyone that the UK (specifically London) is a global cesspool of dirty money where bankers offer financial services for worldwide money laundering and tax evasion while regulators look the other way as shell companies shell companies make billions.
Yes, the UK economy does well.
O.
Our economy does very well for foreign investment
I agree and so did Acorn - ARM as formed: 40% Acorn (themselves 60% Italian owned at the time), 40% Apple (US), 10% VLSI (US) and 10% various parties which even if we assume were all British that still only adds up to one UK money. Arm were global from the start.
Indeed ...
Shameful.
“Arm’s business model is brilliant. We will maintain its open-licensing model and customer neutrality, serving customers in any industry, across the world, and further expand Arm’s IP licensing portfolio with Nvidia’s world-leading GPU and AI technology.”
Save for Arm's model undoubtedly being brillant, I don't believe a word of this.
O.
“Arm’s business model is brilliant. We will maintain its open-licensing model and customer neutrality, serving customers in any industry, across the world, and further expand Arm’s IP licensing portfolio with Nvidia’s world-leading GPU and AI technology.”Save for Arm's model undoubtedly being brillant, I don't believe a word of this. ..... oiseau
The only money shot questions worth asking there, oiseau, is who/what is personified by the pronoun "We" and are they all powerful and/or omniscient, for surely only then can their word be capable and enabled of being believed.
Worse was the Tories trumpeting this as faith in Britain after Brexit....apparently giving away all your key industries is us taking back control!.... simpfeld
It does have one wondering on what sort of offers leading Cabinet officers are tempted with from other governments/allied business interest for them to be instrumental or wilfully deaf, dumb and blind to all such as would be right dodgy shenanigans resulting in a loss of home control.
Offers that they daren't refuse are a firm favourite with all sorts of gangster types.
It's a pity ARM was ever sold to anyone, but better that Nvidia has them than the Japanese Beancounters Softbank, who are clueless at tech and hardly more than speculators.
Though I can see why some ARM users would be unhappy. Still, better than the sell off of Inmos was.
But relistically, as ARM is going to be owned by someone, it's better a real tech company than a so called Fund Manager.
Unfortunately Philips is long gone as Electronics (Only lights and health care, semiconductors was spun off as NXP and sadly getting bought by Qualcomm who are almost just Patent Trolls). Who else other than Nvidia actually makes sense?
Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Apple, Google, Samsung, LG would all be worse.
I am probably very naive but I have never understood this mania for buying each other in the technology industry.
The first time I was directly involved was when Oracle bought Sun and then ran it into the ground (just as we all expected). Why couldn't Sun just continue as they were. Why didn't ARM stay as an independent company?
>Why couldn't Sun just continue as they were.
Sun was pretty much dead once we could run free on Linux on cheap x64
A lot of Sun users ran Oracle. Oracle were afraid that a lot of IBM HW salesmen visiting ex-Sun customers might have a DB2 salesman in tow
>Why didn't ARM stay as an independent company?
Because an idiot with more money thane sense (judging from his other investments) offered the shareholders more than the current market price for it.
I'm really sad about Philips. It was my first proper job when I started out 30 years ago and I was just seeing the tail end of its "golden age" when it was a really innovative company and a nice employer too. But this was now the '90s, the age of VARs and "I expect everyone to be a salesman" as our new CEO announced. The demise of Philips Telecommunications and Data Systems (or Business Systems, or Information Systems, or whatever-it-was-called-this-week by that point) was very rapid but it seems that the new approach to big fat profits i.e. flogging anything that made money and rationalising expenses by firing staff at random was just the way of things from now on.
Its amazing how reports of 1.5 billion of nVidia stock being punted towards employees as part of the deal will bring people round - at least until the shares vest ... unless everyone switches into VIP ("vest in peace" (*)) mode and merely hangs around doing the minimal effort until pay day arrives.
Getting the ink dry on the deal before Election Day 2020 makes sense as corporate strategy. A Biden victory would mean a long cool look by various agencies at mergers of all kinds as budding monopolies. Prior to the first Obama term there were a flurry of mergers in several industries. Of course it could still go south, but carpe diem, etc.
Such a deal should be clearly unacceptable for any anti-trust authority in the world. How come they came up with such a deal? Not only the sector is very restricted to few companies, but ARM licences their technologies to almost all NVidia competitors in the smartphone segment. Considering smartphones, tablets and other gadgets Nvidia is buying the possibility to hold by the balls the competition in a market where more than one billion chips are sold every year. Of course they now promise they'll keep licensing their technology to al the others, but nobody prevents them from transferring the most advanced research to the mother company and let ARM slowly fate into obsolescence
>How come they came up with such a deal?
Does it raise the SP500 before the election? Since ARM and Softbank aren't listed then selling it to a listed company will inevitably increase NVidia's price in the short term.
This government's only priority is that everyone's retirement account statement looks good by November
I think The Register is the only place able and (I hope) willing to coordinate a plea to the powers that be in order to somehow intervene to protect this cutting edge and most precious British intellectual property. Perhaps an open letter, signed by Nobel laureates, academics and top financial and business figures, sharing the ARM co-founder's view that "the way you build companies like Apple is by starting with companies the size of Arm, not with a startup.” (see today's Guardian). Also, he said “They [Nvidia] can make more than $40bn by destroying it.” Can the UK afford losing its largest tech company to a US company that might well in the near future be forced to restrict its exports to the very country that generated its IP?
It's another tragedy for the history (soon to become paleontology) of UK's technological decline after WWII. And I say this having the experience (and honour) of setting up the first computerised Physics undergraduate Laboratory in 1986 in my country using Acorn BBC and Econet technology, and having vivid memories of the era of the design of the first Acorn Risc CPU (it was designed & simulated using plain BBC Model B and ran flawlessly the first time it was etched on silicon!). Still dreaming of acquiring an Archimedes...
Seconded, UBF.
That's the power of the proposal squared as opposed to doubled.
Very soon, only a few more have that energy generated at an exponential level. :-) Such introduces the notion of a supernatural development in a Grand Remote Virtual Experiment with Untouchables.
Trump is oh so readable.
First of all accuse a big powerful country somewhere in the world of doing stuff that el Presidente knows the US is doing and wants to continue doing.
On the downside: is the UK now officially a vassal state of the US or is it trying to pretend it never was?
Take the money and run seems like a good plan if there be no signed and binding Non Compete agreement from/for ARM star performing employees who might want to set up another billion pound green field outfit.* ...... a Dominic Cummings wet dream of an enterprise apparently, if one can believe what has recently been reported in media about his wishful thinking.
After all, it is the drivering innovative creative brains in any business that hold all the value and if they are to be shackled, it will obviously raise hackles and create divisions and foment discontent and revolution if thought to be third party and foreign state actor commanded and controlled in any specific exclusive direction disadvantaging the many in preference to rewarding the few.
* Some may even advise, never look a gift horse in the mouth, so sign on that imaginary dotted line for the money and then do as one wishes, for Non Compete agreements are a blatant fundamental assault on one's human rights and therefore unenforceable in law ?
It is not as if Blighty hasn't set that acceptable precedent, is it, Mr Prime Minister?