[HN Gopher] FTC sues to block Nvidia-Arm merger
___________________________________________________________________
FTC sues to block Nvidia-Arm merger
Author : badwolf
Score : 685 points
Date : 2021-12-02 20:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ftc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ftc.gov)
| usr1106 wrote:
| Good that they remember their tasks of enforcing antitrust rules
| when it comes to mergers.
|
| When will they remember them in cases of disruptive growth like
| Google and Amazon and do AT&T?
| dcow wrote:
| Okay let's assume the worst: Nvidia proves once and for all
| they're a giant green asshole and squeezes the life out of all
| existing ARM licensees to the point where they switch to a new
| ISA or die. What is the value of the investment you just made
| when nobody cares about ARM anymore?
|
| Or, 40 billion to force the market to agree on a new ISA a little
| sooner than it would have naturally? Smart play. It's nice job
| security for the engineers that are going to need to port
| everything, though...
| [deleted]
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| I was pretty skeptical on attempts to block this merger, still am
| tbh. But I'm also very happy this is going to get the scrutiny it
| needs, both nvidia and arm are pretty vital to the tech industry
| right now, I can see it going either way, ARM needs better GPU
| patents, NV needs better SOC patents, the risk of a merger being
| a disaster is pretty high.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > ARM needs better GPU patents
|
| Remember also that "GPU" technology is not strictly about
| graphics.
|
| If you browse the marketing website, listen to the keynotes,
| and generally learn of the NVIDIA vision of the future, it is
| something like this. There will be tons of little robots and
| similar endpoints ("edge computing"). Such a robot will be
| powered by a little ARM chip with an NVIDIA coprocessor for its
| on-board AI (computer vision, mobility, and the like). The
| robot will talk over 5G or one of its successors -- the signal
| processing for the base station perhaps powered by something
| like NVIDIA AI-on-5G. This communication link will connect it
| with compute appliances in the nearest utility closet or server
| room, wherein NVIDIA simulation and route-planning software
| maintains a "digital twin" of the real world, and helps
| orchestrate their operations, while operators can render that
| model on their local machines. And all these devices will have
| computer-vision and route-planning models on board, models that
| are trained in the big machines in the datacenter.
|
| We have a few of these systems in computing today, but AI
| coprocessors will become very interesting as we move deeper
| into this world.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| > Remember also that "GPU" technology is not strictly about
| graphics.
|
| It's not even primarily about graphics anymore.
|
| Graphics seem to be the 2nd if not 3rd most common use for
| GPUs.
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| I don't get the logic. So US government is ok with ARM China
| getting kidnapped, but has a problem with merge of 2 US
| companies? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326447-arm-
| china-seize...
| macintux wrote:
| > So US government is ok with ARM China getting kidnapped
|
| Two factors here: ARM isn't a U.S. company, and neither the
| U.K. nor U.S. would seem to have a great deal of leverage to
| bring to bear on the situation, realistically.
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| "No leverage" "Our hands are tied" "The bribe was too large
| to refuse"
|
| Our grand-children will hate us for being cowards and short-
| sighted profiteers.
|
| https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-bidens-son-helped-china-
| ge...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is really good news. Nvidia has always been show to be kind
| of hostile and proprietary and non community friendly as they've
| gotten larger and larger. It's always good to hear when companies
| that large get taken down a notch or two. ARM is too important to
| the broad market to let them merge with a company that will most
| likely swallow up the IP and limit access to it in an attempt to
| become hegemonious in the arenas that ARM finds itself in.
| mullingitover wrote:
| So what I'm reading is Intel ordered the FTC to dismantle any
| potential competition.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive/flamebait comments. We're
| trying for something else on this site.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mullingitover wrote:
| Sorry, I'm expressing my sincere belief that there's real
| corruption at the upper echelons that's benefitting Intel. I
| can see how my terse comment would come across as flamebait,
| it wasn't intentional. Intel's consistently rich margins
| don't really make sense if we actually have a fair and
| competitive market.
| voz_ wrote:
| This is a good thing, from any way you look. The last thing we
| need is more consolidation, and less competition, in this space.
| nickff wrote:
| It seems like it might be bad for computers, but good for
| embedded.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| On the other hand, a NVIDIA ARM acquisition could really spark
| RISC-V adoption. Maybe.
| 015a wrote:
| Eh. Who are the biggest consumers of ARM's IP? Apple,
| Samsung, Qualcomm?
|
| Apple could move to RISC-V (over another two decades), but
| even if they did, their move wouldn't actually benefit the
| RISC-V community (and moreover, they'd probably just do their
| own ISA; at ultra-vertically integrated gigacorporation
| scale, why not?)
|
| Samsung & Qualcomm? What's the assertion, that Nvidia would
| let ARM's ISA languish so much they'd be forced to move?
| Hasn't Qualcomm already been doing that, just with the actual
| chips; and no one seems to care? Except the people who run
| iPhone vs Android benchmarks of course.
| Alupis wrote:
| There are very few positive signs Nvidia would be a good
| caretaker of ARM IP, continue to push new innovated and
| _open_ designs and mass adoption.
|
| Nvidia's entire business and philosophy regarding their chip
| designs are kind of antithetical to what ARM was achieving.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| ARM was never good for open hardware designs.
|
| It wasn't better before what you think Nvidia will do
| either. Look at the state of Linux kernel updates on ARM
| chips.
| turminal wrote:
| You seem to be making a lot of bad faith arguments in
| this comment section.
|
| Why are you defending this deal so ferociously?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What is in bad faith? It's assumed that ARM support is
| good now. I'd like to see more Tegra type chips, an open
| ARM device with updates Linux drivers from the
| manufacturer. I'd love to be pointed to a better one if
| you have it. I think what nvidia does with Linux GPUs is
| awful, but it is very different how they treat their ARM
| processors.
|
| Please point me to good open ARM processor manufacturers
| that uploads good Linux updates, I'll be happy to be
| wrong that the Jetson really isn't the best.
| necovek wrote:
| All the SoCs available from https://www.96boards.org/
| should have good mainline Linux support.
|
| "Good manufacturers" today contribute directly to the
| upstream kernel, and frequently through Linaro kernel
| trees first.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Would you recommend any of these boards over a Jetson?
| I'm glad these exist but most of the specs look awful,
| and I've tried rockchip in pine hardware and it sucks.
| necovek wrote:
| I don't have much experience with the latest and
| greatest, and it surely depends on the types of workloads
| you plan to put on them.
|
| Rockchip has a number of differently performing chips
| (RK3399Pro seems to perform well in comparison with
| Jetson: https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/05/15/toybrick-
| rk3399pro-b...,
| https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2019/12/05/rk3399pro-vs-
| ras...). Pine only recently introduced a RK3399-based
| board (non-Pro, basically lacking an NPU) version, so you
| might want to go with them for availability reasons.
| klelatti wrote:
| The openness of the hardware designs has little to do
| with Arm - it's the SoC designers adding closed GPU
| drivers for example. Nvidia taking over Arm won't solve
| that issue.
| fooey wrote:
| Yeah, just look at what they did with GSync
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Which is why the parent said that it would be good for
| RISC-V processors, not for ARM processors.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| All you have to see is NVIDIA's trashy effort on Linux and
| locking-down what-would-otherwise-be-open hardware from
| being usable by open-source drivers...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| And ARM had constantly updated Linux kernels and drivers
| from Qualcomm before didn't they?
| monocasa wrote:
| ARM works very, very closely with the Linux kernel. The
| issues with updated code in the kernel isn't because of
| ARM CPU IP.
| rjsw wrote:
| ARM hasn't been much better than Nvidia for GPU code.
| monocasa wrote:
| Which is why I said CPU IP. That being said, it's a
| little hard to blame them there, GPUs are a bit of a
| patent minefield.
| necovek wrote:
| ARM has helped found Linaro (linaro.org) ~10 years ago to
| fix the problem with mainline Linux integration for all
| the participating SoC vendors.
|
| You should expect the following manufacturers to have
| good mainline support:
|
| https://www.linaro.org/membership/
|
| I am sure your mileage will vary between vendors (I am
| pretty sure Qualcomm was NOT one of the founding members,
| but it's there now), but this at least signals an
| investment of money and resources.
| godelski wrote:
| It's funny because NVIDIA used to work well on Linux, way
| back in the day. Then they just decided to not care, then
| they decided to be hostile. Now they're backtracking but
| only because they are forced to. I thought the amount of
| ML would have made them backtrack, but it seems that it
| is more AMD and Steam.
| phire wrote:
| The quality of Nvidia's linux drivers hasn't changed
| much. They are about as good as they were 10 years ago.
|
| But everything else has changed around them. The quality
| of other drivers has improved, the linux ecosystem and
| what it expects out of drivers has changed, and the
| nvidia windows drivers have gotten features that the
| nvidia linux drivers don't.
| [deleted]
| foepys wrote:
| Wasn't there a situation where the Linux ecosystem
| decided to use an API that Nvidia officially opposed and
| never wanted to support? Resulting in Wayland/KDE/GNOME
| (or similar) not running quite a lot of features on
| Nvidia? Something about Nvidia only supporting EGLstream
| while everybody else wanted GBM?
|
| It's very foggy in my mind, so I might be misremembering
| details.
| mijoharas wrote:
| You have the details precisely correct.
|
| Nvidia are finally moving to support GBM (iirc, it's
| because someone from KDE asked an nvidia engineer to help
| get something working with wayland+eglstreams, and he
| found out it was impossible, as the community had been
| saying for a while. Slight citation needed on that as I
| can't find a reference).
|
| Technically they have support in their latest 495
| drivers, but I can speak from experience when I say it's
| not seamless for a user. (I have put a lot of effort into
| getting it to work and it recently broke again).
| mijoharas wrote:
| Found a reference[0]. I'm not gonna pretend that "thing I
| read by some random person on a forum" is an
| unimpeachable source, but it's where I heard it I think.
|
| [0] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/10/nvidia-
| beta-4952905-ro...
| mijoharas wrote:
| I cannot agree with this more! I'm so frustrated, since I
| actually managed to get nvidia + wayland (sway) working
| on my laptop, and an update of some kind broke my
| external monitors this week (I haven't had time to roll
| everything back individually to figure out what yet).
|
| It's an incredibly frustrating experience, and I really
| wonder if nvidia realises the long-term impact they're
| having by alienating the tech crowd (i.e. the ones that
| give recommendations to friends, and decide what hardware
| their companies will buy).
