ARM Co-Founder Says: Selling ARM to NVIDIA would be a disaster
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fantaskarsef
Explaining why he'd think it's a bad idea, quoted from the BBC source article:
So, basically he's afraid that Nvidia will have more influence over ARM, and that they will abuse that power for their own goals, like... a company paying billions for another one. Sadly, he's right, because that's why you buy a company like ARM, for obvious market position.
Also, he wishes that the [UK] government helps to get the company to remain as independent as possible, maybe even with money. Well... I doubt that will happen, with the UK being US buddies and all.
RooiKreef
Given the fact that ARM is dealing with companies like Google that is for the open source community, this is totally against anything Nvidia touches. That is in my opinion why this will be a disastrous decision to sell it to Nvidia. They just don't do business in the way ARM does period. So if anyone still think about the future of ARM then you better hope Nvidia doesn't get hold of them.
cryohellinc
Knowing how Nvidia works (especially as of late) - I think it will be in the best interest of everyone, especially on the consumer side, for Nvidia not to purchase ARM.
moo100times
I mean, I agree completely, and looking at Nvidia operates and their business model, I am suspicious of the same things.
It does not surprise me that their shareholders would be pushing for this deal, both for proprietary business but also for broader ownership links of:
Huawei with Tencent for ARM based cloud gaming, Nvidia for AI cloud based solutions for same company. Likely ARM as the architecture to link them all, and with recent US restrictions on foreign investment, IP restrictions, this might be a broader game at play to circumvent some of these restrictions
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/tencent-cloud-adopts-nvidia-tesla-for-ai-cloud-computing
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tencent-huawei-games/tencent-to-develop-cloud-game-platform-with-huawei-idUSKBN21E0BV
https://cntechpost.com/2020/03/27/tencent-games-and-huawei-build-gamematrix-cloud-gaming-platform/
And whether the cofounder agrees or not, has already been sold once to Softbank so I am not sure what rights he still has.
Andy Watson
Hopefully a big UK tech company like Ineos can buy it with it staying in the UK ( we need the jobs like every country at the moment) and it can still be independent from other cpu / IP tech companies.
H83
Obvious! ARM should be bought and manteined by an UK/EU company or holding like i already said in another thread. The fact that a company like this may be bought by an american company is simply ridiculous!
Kaarme
USA has no buddies currently. Trump doesn't want buddies. Ironically enough Boris Johnson (whose desire to break up the EU Trump supported), if he is anything but a hot air balloon, should be pro-UK, so he ought to oppose ARM slipping away as well, regardless of what the USA might be saying.
ruthan
I dont think that Nvidia is here to blame..
Nvidia is moving here, because stupid Intel X86 licensing and patents laws, they cant buy cpu own x86 license regardless of money. They have plenty money, need own cpus and ARM successful company to buy.
If someone from ARM not want to bought by Nvidia, they shouldnt in first place be no stock market - because be on stock market, means that money are always most important.. and any bla, bla around it is just hypocrisy.
Its hard to tell what Nvidia will do:
a) for them could be ARM just like Steam for Valve or Android for Google, they could be fine with present licencing for everyone, because of profit..
or
2) yes they could lock it down to proprietary technology, but doubt it.. because they will loose lots of profit... and i general they will decrease important of all ARM platform.. to it make not much sense
What is most import with ARM in its pocket and their resources, they could finally fight Intel and AMD with.. because present Samsung ARM Pc machines are joke for WinIntel market.. with some Nvidia ARM APU things could change, Nvidia has great track record from success point of view. Some for consoles where AMD x86 is ruling now.
Kaotik
Arm isn't on stock market really, though SoftBank is thinking of taking it public.
NVIDIA is already doing their own Arm-cores, they don't need the company for that.
Clearly this hasn't stopped them making pretty much everything else proprietary before, why would it now?
Why would they need Arm in their pocket for that? They already design their own Arm cores, they can make them as beefy as they see fit.
schmidtbag
Yes - I shared the same concerns when I first heard the news about Nvidia. As I said in the other article about this, Nvidia is more concerning because they tend to keep technologies to themselves, and that's not good when you've got a diverse licensed architecture like ARM. Nvidia can shoehorn certain technologies that only their variants will benefit from that they likely won't license out to anyone else.
But... I think Nvidia would do a hell of a lot better improving ARM than SoftBank.
I think he's right to say that. I liked ARM being British - adds more diversity in the tech industry. Sure, they weren't really pushing that hard for innovation, but they weren't pushing hard to appease shareholders, either.
Anyway, not to get political but I don't think the US and UK are as close of buddies under the current leadership as you might think. For example, the US and Canada are [supposed to be] best buddies and yet even they have a lot of recent tension regarding trade and work. Personally, I'm pretty irritated about that (Canada deserves better) but I digress. So, with the exception of companies like Nvidia, Apple, and Qualcomm, I don't think ARM will face too much American intervention.
Kaarme
Or they could make more profit by having others buy their ARM, along with their graphics. It doesn't need to make sense to you, as long as it makes sense to Nvidia, even if the sense materialised only years into the future, be it ARM based servers, integrated systems, future console generations, etc, where it would serve Nvidia to both limit competition and have something to offer. They also wouldn't care about the whole ARM platform, they would only need to care about their own business. Like Kaotic already said, Nvidia would have absolutely no need to buy ARM if they weren't planning to change things. Nvidia wouldn't be throwing around billions of dollars for no reason.
Mineria
You mean, tax payers money.
fredgml7
I believe none of the big chip makers should be allowed to buy ARM.
nevcairiel
You know its currently already owned by a Japanese company, right?
The UK/EU thing is long over.
H83
I´m aware of that fact but now they should buy it instead of letting an american or chinese company buy it. Can no one see the importance of possessing a company like ARM on this current times?
Andrew LB
So many sweeping generalizations about how bad nVIdia's business model is... you'd think they would only have 18% of the GPU market if that were the case. If the UK wants to prevent the sale, they're more in their right to do that, but this talk about the government funding the company is about the worst thing that can happen. Introducing government funding of ARM would likely be illegal due to its anti-competitive nature, giving them the distinct advantage of being able to function without being profitable, it would also effectively bar any potential competition. Nobody would enter the market or compete against a company with unlimited government funds backing them up. This practice of "picking winners and losers" is the worst kind of crony corporatism.
Andrew LB
Ah. my bad. Well regardless, my above comment still applies.
TrevorK
This is easy! Pony-up the most US$ to buy it! 8-]
Maddness
I was reading a rumor earlier that TSMC maybe throwing their hat in the ring too.
LtPessimist
It was a great shame when it was sold to Japanese SoftBank Group Corp., but the EU would not let the UK government bail it out. Shame on the EU as many other companies in Europe have been bailed out, but they don't allow the UK to do that for any of our companies.
