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SoftBank now also confirms it is exploring to sell ARM
We've written that NVIDIA is eying the purchase of ARM, several other parties already have shown interest as well. The one company that has remained silent about it all is the owner, Softbank. And they've just confirmed that ARM indeed is for sale.
Masayoshi Son, CEO of the Japanese group SoftBank, confirmed during a conversation regarding their quarterly figures that the company is contemplating selling Arm. Selling the entire company or part of it is an option, says the CEO.
A second possibility is to bring the company to the stock exchange ahead of schedule. Arm previously has been listed on the stock exchange, but when SoftBank bought the chip designer back in 2016, the company withdrew itself from the stock exchange. It then committed itself to bring back stock exchange in the year 2023. That can be brought forward, says Son.
NVIDIA would be in advanced talks to purchase the company, but legislation might be an issue as NVIDIA would become very powerful, as ARM holds a number of cross-licenses and patents. A takeover of Arm by Nvidia could be difficult due to competition rules. Then again, that goes for any company due to the sheer size of ARM itself.
Kaarme
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Joined: 2013-03-10
#5817376 Posted on: 08/12/2020 07:12 PM
Yeah. Sometimes "patent troll" is used as a petty insult even against legit cases of defending a patent. Like an Apple fan could accuse Qualcomm of being a patent troll if some networking solution in an Apple product clashed with a Qualcomm patent and Qualcomm took it to the court. Normally, however, what you described is called a patent troll. For some mysterious reason the American justice system seems to love or at least tolerate them very well, which causes big problems from time to time. I guess the system is just feeding itself since the cases are often talking about millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and the lawyers love to get a slice of that fat cake. Lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and such are all graduates from the law schools, so obviously they have nothing against their whole big family prospering.
I think you have a different opinion on what a patent trolls is than I do. I view the trolls as the companies that buy patents with no intent of actually making anything with the patent but instead intend to make the money back through litigation. What Nvidia did back in the 90's was just being super competitive jerks because they did at least make stuff with said patents.
Yeah. Sometimes "patent troll" is used as a petty insult even against legit cases of defending a patent. Like an Apple fan could accuse Qualcomm of being a patent troll if some networking solution in an Apple product clashed with a Qualcomm patent and Qualcomm took it to the court. Normally, however, what you described is called a patent troll. For some mysterious reason the American justice system seems to love or at least tolerate them very well, which causes big problems from time to time. I guess the system is just feeding itself since the cases are often talking about millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and the lawyers love to get a slice of that fat cake. Lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and such are all graduates from the law schools, so obviously they have nothing against their whole big family prospering.
JamesSneed
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Senior Member
Posts: 1677
Joined: 2017-02-14
#5817389 Posted on: 08/12/2020 08:08 PM
I don't doubt that is why it continues today. At some point we really need to have some meaningfull patent reform here in the US.
Yeah. Sometimes "patent troll" is used as a petty insult even against legit cases of defending a patent. Like an Apple fan could accuse Qualcomm of being a patent troll if some networking solution in an Apple product clashed with a Qualcomm patent and Qualcomm took it to the court. Normally, however, what you described is called a patent troll. For some mysterious reason the American justice system seems to love or at least tolerate them very well, which causes big problems from time to time. I guess the system is just feeding itself since the cases are often talking about millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and the lawyers love to get a slice of that fat cake. Lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and such are all graduates from the law schools, so obviously they have nothing against their whole big family prospering.
I don't doubt that is why it continues today. At some point we really need to have some meaningfull patent reform here in the US.
alanm
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Posts: 11674
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#5817404 Posted on: 08/12/2020 09:42 PM
Softbank is not in good shape. They lost billions this year and are in no position to think of long term strategic investments. They need cash first and foremost to cover their positions during this tough time.
Softbank is not in good shape. They lost billions this year and are in no position to think of long term strategic investments. They need cash first and foremost to cover their positions during this tough time.
RED.Misfit
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#5817408 Posted on: 08/12/2020 10:17 PM
Softbank is just here to make money. They buy things, wait for it to grow and be more valuable and then sell it.
They would have sold arm (partially or entirely) in 2023 anyway. They're selling right now because they need cash after making some wrong calls.
They invested in nVidia in 2017 and sold everything during trade war incertainty i think. They barely gain anything from it, and they completly lost the momentum nVidia acquired right after that (moving from 130$ to 450$+)
They invested in WeWorks which completly failed, they lost big on that one.
And it's called "The Vision Fund", what a vision !
It's very weird that they would do this honestly. They have the largest CPU architecture in the world under their control, it should be a sort of a strategic asset, if nothing else.
Softbank is just here to make money. They buy things, wait for it to grow and be more valuable and then sell it.
They would have sold arm (partially or entirely) in 2023 anyway. They're selling right now because they need cash after making some wrong calls.
They invested in nVidia in 2017 and sold everything during trade war incertainty i think. They barely gain anything from it, and they completly lost the momentum nVidia acquired right after that (moving from 130$ to 450$+)
They invested in WeWorks which completly failed, they lost big on that one.
And it's called "The Vision Fund", what a vision !
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I agree with that definition, though, I would also add that patent trolling includes making patents for really pedantic things to remain anti-competitive. Kinda like how Apple had that patent about their phone basically being a shiny rectangle with curved edges, which is basically like all phones. I get the impression the same sort of thing happens in the GPU market.
Take ASTC for example - that was a patent created by S3 Graphics and it offered a healthy performance improvement back in the day, but because of the patent, nobody else really got to use it. The technology pretty much died with them, and only until about a year ago did the patent expire, where it could be implemented in other drivers. Not that it matters anymore, since there are now better texture compression methods.