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It is important to remember that Hacker News and Phoronix
| and Linux kernel developers are within a communication
| bubble (like any forum).
|
| It may be because, in practice, NVIDIA looks at the size
| of us all... and yawns because we're tiny and because
| most tech reviewers still recommend them and most gamers
| still buy them. And they have a point - AMD has better
| Linux support, but NVIDIA's got CUDA (which has basically
| killed OpenCL and AMD's ROCm is less than a proof of
| concept in quality), DLSS, Raytracing, much better video
| encoders, a bunch of stuff that people are willing to put
| up with subpar Linux for.
| rswail wrote:
| And Linux on the desktop will defeat Windows' monopoly on the
| desktop.
|
| RISC-V adoption will be driven by the capability of RISC-V
| and it being a competitive choice compared to ARM and others.
| NVIDIA acquiring ARM wouldn't spark RISC-V, it would reduce
| ARM adoption.
|
| Neither is a good outcome.
| mhh__ wrote:
| As a partial subscriber to the idea that ARM is probably
| better than RV64 for high performance that probably might not
| be all that good.
| dcow wrote:
| Since when do Nvidia and ARM compete?
| detaro wrote:
| Nvidia competes with other ARM customers.
| dcow wrote:
| But not with ARM... so instead of Softbank making royalties
| Nvidia makes them. I'm struggling to understand how this
| merger would eliminate competition, consolidate the market,
| and put consumers at risk of harm.
| detaro wrote:
| You really don't see how NVidia controlling what price
| their competitors have to pay for ARM technology and when
| they get access to it at all could have an impact on the
| market?
| dcow wrote:
| Right now SoftBank controls that price. If they could
| raise it and make more money off of ARM and piss on the
| market then why aren't they doing it? They're a business
| trying to maximize profits after all, it's in their
| interest regardless of who's competing for what.
| detaro wrote:
| Softbank doesn't benefit if it weakens one of their
| licensees. NVidia would benefit from weakening other ARM
| licensees, even if that would hurt ARM income.
| dcow wrote:
| I do see how this might be a conflict, thank you for
| pointing it out. In general I'm not convinced that those
| competitors couldn't just leave and use some other
| instruction set. If ARM is too important to business to
| be owned by a selfish company, then declare it public
| domain already...
| romwell wrote:
| >then declare it public domain already...
|
| Well that ship has sailed, as ARM is owned by the
| Japanese Softbank now.
|
| Previously, it was a UK firm, and now the UK is trying to
| introduce legislation to prevent this from happening
| again.
|
| ARM was UK's "oh shit" moment. That influenced their move
| to declare nuclear weapons industry "public domain", i.e.
| nationalize it:
|
| https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/11/02/Britain-to-
| natio...
| effie wrote:
| Wow, the concept of privately owned nuclear weapons
| supplier is really something insane. And it is real. Wow.
| romwell wrote:
| Not only it's real, it's how half of the nukes worldwide
| are made.
|
| The rest are pretty much made in Russia.
|
| Makes you ponder the implications of existence of the
| privately owned military-industrial complex, huh.
|
| https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/nuclear-weapon-
| producers/
| sofixa wrote:
| I don't know how accurate that website is. For France, it
| lists the following:
|
| > Don't Bank on the bomb identifies the following
| companies as producers of key components for the French
| nuclear weapons arsenal:
|
| > Airbus Group (the Netherlands),
|
| > BAE Systems (United Kingdom),
|
| > Leonardo (Italy),
|
| > Safran (France), and
|
| > Thales (France)
|
| (Neither of which has anything to do with nukes directly)
|
| Which isn't incorrect but misleading. There are two
| French nuclear-capable missiles (ASMPA and M51, for air
| and submarine launches respectively) and one warhead (
| TNA). ASMPA is a cruise missile designed by MBDA (which
| is the successor to government-owned missile companies),
| M51 was mostly designed by the military with some parts
| subcontracted to various subcontractors like MBDA,
| Safran, Thales, etc.
|
| However, the nuclear warheads themselves are designed by
| a government-owned company, CEA, and everything nuclear
| related in France is at least majority government owned.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > I'm struggling to understand how this merger would
| eliminate competition, consolidate the market, and put
| consumers at risk of harm.
|
| Uh, how about this: NVIDIA raises the licensing fees
| substantially. NVIDIA won't have to pay the licensing fee
| if they own Arm, which would expand their profit margin
| at the expense of Arm licensees, and raise prices for
| consumers.
|
| Or they could refuse to license Arm IP to current
| licensees.
|
| Both of these scenarios are pretty obvious.
| zerohp wrote:
| This is exactly why Nvidia wants to buy ARM. It's
| straight out of the Jack Tramiel (of Commodore) playbook.
| Commodore bought MOS to guarantee supply of the 6502 then
| raised the price for all of their competitors. It's one
| of the reasons why a Commodore 64 was less than half the
| price of the nearest competitor.
| gifnamething wrote:
| Arm design CPU microarchitecture. NVIDIA design CPU
| microarchitecture.
| jamesliudotcc wrote:
| Administrative overreach. If the FTC really believed they could
| win in a regular federal court where they did not hire and fire
| the judges, they would do so.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Does ARM have any real competitors?
|
| ARM alone is way too powerful
| varelse wrote:
| Our government continues to show how corrupt and bad it really
| is. It'll be super funny when Qualcomm buys ARM instead because
| that's a-okay and all that. Edit: you know Qualcomm has already
| said that's exactly what they're going to do right? Maybe the
| Nvidia CEO needs to kill a goat with a stun gun and feed it to
| the FTC to send the right message? That seemed to work really
| well for Zuck.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...
| rswail wrote:
| You realize that its not only the FTC involved here.
|
| The UK is already investigating as well, see
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22785832/nvidias-arm-acq...
|
| The EU is also investigating:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/27/22266504/nvidia-arm-deal...
|
| Any one of these regulators can both delay and/or stop and/or
| change the conditions of the proposed merger.
|
| It's highly likely that any other direct acquisition of ARM
| would get the same investigation, no matter who the acquirer
| is.
| varelse wrote:
| And I get why the UK is concerned. Their regulators caught
| flack for allowing foreign companies to buy Deepmind and ARM.
| But I don't get the United States government's motivation
| here yet. The story will come out in time.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/13/britain-to-protect-tech-
| firm...
| gifnamething wrote:
| >Edit: you know Qualcomm has already said that's exactly what
| they're going to do right?
|
| Well that's not what your link says
| varelse wrote:
| Okay if you trust that buying an unspecified stake doesn't
| lead to an acquisition once the smoke has cleared you have a
| very different worldview than I do. We will have to agree to
| disagree.
|
| It does seem like the next 100 years is just more of what's
| been going on the past decade and it seems pretty grim for
| the customer and great for the corporations as they duke it
| out with each other much like what this seems to really be
| about.
| gifnamething wrote:
| I don't need to trust it, the rules for acquisition are
| much more strict than the rules for part ownership.
| varelse wrote:
| Fascinating... So many strange acquisitions and this is
| the one that triggers all the red flags. The story will
| come out eventually and I think it's going to be a doozy.
| cdbattags wrote:
| If this merger does happen, my hope is RISC-V will win in 5-10+
| years horizon. Which I think would be net-net better for the
| whole industry.
| mrlambchop wrote:
| A late, but potentially still well timed event that will tie up
| the deal through to next summer when the exclusivity period
| expires and SoftBank gets a 1.25B breakup fee.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Is that good? The Nvidia-ARM merger has progressed and been in
| the news so many times that it's been partly responsible for
| Nvidia's stock growth. It's a bit strange to correct a market
| by blocking a merger while choosing to sue at the most
| disruptive time (correcting/bear-ish turned market, inflation
| policy changes, very close to the exclusivity period
| expiration).
|
| The FTC should be doing its job but it should be doing it the
| proper way - not just delaying the deal until it falls apart.
| It should also do its job promptly... the UK was looking at
| this deal nearly a year ago - that should have been a huge flag
| to accelerate their own investigation. What's the point of
| wasting months of people's time and money.
| keewee7 wrote:
| This might be the geopolitical blunder of the decade. If this
| merger doesn't happen China is going to win the chip race.
|
| As an European I'm increasingly bullish on China and see the US
| and EU as self-sabotaging neurotic entities.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| What is the "chip race" and why is a combined NVIDIA/ARM
| necessary to "win" it? Aren't AMD/TSMC, Apple/TSMC, and Intel
| enough to be competitive?
| keewee7 wrote:
| TSMC is Taiwanese, China will takeover Taiwan in the next
| 5-10 years, and Intel's manufacturing processes are ancient.
| The future when US/EU can't produce our own chips is rapidly
| approaching.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| And... What do ARM or NVIDIA have anything to do with
| fabrication? If anything a merger will hurt Intel and make
| it harder for them to update their processes.
| rswail wrote:
| TSMC is building new plant in the US and elsewhere outside
| of Taiwan.
|
| There's no guarantee that Chine will "takeover" Taiwan any
| time soon, the geo-politics of that are way more enormous
| than just chip manufacture.
|
| Most of the development in manufacturing of chips is by the
| companies that supply the fab developers, the integration
| of those skills and components is where the different fab
| owners have their competitive advantages.
|
| The "future when the US/EU can't produce our own chips" was
| also in the 80s when there was a push to develop memory
| manufacturers and back then, Japan was the evil empire that
| needed to be stopped.
|
| TSMC would continue post a China takeover of Taiwan.
| unionpivo wrote:
| You do realize that neither Nvidia nor Arm, have their own
| foundries and have shown no signs of wanting to build one ?
|
| TSMC and Nvidia are not in the same business.
| effie wrote:
| > If this merger doesn't happen China is going to win the chip
| race.
|
| Wut? How is NVIDIA keeping new ARM designs from competitors
| like Intel, AMD and phone manufacturers helping to win the
| "chip race"?
| Aicy wrote:
| Promoting fair competition (not crony captalism) is how the US
| wins the chip race
| gip wrote:
| As a former hardware engineer I support the move by the FTC! I
| have an honest question though: does the lawsuit have any
| realistic change to block that merger?
