SoftBank now also confirms it is exploring to sell ARM
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PrMinisterGR
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.
Embra
The plot thickens.
JAMVA
Maybe the CEO just wants to give himself a bonus...
Kaarme
In my opinion, only if the buyer is already integrally involved in relevant (related) business. Nvidia is 100%, but also any smartphone manufacturer would be, for example. Some general (technology) investment fund wouldn't be, unless it was majorly owned by a company that is.
At least ARM is too much for the American patent trolls. One of those would be even worse than Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Huawei, or something like that buying it.
JamesSneed
Intel wouldn't be allowed to buy ARM from an antitrust perspective but I have a feeling they may offer on ARM to run the price up. This is going to be interesting.
slyphnier
if they corporate/company in great or good condition then absolutely they wont do it
except softbank been getting big loss, which is make them in bad situations
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/SoftBank-faces-a-130bn-question-Is-the-worst-over
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1106/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/12/business/corporate-business/softbank-targeting-10-billion-public-investing/
craycray
Their big problem right now is their Chinese division which has gone rogue, and is operating autonomously and disobeying all corporate orders. Google it.
schmidtbag
That's probably why SoftBank is getting rid of it. I thought it was weird of them to have bought it in the first place.
Not sure about Huawei (they're not American anyway) but aren't the other 3 known for patent trolling? They're just a lot "quieter" about it. To my understanding, one of the reasons Nvidia bought out so many companies in the 90s and 00s was so they could attain patents. Wherever there isn't a patent, there's some proprietary technology instead. I'm less familiar with what ATI/AMD did. Intel has probably made deals with both companies to use their patents, because otherwise I don't see how they could build a competitive GPU.
craycray
Yep. There is always politics involved. So, they fired the Chinese CEO, but he refuses to leave!!!
A particular meme comes to mind.
JamesSneed
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.
schmidtbag
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.
Kaarme
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
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
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
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 ! 😉
moo100times
TSMC should buy ARM and lead the world.
PrMinisterGR
No thanks. It's already way too dangerous that there is only a single advanced fab, not even counting it's in Taiwan.
H83
This^^ Softbank betted billions on some companies, like one who sets up offices for other companies or some other stupid crap, and they all flopped hard, leading to massive losses. Now they need to sell their most valuable assets to cover those losses and ARM is their best company.
Venix
nvidia buying arm might be the best thing ever happen or the worse .... we do not know yet , they might improve it leaps and bound ... that will be awesome ...on the other hand they might lock it down HARD triggering risk 5 to rise ...witch again might be awesome ...or terrible risk5 seems supper interesting but hp lenovo etc able to get the open source cpu and add their propriatery stuff might rise a new era ...that hp will be trying to lock you to their systems ... then dell doing the same ... etc etc etc .... who knows ? we will see right now they dance with the billions and all we can do is sit and watch really except if someone forgot some billions in their pockets and is able to buy too :P
