SoftBank buys server-grade Arm silicon designer Ampere Computing

Japanese tech investment house SoftBank Group has announced its intention to acquire Ampere Computing, the chip design firm that makes server-grade silicon based on the Arm architecture. SoftBank (SBG) is paying $6.5 billion for the privilege. Ampere’s major investors – Oracle and Carlyle – are selling their stakes. Softbank …

[jglathe]

What

Why would the old investors sell, I ask myself. Baffled.

[sschuchart]

Re: What

Well, ARM was about to enter their space - hard to compete with the originators of the technology. Plus, they likely got significant return on their investment, although I can't verify that. Plus, its not like they cant keep buying Ampere processors.

[JohnSheeran]

Re: What

You are probably right on both counts. Especially the ROI. American companies love to capitalize on short term gain. It's why our country is such a mess.

[Fido]

Re: What

My impression is the Altra, Altra Max and One processor designs are slow compared to recent Graviton, Intel, Epyc and likely the next generation Loongson processors. Although slow is not an ideal feature during the transition to compute intensive AI, the conjecture I've heard is Ampere has an engineering team with enough experience to quickly integrate a massive TPU into existing ARM designs.

I think at this point it's clear AI is not a fad that will fade like skinny jeans, but a tool which greatly increases productivity for workers in certain technical and creative fields.

When the dot-com bubble burst, online shopping didn't go away. Neither will the need for economical AI inference go away if the AI bubble breaks. Whether Ampere turns out to be a valuable acquisition for SoftBank is a different matter.

[IGotOut]

Softbank

Are going to crash and burn so hard when this AI hype cycle comes to a crashing halt.