| pm90 wrote:
| It absolutely does. The FTC doesn't bring lawsuits forward
| unless they have pretty good reason to believe they will
| succeed. I suspect they have been gathering evidence to make
| this case for a while now.
| scandinavian wrote:
| Always such a weird argument. I assume Nvidia also doesn't
| try to aquire large companies unless they have pretty good
| reason to believe they will succeed.
| not2b wrote:
| It seems it will at least delay it while the lawyers fight it
| out in court.
| e-_pusher wrote:
| This is an aside but: what made you switch away from hardware
| engineering? And what are you doing nowadays?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think the comments along the lines of "This is weird, why
| wouldn't the US govt want a US company to own ARM?" are
| incredibly simplistic.
|
| First, it's at least possible that some government agencies
| actually do care about their charters and don't make it 100%
| about any one-sided geopolitical advantages. It's not hard to see
| how this deal will be bad for American consumers and businesses
| at large, and the FTC's purpose is to prevent that harm.
|
| But more than that, even if you _do_ take the position that they
| only care about realpolitik, the US government 's desire to reign
| in big tech is about the sole thing that has bipartisan support.
| This action is well in line with keeping big tech from usurping
| the power of government.
| dcow wrote:
| > It's not hard to see how this deal will be bad for American
| consumers and businesses at large, and the FTC's purpose is to
| prevent that harm.
|
| I am having a hard time understanding this. Care to explain
| rather than sidestepping and calling out my comment as overly
| simplistic? It seems the FTC is acting to protect businesses
| (ironically other big tech), not consumers. That's what I don't
| get.
|
| > This action is well in line with keeping big tech from
| usurping the power of government.
|
| "It's political" isn't really an explanation either. There's
| certainly something to discuss about at what point a company
| becomes too big and valuable, but that doesn't seem to be the
| stated motivation here. And I'd be interested in understanding
| what the framework is for applying those restrictions and how
| e.g. a company like Apple slid by without getting dismantled.
|
| EDIT: To put my confusion another way, at the end it says "The
| FTC acts when it has reason to believe the law has been or is
| being violated." What law has allegedly been violated or would
| be violated should this merger succeed?
| ScottBurson wrote:
| Here's Matt Stoller's explanation:
| https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/ftc-sues-to-block-
| nvidia-...
|
| I'm guessing "the law" is probably the Sherman Antitrust Act,
| which is still on the books, though enforcement went out of
| fashion in the 1980s. Seems to be making a comeback, though.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _enforcement went out of fashion in the 1980s_
|
| the Bell System was broken up in the 1980s
| dcow wrote:
| I follow Matt and often agree with his takes. This short
| piece just seems to be a non-opinion announcement to keep
| his followers appraised.
|
| > This is Lina Khan's first major merger challenge. It is
| also a unanimous vote, and ironically, not all that bad for
| some of the key players in big tech.
|
| I think this key point is telling... Big tech has a big
| hold on our political-think. And even Matt seems to have
| conflicting thoughts.
| nnvvhh wrote:
| Either Sherman or Clayton Act.
| dcow wrote:
| From the Clayton Act:
|
| * mergers and acquisitions where the effect may
| substantially lessen competition
|
| This is my bone. I don't understand how this merger
| substantially lessens competition. Let's all concede the
| merger is obviously bad for every single business in the
| US and there is nothing redeemable about Nvidia and no
| reason to believe it should own ARM IP. They're still not
| competitors and no competition in the market has been
| lessened by such a merger. In fact, access to other
| people's sensitive business details probably makes things
| more competitive and forces participants to innovate in
| other areas. Only day to day contract negotiation has
| become shittier because now you have deal with "shitty"
| Nvidia. Where's the law that says companies can't
| vertically integrate? Is there a precedent for blocking
| these type of vertical mergers solely because it might be
| good business for the acquirer and unfortunate news for
| other participants? Why couldn't other participants put a
| bid out on ARM? Why can't Apple and Google just throw 100
| billion at SoftBank and say we're buying and freeing ARM?
| Idk maybe I was simply born into an age of spineless non-
| enforcement of anti-trust, but I'm not seeing how this
| scenario warrants more scrutiny than "normal".
| nnvvhh wrote:
| Take note that the FTC has not actually done anything,
| they have only initiated a lawsuit. A court may disagree
| with the FTC's assessment and permit the merger. The
| government loses antitrust suits. But antitrust suits are
| long and expensive, so a challenge like this may cause
| Nvidia and Arm to back off.
|
| Your intuition is right in that vertical mergers are
| viewed less suspiciously than mergers between
| competitors. But courts still assess the impact to
| competition in vertical mergers. As you did, assume the
| worst case: if Arm is really crucial to Nvidia's
| competitors, and the merged firm keeps Arm's designs to
| themselves, competition in chip-supply is harmed. Yes,
| Nvidia was savvy etc. and is just doing what another
| actor could do, but compare this method of Nvidia beating
| their competitors versus the "ideal" way where Nvidia
| makes a better product, does it cheaper, and is generally
| more efficient. That's what antitrust law wants. It wants
| the merits of the product and the org to decide the
| winner in a market, not things like buying Arm and
| keeping them to yourself.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _I don 't understand how this merger substantially
| lessens competition._
|
| Step 1: acquire ARM
|
| Step 2: make life more difficult for other ARM license
| holders and/or easier for NVidia
|
| Step 3: be the only viable supplier of ARM chips
|
| _I 'm not seeing how this scenario warrants more
| scrutiny than "normal"._
|
| Speculating: maybe the old "normal" was too low, this was
| just the easiest first move, and other more difficult
| antitrust moves are in the pipeline.
| dcow wrote:
| Intel could do the exact same thing to any X86 vendor
| today, couldn't it? And AMD to X86_64 vendors, no? I'm
| not saying your logic is wrong, but this problem seems
| more pervasive than Nvidia and ARM. In reality if we stop
| this merger what we're saying is that it's a problem for
| _any_ company to own IP that they license to competitors
| while at the same time producing and selling an in-house
| product that leverages the same IP. I 'm not ignoring the
| conflicting interest here, but we've never said "a
| company can't be vertically integrated and also license
| technology to competitors". Maybe times are a changing,
| but if this becomes the new norm the only thing it seems
| to protect are incumbents in the space who are already
| vertically integrated...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Intel could do the exact same thing to any X86 vendor
| today, couldn't it? And AMD to X86_64 vendors, no?
|
| They already have killed off any effective competition,
| and that's a bad thing. If x86 was more diverse and was
| moving toward the current set of two, blocking it would
| also be good.
|
| At least the important parts are falling out of patent...
|
| > In reality if we stop this merger what we're saying is
| that it's a problem for any company to own IP that they
| license to competitors while at the same time producing
| and selling an in-house product that leverages the same
| IP.
|
| Well it is. How much of a problem depends on how much
| competition the different parts of the market have.
| ScottBurson wrote:
| I think there's a difference between a company licensing
| IP it has developed itself vs. acquiring another
| company's IP that is already being used by competitors.
| Not saying the latter is never allowable, but it weighs
| against allowing the acquisition.
|
| Still, you raise a good point. Maybe along with blocking
| more mergers, we should be looking at breaking some
| companies up.
| eganist wrote:
| It looks like your question was answered in another reply
| to you more than a half hour before this comment of
| yours.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29423870
|
| I'm by no means an attorney but the argument made seems
| sound.
| dcow wrote:
| Well if the original creator of this thread had replied
| in-thread to my other comment, then I wouldn't have felt
| the need to engage in two different spots. I agree it's
| annoying.
|
| Anyway I can't help but feel the argument is pretty loose
| on demonstrating that Nvidia would be in a position to
| harm the market in a _substantial_ way. Usually the law
| is enforced reactively to punish bad /unwanted behavior.
| We preemptively prevent mergers that would result in no
| real competition existing in a market, in other words: a
| monopoly. We do that because it's bad for consumers. You
| can echo the FTC's statements about how having leverage
| over other market participants might be harmful all you
| want, but the reality is that they don't explain how
| Nvidia owning ARM creates a monopoly (is akin to
| something like Intel owning ARM) and then how that is
| inherently bad for fundamentally bad for consumers.
| Nvidia owning arm looks like savvy business at best and
| at worst annoying and disruptive to some people who put
| most of their eggs in the ARM basket. I see how it could
| in theory have an effect on some competition to have this
| type of vertical integration happen, but is that
| _substantial_ to the point of Nvidia being a monopoly on
| microprocessors and consumers left abused and holding the
| bag? That 's quite the claim.
|
| AMD competes with Intel and Intel is similarly vertically
| integrated. AMD even makes graphics cards after merging
| with ATI and that didn't kill any markets or harm
| consumers, if anything AMD graphics has become more
| competitive. Intel is entering the graphics card space.
| Personally I'd love to see another player in the
| processor space. Right now it's Intel and AMD and now
| Apple. Why wouldn't an Nvidia N2 ARM SOC that competes
| with the Apple M1 be a good thing? IDK I see potential
| consumer benefits to Nvidia being able to run with ARM. I
| can't help but feel like we're straining here under the
| guise of "big tech is big and bad let's punish them all".
|
| Anyway probably at the end of the utility of going back
| an forth on wether the merger _substantially_ lessens
| competition to the point of causing consumer harm. We 'll
| see what the courts decide.
| eganist wrote:
| I mean, ARM is basically the only game in town when it
| comes to mobile chips. Combine that with nvidia's
| graphics technologies and now you've got basically the
| entire market for XR devices (I reject the use of
| 'metaverse' in this context) cornered.
|
| It's one case out of many where suddenly a defacto market
| leader emerges with almost no room for other entrants,
| whereas at least without the merger device makers can
| source silicon from arm licensors as well as from AMD,
| NVDA, and INTC (soon-ish) for solid graphics components.
| [deleted]
| nnvvhh wrote:
| One thing the TFA says: "Because Arm's technology is a
| critical input that enables competition between Nvidia and
| its competitors in several markets, the complaint alleges
| that the proposed merger would give Nvidia the ability and
| incentive to use its control of this technology to undermine
| its competitors, reducing competition and ultimately
| resulting in reduced product quality, reduced innovation,
| higher prices, and less choice, harming the millions of
| Americans who benefit from Arm-based products, the complaint
| alleges."
