Standards dropping
Historically I would have expected to see el Reg publish a much more detailed and considered version of this article about a month ago - this is late and derivative of about 100 similar commentaries. Do better guys!
56 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Feb 2013
They realise that their increasingly egregious rent extraction from their customers has accelerated RISC-V adoption and this is the first step to their post monopoly world. They used to be seen as Switzerland but are increasingly perceived as Russia, and not a reliable partner.
Hiding behind a demonstration chip is a thin veil that is easily seen through.
My bet is they end up becoming a fabless manufacturer over time.
Strongly disagree - I reckon ARM must understand they have alienated some of their largest customers who have begun deploying RISC-V in lower end designs and slowly pushing it up to higher complexity designs. The writing is on the wall and they know they have to maximise the value they extract before it's too late. ARM's strength historically was that it was always Switzerland - the neutral player in the middle that everyone could work with. Post the overpriced acquisition and the Softbank funded spending spree they needed to deliver more revenue; initially to justify the investment and now more desperately to recover MS's reputation with a successful IPO and subsequent growth before the mirage disappears and the world moves all in on RISC-V. As part of their response here they started getting greedy. They moved from emulating Switzerland as a strategy to emulating Russia with an increasing scorched earth policy on their customers and once partners. Clock's ticking and they need to earn as much money as possible before the capital being invested in RISC-V and the associated till chain materialises as an existential threat.
Arm has shot itself in the foot and it's beginning to look like gangrene had set in.
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
Not sure if the BBC is being a useful idiot here, or is sacrificing it's journalistic integrity on the altar of fast news, but somebody is obviously funding dirty tricks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46489689
This is the type of trash that is most likely to come from a large corporate sponsor paying someone to create FUD
Personally I give the journalists the benefit of the doubt and assume they are useful idiots with a web browser.
So a few points:
When you say UK investors do you mean venture capital funds registered as UK partnerships, British partners at overseas funds, funds run by Brits, or something else? Bear in mind Atomico's HQ is in London, so not suer your statement is correct.
For any large scale silicon play it is critical to have serious valley based investors as that is will plug you into all the necessary customer and partner ecosystems at the right level and act as a social signal to other tech companies, and more importantly - experienced industry executives who you will need to poach to set up your OEM relationships, get your chips to tape, get your initial PoC's in place etc. you are to be taken seriously.
Silicon investments are highly capital intensive with almost binary outcomes. UK has long track record of companies not making it in this space (with a few successes). I confessed to being slightly impressed that Atomico made the investment in the first place - (suspect without a large US investor they would have eventually needed to write it off or had it snapped up as a small tuck in acquisition for IP now needs a $billion+ outcome for it to be meaningful to Sequoia), and obviously someone there has very big balls (or whatever the female equivalent of that expression is; though based on general VC statistics, less likely)
Selling to highest foreign bidder is not a bad strategy if price is right - look at Autonomy - what a result! What's important is that the money gets recycled into next generation of innovation - which seems to be happening.
Would trust it as much as I trust software from Blighty or the US. Slightly more than I would trust software from Russia and orders of magnitude more than I would trust software from virtually any other country.
Suspect if I was running a Middle Eastern dictatorship I would be a little more leery though and buy it through a reseller instead.
I think you miss a fundamental point. One of the drivers of the conversation around basic income is the increasing awareness of the political classes around the impact of automation and AI. Whilst it is easy to look at this as a separate topic, the fact that there are more people than the work that needs to be done, Elon hasn't found a cheap way to ship us off planet and a lack of growth in the west means that there are lots of idle hands and bribing them to STFU as is being done in Spain is a highly relevant topic.
To shut down that quickly my guess is someone has not been doing their homework on local regulatory requirements. inclined towards either a breach of Regulation E or an AML linked issue for the US. Seriously folks - if you want to build a business in this space invest in understanding compliance and regulation. It may be as boring as Big Bertha but you gotta know the rules if you wanna play the game.