|
| When a downstream firm merges with an upstream supplier that
| is really important to the downstream firm and its
| competitors, the merged firm can competitively hobble the
| downstream competitors. They can refuse to sell the upstream
| good to competitors, or raise the cost for competitors. Plus
| it may force the competitors (or potential new entrants) to
| vertically integrate themselves and enter both the downstream
| and upstream markets, which chills competition in the
| downstream market. The government also credits business
| justifications for the merger, and in the end they balance
| those with the potential harms to competition.
|
| The article (I can't find the complaint) also says, and this
| is a typical vertical merger concern, that this will give
| Nvidia (the downstream firm) access to sensitive information
| of Nvidia's rivals that they had previously shared with Arm.
|
| EDIT: There is also a general antitrust push in the Biden
| administration, notably in the appointments of Lina Khan and
| Tim Wu. Interesting to see its fruits.
| varelse wrote:
| Between Intel and AMD there are two competitors here.
| Strange that the government didn't raise a similar concern
| when AMD acquired ATI or anytime Intel acquired just about
| anything but you know how these things work and I guess
| Apple isn't happy with this.
|
| Somehow reminds me of when the SEC decided that Nvidia was
| the next Enron back in the 00s because a few of their
| employees did some piddly insider trading and they spent
| the next two to three years trying to destroy the company.
| In the end, earnings were adjusted up 10 million and they
| got rid of their CFO as a sacrificial lamb. All these
| government bureaucrats need to look busy after all.
| slongfield wrote:
| Neither Intel nor AMD supply SoC cores in the same way
| that ARM does--they don't really operate in the same
| market segment.
|
| NVidia's competition in the hardware acceleration space
| often includes ARM cores for management (e.g., the Xilinx
| Zynq https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-
| devices/soc/zynq-700... ), or are extension of the ARM
| instruction set (e.g. AWS's Graviton
| https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ ).
|
| RISC-V suppliers (e.g, SiFive) is the closest thing that
| ARM to has to a competitor here, and they're nowhere near
| the same scale.
| varelse wrote:
| That seems awfully esoteric to me. Compare and contrast
| with Intel taking Altera off the map and AMD taking
| Xilinx off the map. At the time, FPGAs were erroneously
| seen as a credible competitor to GPUs in artificial
| intelligence. They absolutely smash GPUs at extreme low
| latency, but it was a poor technological take to assume
| that meant they could beat them where GPUs were strong
| but that didn't stop lots of money being thrown at the
| attempt.
|
| Which is to say it seems odd that the FTC would get its
| hackles up over a case as nichey as you describe. it
| would seem the elephant in the room is Nvidia's dominance
| of AI. There's nothing stopping AMD or Intel developing
| equivalent SoCs. In fact one of the cases you mentioned
| comes from Xilinx ergo AMD.
|
| So I have to think this has to be something as basic as
| slinging mud at their dominance of AI. Something as
| simple as trying to exclude competing browsers from your
| operating system's desktop. Something as understandable
| as trying to exclude third parties from collecting money
| on your mobile platform. And since both other cases are
| larger more general instances of dominance, it's curious
| they aren't being investigated as well. Well not really,
| there's probably a lot of grift here.
|
| But if we're going to worry about a single party having
| dominance of AI then we have to start asking questions
| about Google and Facebook controlling the major
| interfaces to AI. Sure, they are open source, you can
| fork them if you like. But they get to control all the
| pull requests into the master branch. That lets them
| control how well any one platform runs their framework.
| That seems a bit anti-competitive as well when at least
| one of the parties has their own AI hardware.
| Klinky wrote:
| >Somehow reminds me of when the SEC decided that Nvidia
| was the next Enron...
|
| There was significant insider trading occurring due to an
| internal email about the Xbox deal. 10 employees and 15
| people total.
|
| _" The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued 15
| people, including the 10 suspended nVidia employees,
| accusing them of insider trading in shares of the
| graphics chipmaker based on advance information that it
| would win a lucrative contract from Microsoft Corp."_ [1]
|
| In a separate incident, nVidia wanted to show better
| quarterly results and tried to pressure their supplier to
| reduce costs, with the promise of paying more in the
| future. Their supplier wanted it in writing. The CFO knew
| they could not have such an explicit agreement in
| writing, as it would not allow them to write down the
| cost savings for the quarter, so they directed an
| employee to author two separate agreements to obfuscate
| their mutual nature.
|
| _" We can not sign this or have this in print. Will wipe
| out the credit in Q1. Need to arrange this separately and
| trust us to abide by it."_ [2]
|
| Seems kind of in the purview of the SEC to look into
| these kinds of things.
|
| 1. https://money.cnn.com/2001/11/20/technology/nvidia/
|
| 2. https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/34-48480.htm
| varelse wrote:
| An inappropriate release of market influencing news that
| was exploited improperly by 10 employees of a 500
| employee organization is your definition of significant
| insider trading on par with Enron? $1.7M in profits
| total. Those employees were terminated and they paid
| fines and I believe one was banned from working in tech
| going forward. The hyperbole here is ridiculous. That's
| about 1/1000th of an Enron.
|
| But thanks for pointing out why they got rid of the CFO.
| I didn't know about that part. It makes more sense now.
| Klinky wrote:
| The SEC didn't compare nVidia to Enron, the media did.
| That was because nVidia was the best performing S&P 500
| stock for 2001, a title it took over from Enron. The
| unwinding of Enron's massive accounting scandal was still
| hot in the news at the time. It was an obvious comparison
| to make about another "top performer" having an
| accounting scandal. However, the "overreaction" by the
| media and market was not the fault of the SEC.
|
| The punitive remediation for the insider traders was done
| due to the SEC investigating, which then lead to
| discovery of the accounting issue. Your characterization
| that the SEC had a vendetta against nVidia is completely
| wrong. Maybe nVidia should have had tighter controls on
| privileged information and better insider trading
| education for their employees. Maybe they also shouldn't
| have tried to cook their books to deceive the market. If
| it really was only a puny $1.7M and didn't really matter,
| why'd they do it? _CORRECTION: $1.7M was profits by the
| insider traders, nVidia misstated $3.3 million in cost
| savings._
| varelse wrote:
| Ironically, Nvidia restated earnings slightly upward as
| opposed to Enron overreporting by $600M. Not so sure
| whether that was "cooking the books" or just playing fast
| and loose with ambiguous accounting laws which is in my
| experience what accountants do, but they did get caught,
| no argument there and the CFO was fined. But I wonder who
| else would get caught doing similar things of similar
| magnitude if their annual statements were scrutinized in
| as much detail here specifically looking for trouble.
|
| As for the inside trading employees, they were fools.
| Good luck keeping out fools like that once you have a
| hundred or more employees or why do some googlers stalk
| their ex partner's search histories? Why do some Amazon
| employees snoop on Alexa recordings? Why do some Facebook
| employees look at the private friends list of their ex
| partners? Etc. There was a second insider trading
| investigation in 2014 that was handled quietly and
| efficiently unlike this fiasco. That one seemed a bit
| more nefarious and systematic IMO and yet no one compared
| it to Enron. Funny that.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-sec-accounting-
| prob...
|
| https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2014-82
| Klinky wrote:
| You just seem to want to try to come up with a bunch of
| excuses to downplay or redirect attention away from
| nVidias culpability in what they did. It was not the
| SEC's fault they had insider traders and their CFO
| knowingly and deceptively hid quarterly costs on purpose.
| Accountants should not actually be playing fast and
| loose, unless they want SEC attention.
|
| Did 2014 involve accounting discrepancies? Did the SEC
| still release a public press release like they did in the
| 2000s? Their handling wasn't much different here. Enron
| was long dead by 2014 and it doesn't look like there was
| wrongdoing by nVidia directly, so obviously the media
| wouldn't make such comparisons.
|
| Digital privacy concerns don't directly involve the SEC,
| though maybe the FTC. That's another topic, but one
| worthy of competent regulatory oversight.
| varelse wrote:
| So you are stating that the release of the "X is ours"
| email that started all this was deliberate corporate
| misconduct by the CEO? I don't even think the SEC
| insinuated that.
|
| And that the SEC finding a small accounting discrepancy
| so as to justify the time they put into this
| investigation is actually an Enron level event?
|
| Got it. We see things differently. You think I'm
| downplaying what happened. I think you're overstating it
| just like the media compared them to Enron.
| Klinky wrote:
| No, it was the CFO explicitly calling out that they can't
| do something and then doing it anyways to deceive
| shareholders about quarterly costs. That should be
| obvious.
|
| Just because Enron had massive fraud doesn't make $3.3
| million "a small discrepancy", nor is purposefully doing
| something merely a discrepancy or oversight.
|
| No one compared the insider trading to Enron. The actual
| accounting issue got them those comparisons.
| [deleted]
| nnvvhh wrote:
| The people enforcing the laws change between
| administrations, so it is not unexpected that past
| actions look inconsistent. Biden's people were not in
| power then (in fact the current FTC chair was seventeen).
|
| I'm not sure if you're saying that Intel and AMD existing
| means that competition is doing fine, but three actors is
| a highly concentrated market.
| varelse wrote:
| We seem to be OK with only two players in mobile and on
| the desktop for now. Interesting the battles we choose to
| fight.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| 4/5 of the FTC commissioners were appointed in 2018
| tristor wrote:
| If there's an antitrust push, how have they not looked at
| Google or Amazon yet? Both businesses engage in anti-
| competitive behaviors in markets they dominate which
| possibly (likely) cross the line.
| kibwen wrote:
| Who says they're not looking at Google or Amazon? From
| https://fortune.com/2020/02/11/ftc-antitrust-probe-
| google-fa... :
|
| "U.S. technology giants face a new wave of scrutiny from
| antitrust officials, as the Federal Trade Commission
| demanded information about their acquisitions of startups
| that may have eliminated emerging competitors. The FTC
| issued orders to Alphabet's Google, Apple, Facebook,
| Amazon.com and Microsoft for information on the terms and
| purposes of transactions they closed from the beginning
| of 2010 through 2019, the agency said Tuesday."
| Traster wrote:
| I agree with you that it's _obviously_ dumb to let Nvidia buy
| ARM... BUT we 're already in a situation where softbank own
| ARM. I think the only argument that Nvidia is more dangerous is
| that they're more competent.
| neltnerb wrote:
| But Softbank and ARM are not in remotely similar markets and
| ARM can't meaningfully favor Softbank as a customer even if
| they wanted to.
|
| So yeah, I guess I'd argue that NVidia is more dangerous
| because they're more competent. In the sense that they are
| competent because they are in a close enough market for there
| to be a conflict of interest.
| quitit wrote:
| With SoftBank Group as a holding company, ARM pretty much
| runs the same as before.
|
| Should Nvidia own ARM, the avenues for exploitation aren't
| just obvious, but anticipated.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I don't think there is any charter to protect competition
| outside the US. The reason the FTC would block the merger is to
| protect US companies and agencies doing business with ARM
| and/or Nvidia. It maintains competitiveness in their purchasing
| options.
| [deleted]
| emodendroket wrote:
| > But more than that, even if you do take the position that
| they only care about realpolitik, the US government's desire to
| reign in big tech is about the sole thing that has bipartisan
| support. This action is well in line with keeping big tech from
| usurping the power of government.
|
| It's kind of a team project, isn't it? The links between the
| two go pretty deep.
| [deleted]
| Symmetry wrote:
| As an NVidia shareholder let me say thank goodness. NVidia is
| having to pay more than the market rate for ARM in order to get
| it from Softbank instead of them just selling ARM on the open
| market. But because nobody in their right mind would trust NVidia
| with ARM, ARM under NVidia is going to be worth less than what
| the market would pay for an independent ARM. And everything
| NVidia wants to do with ARM they can do by just buying an
| architectural license like everybody else.
|
| The whole deal would have been a huge destruction of value for
| the sake of Jensen Huang's ego.
| dcow wrote:
| Strategically, why wouldn't the US gov't want a US company owning
| ARM? Why is the FTC pilling on to block this? How would I, as a
| consumer, be harmed by a graphics company owning an instruction
| set and design specification?
|
| Stopping two US companies from merging because it would create a
| monopoly and negatively impact US consumers is one thing. But
| this isn't even remotely the case here? Doesn't the US government
| get more tax revenue if Nvidia makes some extra dough charging
| royalties for that IP? I'm confused.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| The press release directly and prominently answers this
| question multiple times. It suggests that under Nvidia the new
| Arm would be disincentived to innovate in any area that
| negatively affects Nvidia businesses. Given that Arm is a
| critical supplier for many industries, this could result in
| consumer harm via "reduced product quality, reduced innovation,
| higher prices, and less choice"
|
| Also, I don't believe the FTC mission is to increase US tax
| revenue, so that aspect seems irrelevant.
| dcow wrote:
| And why is SoftBank any more positioned to be a champion of
| ARM quality? I just don't see how it would not be in Nvidia's
| interest to promote a healthy ARM any more or less than any
| other owner. Is the goal for ARM to become independent again?
| Are Nvidia's competitors making ARM graphics cards and SoCs?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| AMD decides it wants to make something like the TX1. Do you
| think that could happen if Big N owned ARM? Would the M1
| series have progressed as quickly knowing the bad blood
| between Apple and Nvidia? Softbank probably isn't the best
| management but its neutral.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yes to both, if it's not competitive they'll use RISC-V
| or another architecture.
| dralley wrote:
| Changing architectures is no small thing regardless of
| how many times Apple has done it.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You're right. I don't even count the new M1 as an
| architecture change, they switched to mobile like how C2D
| came from pentium M, their software market in ARM was
| already mature and it would be significantly harder. At
| the same time, they made Rosetta and switched to x68 and
| ARM around the same time, only ARM won.
| dcow wrote:
| If ARM is truly too important to _the economy_ to be
| owned by a "selfish" business, shouldn 't we just declare
| it public domain and move on? Why can't Nvidia's
| competitors who they'd try to abuse and squeeze go use
| some other ISA? Is ARM really _that good_ , or is it just
| popular?
| [deleted]
| Traster wrote:
| A company doesn't need to be owned by the govenrment
| (which I assume is what you mean) for the government to
| guarantee it is free from being bought out by it's
| competitors. Whatsapp/Instagram were great examples of
| this - where the leader in a sector managed to buy its
| primary competition. As far as I understand it no one can
| credibly claim Instagram's growth has been prioritized
| relative to Facebook - why? Becuase Facebook prioritizes
| facebook.
|
| This isn't a question of "will the economy collapse if X
| buys Y" it's a question of "Which will yeild the best
| outcome, Y being acquired by X or no". The exact
| definition of "best outcome" is where the entire
| battleground though.
|
| It is quite difficult to see who actually could acquire
| ARM though - because of ARM's quite unique position, any
| of the potential acquirers are either customers (Apple,
| Nvidia, Qualcomm) who would be vertically integrated to
| beat out competitors or direct competitors (AMD, Intel).
| I think almost the only people who could buy ARM at this
| point would be TSMC.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| For the market to stay competitive, ARM must stay
| independent - we have enough oligopolies and monopolies
| already
| khuey wrote:
| Why does ARM need to be acquired by someone? If Softbank
| wants to unload it why can't they do an IPO?
| jpetso wrote:
| Mostly because Jensen Huang was willing to pay a nice
| premium over what the market would otherwise offer. There
| are some _cough_ synergies _cough_ that Nvidia could have
| instrumented for higher profits, Jensen had a clear and
| enthusiastic vision about how to get there.
|
| Softbank can still sell ARM to anyone including the
| public market, they just won't get as much money for them
| that way. Presumably.
| kbenson wrote:
| It's not about the economy, it's about competition and
| consumer harm from the lack of it.
|
| As much as it's easy to forget, the free market is
| supposed to be a tool for the benefit of consumers
| (through both price and innovation), and while it's not
| very common, every once in a while the government
| actually looks at that as important and steps in.
| pm90 wrote:
| It hasn't been common recently, under Obama/Trump. The
| Biden Admin FTC seems like it's serious about using
| antitrust laws to prevent the market from being too
| lopsided in favor of a few big players.
| rswail wrote:
| More like Bush II/Obama/Trump. The FTC has been neutered
| for a while, particularly when the rulings about
| decreased competition vs consumer choice were made in the
| mid-2000s.
|
| The reason for competition law is to regulate the free
| market to ensure that consumer choice is not limited by
| the uncontrolled acquisition and merger of suppliers.
|
| The merger of NVidia and ARM is inherently non-
| competitive unless NVidia accepted
| limitations/restrictions on their licensing freedom which
| they are not willing to propose or accept.
|
| That's leaving aside the international and other
| ramifications of a company that is involved in the entire
| vertical of chip production and sale through to retail
| having control of the licensing of the most used ISA and
| other IPRs that are available to its competitors
| throughout that vertical.
| effie wrote:
| It does not need to be. Softbank owning ARM is the status
| quo, the devil we know, and they have a track record of not
| running ARM availability/quality into the ground. They
| don't seem to have motivation to do so. Also, they are
| invested in telecommunications, so having healthy and
| strong ARM position for mobile devices is in their
| interest.
|
| NVIDIA, on the other hand, is suspicious. It is in their
| interest to use and manipulate ARM to release/restrict
| products in such a way that will strengthen their already
| strong market position with accelerators, and push down its
| competitors like AMD and Intel.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Intel and AMD already have a monopoly on x86-x64, and
| both make GPUs and CPUs. Nvidia only makes GPUs.
| Tostino wrote:
| They were terrible at the CPU game with their Tegra line.
| Not sure if that's still going on.
|
| I'd rather Nvidia be kept away from Arm at all costs.
| dcow wrote:
| Or, they realized they're terrible and instead of trying
| to be terrible again they're trying to be not terrible
| this time by acquiring people that actually know what
| they're doing? A good ARM Tegra sounds like a product
| that would benefit the market and thus consumers.
| Grazester wrote:
| Terrible enough to power one of the best selling consoles
| of all time despite its shortcomings.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Intel and AMD
|
| > monopoly
|
| Pick one?
| posguy wrote:
| Nvidia's Jetson series computers and their various SOCs
| (as seen in the Nintendo Switch (Nvidia Tegra), Tesla's
| cars, etc) are not just GPUs.
| __alexs wrote:
| It is not possible for 2 competing companies to have a
| monopoly. Perhaps you suspect some sort of collusion
| between them? Seems unlikely given the kicking Intel have
| had the past few years.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| AMD has barely beaten Intel's Sandy bridge, finally. Not
| enough for me to buy one.
|
| They don't need to collude, they'll "compete" by siting
| on their ass like Intel did, barely being better yet
| jacking up the price, only "Haswell" is renamed "Zen 3".
| effie wrote:
| Wait a second, isn't Ryzen 5xxx much faster in single
| thread than Sandy Bridge ever was? Isn't the available
| number of cores greater as well?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Why does ARM need to be owned by anyone? If they are
| profitable, then there's no need to participate in M&A
| except for polishing C level resumes.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Exactly, last i checked the important part of free market
| was producing products consumers enjoy and generating
| revenue, not corporate scheming and strong-arming
| competitors
| doikor wrote:
| Because Softbank made some really bad investments and
| needs money. (It made 12 billion loss with a 57 billion
| revenue last year)
|
| I guess the other option is to list it on some stock
| exchange.
| [deleted]
| ralph84 wrote:
| > the new Arm would be disincentived to innovate in any area
| that negatively affects Nvidia businesses
|
| If the standard is "they don't compete against each other
| now, but would be disincentivized to compete against each
| other in the future," that could be used as a rationale to
| block literally _every_ merger.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If the standard is "they don't compete against each other
| now, but would be disincentivized to compete against each
| other in the future," that could be used as a rationale to
| block literally _every_ merger.
|
| Try it this way: How many _other_ companies are _likely_ to
| compete with them in the future? If the answer is a
| thousand, the loss of potential competition is not very
| significant. If the answer is less than ten, it is.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I wonder how this standard would have been applied to past
| mergers?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_a
| c...
| nerdponx wrote:
| It should have been.
|
| CVS buying Aetna was a particularly sick joke.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Don't both ARM and NVIDIA design CPUs and GPUs? Seems like
| they compete against each other now.
| impulser_ wrote:
| They compete more than ever. Google, Amazon, FB, Apple are
| all developing AI, CPU and GPU chips that compete directly
| with Nvidia using ARM
|
| You know why? Because working with Nvidia has become such a
| pain in the ass. That it's better just to do it yourself.
|
| They charge you 10x for a gpu that's a little better than
| their consumer GPU but won't sell you the consumer GPU
| because they want you to pay 10x.
|
| Now they will definitely do the same with ARM licensing.
| jjeaff wrote:
| How do they stop companies from buying consumer GPUs? I
| have used some minor firmware tweaks to unlock full
| commercial capabilities out of Nvidia GPUs in the past.
| Perhaps that is against the tos and a large company
| couldn't get away with it like an individual can?
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| If you're Google/Apple/etc, you don't want to be relying
| on some unofficial firmware tweak where the next driver
| update could completely brick your business and force you
| to never update the driver again.
| mroche wrote:
| > Perhaps that is against the tos and a large company
| couldn't get away with it like an individual can?
|
| A while back they made a change to the terms of the
| GeForce driver, barring it from deployment in datacenters
| except for blockchain processing.
|
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-
| updates-ge...
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| Wasn't the ostensible justification here making the cards
| more available for the enthusiast gaming market they were
| (to some extent) intended for?
|
| That's an honest question, I can't fully recall.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> that could be used as a rationale to block literally
| every merger_
|
| Don't you threaten me with a good time. Imagine, companies
| actually forced to collaborate via the ordinary mechanism
| of contract arrangements rather than by assimilation into a
| horrifying megaconglomerate.
| pas wrote:
| A merger is a contract :)
|
| The problem is when some companies form a cartel of sort
| (with our without contracts) anyway. The same way Intel
| was not licensing x86, but since AMD already had it they
| were both incentivized to keep users on x86 and keep arm
| out.
|
| (Of course the nvidia-arm acquisition is more about
| nvidia trying to build an army, oh pardon, portfolio. As
| Intel and AMD already have. They acquired Mellanox, plus
| they have GPUs and CUDA chips. Intel and Apple kind of
| have everything of course. AMD has Radeon, but AMD is
| probably still trying to catch up financially. There's
| also Qualcomm with their snapdragons and modems. And
| there are probably others, but the important thing is
| that snapdragons are arm based. And while selling high-
| end ML and gamer/miner cards is certainly not bad, but
| nvidia is probably trying to expand into a different
| market too, let's say high-volume but older semi tech.)
| kibwen wrote:
| Indeed, but while most contract arrangements need to be
| explicitly re-upped, a merger is permanent; a subsumed
| company cannot un-merge itself, because it no longer
| exists as an independent entity. This fact incentivizes
| both sides to remain competitive, because each side knows
| that they are replaceable if they don't keep costs down
| and quality up relative to their competitors.
| Furthermore, while a cartel is the worst-case scenario
| between two independent companies, cartel-like behavior
| is the _only_ scenario for two merged companies; it 's
| unfathomable that any subsumed company could decide _not_
| to do whatever its new owner tells it to.
| dcow wrote:
| How is SoftBank selling ARM? (And how did Google acquire
| Motorola and then sell them off to Lenovo, for instance?)
| Is there a difference between how they acquired ARM and
| how Nvidia wants to acquire ARM that makes it a merger
| instead of an acquisition or something? I honestly don't
| know and am curious and think there's an interesting
| point here if how I'm interpreting your comment is
| correct.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > that could be used as a rationale to block literally
| every merger.
|
| Even though that would hurt me businesswise I would happily
| sign for that future. And while we're at it: make it
| illegal for one company to hold shares in another. Just
| natural persons holding shares in companies would be fine.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| This is entirely impractical. Companies wouldn't even be
| able own subsidiaries in other countries that can legally
| act as employers or tax payers there.
|
| It would make it impossible for governments to own
| minority stakes in local subsidiaries of global
| corporations to veto some things. It would make it
| impossible to impose capital requirements on subsidiaries
| of big financial institutions. It would be impossible for
| larger competitors to rescue failing peers and keep them
| operating as a going concern.
|
| And it would very likely create the most suffocating
| oligopolies on a national level as well as on an industry
| level as competitors would find it extremely hard to
| enter markets with entrenched incumbents if the only way
| to do it was to build from scratch.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Companies wouldn't even be able own subsidiaries in
| other countries that can legally act as employers or tax
| payers there.
|
| So? That would enable local companies that occupy the
| same niche to do so. All these multinationals are not
| necessarily a good thing.
|
| > It would make it impossible for governments to own
| minority stakes in local subsidiaries of global
| corporations to veto some things.
|
| Only if you believe that those local subsidiaries should
| exist in the first place and that need not be the case.
|
| > It would make it impossible to impose capital
| requirements on subsidiaries of big financial
| institutions.
|
| There would be no such subsidiaries.
|
| > It would be impossible for larger competitors to rescue
| failing peers and keep them operating as a going concern.
|
| These could be structured as asset sales. And a whole lot
| of trickery that causes these peers to fail would go out
| the window.
|
| You are making the mistake of looking at the glass 'half
| empty', when in fact the better way to look at it is what
| we would get for it in return. Capitalism, but with a
| much more direct link between UBO and the companies they
| have a hand in, far less opportunity for nation state
| level wealth to end up concentrated with a very small
| number of people and less opportunity for companies to
| play shell games with their income.
|
| Capitalism, like money is a great invention. But like
| everything else when taken to extremes it is a net
| negative, in moderation it could well be uniformly good.
| But the whole externalization game needs to stop or it
| will harm us greatly.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| So what you're saying is that companies should never
| employ people or put capital to work in more than one
| country or do anything else across borders that requires
| a legal entity that can be locally regulated, taxed and
| held accountable.
|
| All failing companies should be liquidated and sold off
| in bits and pieces, employees fired, contracts and debts
| voided, pension schemes closed.
|
| Entrenched local incumbents could only ever be disrupted
| by individuals starting new companies, funded exclusively
| by other individuals. Presumably, none of these
| individuals would be allowed to own a controlling stake
| in another company, otherwise it would effectively be one
| company.
|
| You would have to convince those wealthy individuals to
| start companies in small countries in spite of the fact
| that the growth potential of their company would be far
| more limited than if they started a company in a big
| country. The only incentive would be local protectionism.
|
| You would also have to make sure that companies don't
| enter into contractual relationships that effectively
| make them act as one (such as McDonald's franchises)
|
| You would effectively hand absolute power to local family
| clans and oligarchs closely intertwined with local
| bureaucrats and politicians. It's a recipe for stagnation
| and corruption.
|
| This is not a glass half full and it's not moderation.
| It's a glass smashed in an act of vandalism and blind
| rage. It's the sort of revolution that countries take a
| century to recover from.
|
| Turning the clocks back a couple of centuries is not
| progressive either.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > So what you're saying is that companies should never
| employ people [in more than one country]
|
| No, that's not what I'm saying, besides that could be
| easily covered through employment law, but we already
| have the concept of internationally operating free-
| lancers.
|
| > or do anything else across borders that requires a
| legal entity that can be locally regulated, taxed and
| held accountable.
|
| Not if that legal entity is going to have a company as
| its shareholders. But there would be no reason why it
| could not exist and have natural persons as its
| shareholders, they could even be the same shareholders as
| in some other company abroad.
|
| You are still arguing about this from the perspective of
| everything that it can't do, which is pretty easy to deal
| with because most of those things it can do. What it
| can't do is to hide the UBOs, which is really the only
| big change. Everything else can easily be worked around.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> You are still arguing about this from the perspective
| of everything that it can't do_
|
| No, I also told you what I think it would do. Create a
| corrupt local oligarchy that is extremely hard to
| disrupt. It would create a mediocre, low productivity,
| stagnant economy shaped by the most extreme form of
| protectionism I have ever heard of.
|
| _> Everything else can easily be worked around._
|
| Your use of the word "easy" for something that would
| require a root and branch redesign of company law, tax
| law, employment law, competition law and scores of other
| laws in every country on earth tells me that you really
| haven't thought this through. Not to speak of changing
| the ownership structure of tens of thousands of existing
| companies.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Most shares are held by companies: either pension fund,
| to create your ETFs, mutual funds, or holding for you in
| normal broker account, or financial institutions, to
| provide liquidity, to put to work the pension fund huge
| inventory (most hedge fund short-selling is done with
| pension funds' dormant inventory using an investment bank
| middle-man), or by companies needing to store money
| somewhere other than cash.
|
| I don't know many individual directly handling shares
| with the exchange and the settlement. How do you avoid
| the enormous volume of trading that happen due to
| retirement account reuse for shorting ? Would you forbid
| that too, removing the incentive for company to be honest
| because nobody can short anymore ?
| Retric wrote:
| Arm and Nvidia are in direct competition today. ARM was 39%
| of the tablet GPU market in 2020 for example.
| paulmd wrote:
| NVIDIA's chips count as part of that ARM marketshare, and
| in fact ARM itself does not manufacture chips at all, nor
| does NVIDIA design CPU ISAs.
| danieldk wrote:
| The grandparent was talking about GPUs. NVIDIA and ARM
| (Mali) both design GPUs.
| comex wrote:
| And they also both design CPUs. ARM just doesn't
| manufacture theirs themselves.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Market power, among other things are the requirement. No
| one cares if mom and pop store buys its neighbour. There's
| a whole specialty called competition law.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Maybe they recognize global nature of this issue since Earth
| has just one Arm, and if it is damaged all people on Earth will
| be disadvantaged, including Americans, who, even though some of
| them don't recognize that, live on Earth not planet America.
| bboreham wrote:
| > Doesn't the US government get more tax revenue
|
| As a frequently observed phenomenon, no. The intellectual
| property and brand which generate revenue for ARM will be held
| in some other country, so profits can be directed there and no
| tax payable in the USA.
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| The strategy is for the rich and powerful to sell out this
| country piece by piece, starting with Hunter Biden's Cobalt
| mine deal: https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-bidens-son-helped-
| china-ge...
|
| Great way to cause a chip crises and kill our car industry, but
| if they keep going at this pace, soon there won't be anything
| left to sell.
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326447-arm-china-seize...
| mminer237 wrote:
| The risk is that Nvidia could produce ARM chips themselves
| without having to pay money while raising the rates on other
| companies. This could create an unfair advantage for Nvidia and
| allow them to charge consumers above-current-market rates on
| ARM chips.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why wouldn't the US gov't want a US company owning ARM? Why
| is the FTC pilling on to block this?_
|
| The U.S. government isn't a monolith. FTC is charged with,
| first and foremost, maintaining our markets.
| romwell wrote:
| Also to add:
|
| Allowing nVidia to become a monopoly would bite the US in the
| ass strategically, as nVidia loses incentive to innovate.
|
| That's how the US, effectively, ended up having no viable
| aircraft when it entered WWI, after being the country that
| invented the thing. (Wright and Curtiss, IIRC, locked the
| market with patents).
|
| Or, more closely, how the US telecom/Internet infrastructure
| is atrocious, despite -- and because of -- the Internet and
| the telephone being invented here. Go figure, Ma Bell wasn't
| the bees knees.
|
| Strategically, the US needs someone to keep nVidia up on
| their toes. Innovation cuts into profit margins when you have
| a monopoly.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Ma Bell made some great innovations here and started a lot
| of the computers tech, after it was destroyed the baby
| bells combined again, Cingular has exclusive rights to
| iPhone at a time.
|
| Nvidia is reasltically already a monopoly with CUDA. They
| don't need to innovate and they force universities to use
| their more expensive GPUs.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > They don't need to innovate
|
| They're constantly innovating, and have monthly software
| releases. Don't blame NVIDIA because AMD can't offer a
| solid enterprise offering that is attractive to
| customers.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They don't need to for CUDA. I didn't say they didn't.
| I'd love more open ARM devices like Jetson.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Cingular has exclusive rights to iPhone at a time_
|
| But not the other baby bells, which is the point. Also,
| Apple went to Cingular after being rebuffed by Verizon.
| (Apple wanted no crapware. Verizon said no.) Competition
| working.
| romwell wrote:
| Is your point that monopolies aren't bad, or that anti-
| monopoly laws are useless?
|
| Because both of these are provably false.
|
| As is that nVidia is already a monopoly.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Natural monopolies aren't bad, don't last long and they
| fall when it's leapfrogged, like Kodak when digital came.
| The USPS is an unnatural monopoly which stifles any
| carrier and serves mostly to distribute spam.
|
| Anti monopoly laws are useless, x86-64 is a duopoly, and
| any monopoly laws aren't able to stop Amazon and their
| vertical intergration, because the argument is that eBay
| and other sites exist. Network oligarchs collaborate to
| fix prices.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Natural monopolies aren't bad, don't last long and they
| fall when it's leapfrogged"
|
| Natural monopolies are things like electric power grid
| and water supply and train and roads, they last forever
| precisely because they are natural and they were never
| leapfrogged in history. 'Natural" part stands for
| nessesary inveatment in infrastructure being redundant
| and causing zero-sum game.
|
| Kodak wasn't much of a monopoly and certainly wasn't a
| natural one
|
| Read up on how antitrust actually works, your assesment
| of USPS is equally inaccurate
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You listed infrastructure, I'm referring to examples such
| as standard oil, which sold oil the cheapest.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That's not a natural monopoly
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| > The USPS is an unnatural monopoly which stifles any
| carrier
|
| The USPS is required to deliver to everyone, even when it
| doesn't make monetary sense to do so. They are an
| important piece of US infrastructure.
|
| They are also incredibly constrained by legislation. They
| aren't allowed to just raise prices as needed.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| No it's not. You can do it digitally for official
| documents, and they mostly deliver spam, and the cost is
| in your taxes. I'd rather not have them.
| freemint wrote:
| There are places where it delivers where there is no
| internet.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| At what cost? What benefit is sending non refusable spam
| to the ends of the US to anyone besides spammers? You
| don't accept spam email do you? Would you support it if
| it physically existed and your taxes paid for it,
| including costly methods like sending it to the middle of
| nowhere?
| freemint wrote:
| If governments primary means of working is paper paper
| must be able to be delivered to every household.
| romwell wrote:
| Well we kinda want some people to _live_ in the middle of
| nowhere, because we want to eat and _somewhere_ isn 't
| where farmland is, apparently.
|
| Also we kinda want to keep territories like Alaska
| inhabited because geopolitics.
|
| And we kinda want the people living in those places to be
| able to get their official government documents (driver
| licenses, court notices, etc).
|
| Then there's this idea of _voting by mail_ , which isn't
| something that should be a _privilege_ , but that's too
| complex for our discussion.
|
| To translate _one_ of the reasons for USPS into words you
| may understand: you know how two-factor authentication
| requires that second factor? The USPS provides a means
| for the gov to get that second factor into the hands of
| the people.
|
| A third party would be a man-in-the-middle.
|
| So consiser USPS a part of the government's 2FA
| infrastructure and messaging system with SLA and proof of
| delivery.
|
| That, unlike your company's authentication
| infrastructure, happens to _pay for itself_.
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| Last time I checked there was no official government ISP
| the was required to provide some baseline of service to
| every physical address in the country at a reasonable
| price. And to keep it equivalent you'd only pay for
| bandwidth used - no flat fee for the hookup itself. The
| internet is not (yet) a replacement for what the USPS
| actually is.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| USPS doesn't serve everywhere either. Where do you think
| that inefficiency is paid for? Why are taxes subsidizing
| spammers that you can't even refuse? What if you only had
| government email that was full of spam? What if it was
| physical spam that taxes pays for that follows victims
| around the US with no way to stop it? Is that what you
| support?
| batty_alex wrote:
| The USPS is self-funded by those periodicals. Your taxes
| don't go to USPS
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal
| -se...
|
| > The agency is burdened by hundreds of billions of
| dollars in debt and falling revenue, and Congress and the
| White House have signaled an unwillingness to grant more
| funding without major restructuring, lawmakers say.
|
| > The law envisioned the Postal Service as a self-
| sustaining agency whose revenue could cover the expenses
| associated with an aging workforce involved in a physical
| occupation: delivering packages and parcels to every
| address in the country.
|
| > Not even two decades later, it can't. The Postal
| Service has racked up $160.9 billion in debt from what's
| owed prepaying retiree benefits. On top of that, it has
| many years' worth of operating deficits, as its top
| revenue generators no longer covered the costs of
| delivering the mail.
|
| Then why do they need bailouts? Are these bailouts self
| funding? What money gave them that credit when they were
| long unsustainable? This is an unnatural monopoly that
| doesn't allow competitors and also is a failure who
| mostly delivers worthless physical spam you cannot
| escape.
| romwell wrote:
| Why? Did you ever read what your wrote?
|
| Because unlike _any other company or agency_ , they are
| required to _prepay retiree benefits_.
|
| Anyway, you might be surprised to hear that our Army and
| Navy aren't self-sustaining. Obviously, we should cut
| their funding and see how they manage to make their nukes
| pay for themselves. /s
| p1necone wrote:
| I wish we could run experiments on this sort of thing and
| compare. I want to know how an alternative "no IP law" USA
| would have developed. Or even one that just didn't grant
| patents as freely.
|
| My totally uninformed opinion is that basically the only IP
| law that's worth a damn is trademarks (which should
| absolutely be very strongly enforced. It's crucially
| important that consumers know who they're buying from for
| the market to work properly), and _maybe_ copyright on
| /entertainment/ focused creative works for the life of the
| author and no longer.
| rswail wrote:
| Look at the US during the 1800s freely "borrowing" stuff
| from the UK, which was then the world leader in IP
| development.
|
| All "developing" nations don't (and shouldn't) GAF about
| IPRs during that phase in their development. Notice that
| China didn't GAF for years, but does now, both from a
| control POV and from a competition POV.
|
| Countries only worry about IPRs when they have sufficient
| IP development to have something to sell.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Realistically, with the cost of developing this stuff only
| going up, only monopolies or duopolies are really going to
| exist at the cutting edge. That's the trend and I don't
| really see a way of reversing it.
| pm90 wrote:
| Cost of developing what? New ISAs? Chip Designs?
| gofigure wrote:
| Politically, 'big tech' is on the defensive and this is one way
| for FTC to show some teeth.
|
| That being said, nVidia is currently not playing in ARM's
| space, so it's hard to argue that this acquisition will harm US
| consumers or raise prices for them. Hence my feeling is that
| this is politically motivated, at least to some extent.
|
| Also, we (the US) are entering a period of intense competition
| with China that may last decades and may even include acts of
| war. Semiconductors are a key area of competition. More US
| control of key semiconductor assets is in the US interest.
| However to be totally fair that doesn't typically concern anti-
| trust law. But it should concern the current administration and
| drive some of these decisions about where to focus. It would be
| very different if this was about social networks and funny cat
| gifs.
| tw04 wrote:
| > That being said, nVidia is currently not playing in ARM's
| space, so it's hard to argue that this acquisition will harm
| US consumers or raise prices for them. Hence my feeling is
| that this is politically motivated, at least to some extent.
|
| Huh? They currently use arm designs in the Nintendo switch
| and their own shield line. They also utilize them in their
| mellanox Ethernet adapters and network switches. What makes
| you believe that won't give them a reason to increase prices
| for competitors that also use ARM chips, if not outright
| refuse to grant them a license?
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| > nVidia is currently not playing in ARM's space
|
| Look who ARM licenses to and what sort of products those
| clients manufacture. They are in direct competition right now
| in a number of areas.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Because it has an extremely HIGH probability of Nvidia being
| hostile and blocking other companies from getting new or
| relicensing old licenses. Nvidia is big enough and powerful
| enough as it is whatever country it is based out of. ARM is
| much better placed as being independent in the market and not
| owned by an 800lb gorilla like nvidia.
| buu700 wrote:
| That was my exact reaction. I'm not sure how much I like Nvidia
| acquiring Arm, but on some level as an American my instinct is
| to encourage it.
|
| If it is the FTC's actual position that the deal would harm
| consumers or the industry as a whole, it's certainly admirable
| that they would ostensibly prioritize that over US strategic
| interests.
|
| This makes me wonder if their analysis shows that the merger
| would do sufficient harm within the industry as to actually run
| counter to US interests. If ARM is shaping up to become a
| pillar of the Western world/economy while China and its sphere
| of influence consolidate around RISC-V, then anything that
| harms Arm's market position is also a geopolitical risk to the
| West. The US government pushing for such a merger, at a time
| when China is investing heavily in semiconductor manufacturing
| capabilities while eyeing a conquest of Taiwan/TSMC, would
| therefore be shooting itself in the foot. Better to grow the
| pie than risk blowing it up for a slightly larger slice.
| not2b wrote:
| I don't think it's the US strategic interest for Nvidia to
| own ARM. International corporations don't have any particular
| loyalty to the country where their corporate HQ is located,
| and fewer semiconductor companies just mean higher prices and
| fewer choices. Also the acquisition would accelerate movement
| by Nvidia's competitors away from ARM. The only pie that is
| grown by merging two successful companies is the wealth of
| the stockholders, everyone else is worse off.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "then anything that harms Arm's market position is also a
| geopolitical risk to the West"
|
| This is some seriously flawed thinking extremely convenient
| for corporate interests. Mixing up marlets with national
| security leads to the kind of atrocities that make
| totalitarian states proud.
|
| "Coca-Cola Co.'s Colombian bottlers are working with death
| squads to kill, threaten and intimidate plant workers,"
| mywittyname wrote:
| Their argument seems to largely be that ARM does not produce
| chips directly, but instead licenses designs to other firms
| using a "neutral, open licensing approach." They feel that this
| will stop should Nvidia acquire ARM.
|
| The also FTC contends that ARM induces competitive behavior in
| Nvidia. And a merger would stifle that competition.
|
| Additionally, and probably most importantly, the FTC contends
| that Nvidia's competition shares sensitive information with
| ARM. And part of what Nvidia is looking for with this
| acquisition is this information. I suspect this is the true
| reason behind the lawsuit; there's probably a good bit of
| industry support behind it.
|
| Personally, I'd rather ARM be owned by a massive American firm.
| And out of all the American firms who would be interested in
| ARM, Nvidia is the most likely to continue to innovate, rather
| than merely engage in rent seeking behavior.
| rswail wrote:
| Why would you want ARM owned by a "massive" American firm. Is
| there one that you would trust to keep the evolution of ARM
| IP at the same rate, while also offering IPRs (ie licensing
| etc) in a way that continues to encourage innovation in the
| use and evolution of that IP?
|
| Massive firms are not an inherent Good Thing. There are some
| benefits due to their ability to invest, but there are also
| multiple downsides to conglomerates, particularly in
| strategically vital industries and areas.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Well, it's not that I _want_ it owned by a massive firm,
| but the fact is that only an extremely large company would
| be in a position to buy it. I was primarily pointing out
| that, I 'd personally favor it being owned by an _American_
| company, because the most obvious alternative is a Chinese
| one. I can 't think of many British/European technology
| companies who could afford ARM and could justify the price
| premium.
|
| The alternative would be to go public again. But I think
| the temptation is too great, and some massive company would
| take it over. ARM is the kind of company which is much more
| valuable as a part of a conglomerate than it is as an
| independent company.
| garmaine wrote:
| > Doesn't the US government get more tax revenue if Nvidia
| makes some extra dough charging royalties for that IP? I'm
| confused.
|
| Maximizing tax revenues is not the FTC's job.
| wahern wrote:
| > Strategically, why wouldn't the US gov't want a US company
| owning ARM
|
| It's worth noting ARM Ltd is a British company currently owned
| by a Japanese company. The U.K. and Japan are two of the
| closest, if not the closest, defense and industrial partners
| the U.S. enjoys. And unlike many U.S. allies, they're more-or-
| less close by choice. IOW, there's a deep reservoir of trust
| across the spectrum--military, legal, political. Both the U.K.
| and Japan tend to exercise their independence far more freely
| than other U.S. allies precisely because of the mutual respect
| afforded among the three. There's much less tension and
| apprehension among those three than as between, say, the U.S.
| and France. A critical supplier like ARM being in the hands of
| the U.K. and/or Japan is good enough from the perspective of
| the U.S., absent some extraordinary complicating context.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| You dont think this had anything to do with it then? ;-)
|
| "When Britain Nuked America....Twice!"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wx6npt421c
|
| And this?
|
| "U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to
| Space Force general (thedrive.com)"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29402923
|
| I think its a good decision because just being dominated by
| US tech companies can be demoralising, besides no one has a
| monopoly on ideas or innovation which all develops at
| different rates.
|
| And if ARM did get bought up, would this also drive other
| countries towards China who are developing their own CPU's?
| "How China plans to lead the computer chip industry"
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50287485
|
| From a US Military perspective, you don't want to pee off
| your military assets/partners do you?
| chrisjc wrote:
| Wow, fascinating video.
| shrewduser wrote:
| how many US companies rely on ARM being a neutral party though?
|
| while you might win a little on one side of the ledger how much
| would you lose on the other?
| emodendroket wrote:
| People have gotten really into the idea of antitrust without
| really thinking about what problems "trust-busting" was meant
| to address or whether it's relevant to the ones they have now.
| Well, I guess half-baked nostalgia is all the rage these days.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Looking at your other replies your argument seems to boil
| down to "reasearch needs all the money in the world,
| consolidation helps with money", but don't really address
| where you think that money will come from, and for what value
| delivered.
|
| The main concern voiced here is that Nvidia-Arm could get
| away will less research while earning more money.
|
| That's basically what happened when Wintel was at peak and
| there was no viable alternative to Intel chips. They didn't
| bring incredible innovation from the ungodly amount of money
| they gained; they just crushed all their other competitors
| through various means, got sued, and still made the field
| plateau for a decade or so before we saw real innovation.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Isn't it the actual state of play though? At more and more
| levels there are only one or two players -- e.g., ASML,
| Samsung/TSMC, AMD/Intel, etc. There are lots of others
| around but they've written off cutting-edge business.
| That's even though there are a number of exciting
| developments in hardware going on. I just think the barrier
| to entry has grown so large that it's difficult to avoid.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Right now, regarding CPUs we have:
|
| - Intel
|
| - AMD
|
| - Apple
|
| - Qualcomm
|
| Any of them is pushing the enveloppe in some way or form,
| I'd argue they are "cutting-edge"
| theduder99 wrote:
| anything that would improve the US this admin does the opposite
| 90% of the time. look at the remain in mexico thing which was
| done away with and now after the epic border fail is going to
| be stood up again.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| You're not paying attention if you think Nvidia is just a
| "graphics company". As a chip supplier they are known to be
| aggressive to the point of bullying and their negotiations tend
| towards the extortion end of the business spectrum.
|
| I like Nvidia (because I don't have to work with them), but I
| don't think they are the right steward for ARM in any way.
| dcow wrote:
| So the headline should read: Nvidia too much of an asshole to
| own ARM? Let's update our laws too. I'm serious, if we don't
| want companies to be assholes then we'd need to regulate how
| they negotiate and a lot of other things.
| rswail wrote:
| Companies are sociopaths by definition. You can't stop them
| being assholes, what you can do is regulate their asshole-
| ness so that it minimizes that effect on consumers and
| markets in general.
|
| "Free trade" and "Free markets" has never meant "totally
| unregulated".
|
| That's completely flawed reasoning that ignores the actual
| purpose of those things, which is to encourage
| increased/better supply of products and services to
| consumers at the best possible price.
| effie wrote:
| Caring only about laws and not about reputation of being a
| good ecosystem partner to others is a recipe for others to
| look elsewhere. NVIDIA has a really bad rep due to its
| arrogant behaviour towards customers and other companies
| (Linux project, Apple). Maybe this ARM drawn out saga is
| just karma coming back from that.
| shrewduser wrote:
| Nvidia has burned its bridges with a lot of companies
| over the years (Microsoft comes to mind, i'm pretty sure
| they will never use an nvidia chip inside an xbox ever
| again)
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Apple too. There's a reason it was, in recent memory,
| intel embedded graphics or an AMD mobile GPU in the
| portables.
|
| Not going to be a thing going forward, of course. The M1
| (next seems to be M3 at 3nm ?) will handle the GPU from
| here on out
| cwizou wrote:
| For many different reasons too ! Some were a bit
| petty/misguided :
|
| - Microsoft was mostly contractual on the Xbox, Nvidia
| didn't want to lower the price of the chips over the
| lifespan of the 1st Xbox which was a huge no-no. And some
| technical people also had a terrible experience (some
| people in the DirectX team had strong thoughts about
| working with Nvidia).
|
| - Sony was mostly about terrible tech support and not
| wanting to share enough technical details which hampered
| AAA devs a whole lot, to the point most ended up using
| the SPUs in very creative (and technically fascinating)
| ways to compensate (the GTA V engine on PS3 was truly
| impressive in that regard).
|
| - There were some minor (but acrimonious) back and forth
| with Apple over a failing gen of GPUs (G80s if memory
| serves), but the large fallout came for the same reason
| as for the rest of the mobile industry : the Kepler
| licensing initiative.
|
| Long story short, Nvidia tried to assert patents on
| mobile GPU (ala Microsoft on Android, as a way to "sell"
| their exit of the mobile market to investors). They then
| sued Samsung and Qualcomm [1]. Samsung countersued
| Nvidia, which had to settle as Samsung was close to
| winning a ban on imports from some Nvidia products [2].
| Many of the patents Nvidia tried to assert were thrown
| out and they had a terrible legal time.
|
| The damage that ill thought strategy did to Nvidia is
| hard to measure but there's not a single mobile company
| that wanted that acquisition to go forward and many are
| probably quite relieved after this.
|
| [1] : https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-launches-
| patent-suit-ag... [2] :
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-
| idUSK...
| InTheArena wrote:
| Rule of law still matters. It's interesting to see how
| differently ARM is treated versus ARM China.
| Bud wrote:
| It's shocking how just four years of Trumpism have made it
| difficult for Americans to even _imagine_ a US government agency
| actually doing its job, as it was intended to do.
|
| We now just automatically jump to assuming "fuck everything,
| except making more money and Mercuh".
|
| Sad.
| krapp wrote:
| > It's shocking how just four years of Trumpism have made it
| difficult for Americans to even imagine a US government agency
| actually doing its job, as it was intended to do.
|
| It wasn't just four years of Trumpism. Trumpism was simply the
| fruition of _decades_ of successful neoliberal anti-government
| propaganda, primarily from the Republicans, going back at least
| as far as Reagan saying "Government is not the solution to our
| problem, government is the problem." What Trumpism added was
| mainstreaming conspiracy theory on top of the general
| disposition that government should be starved until it was weak
| enough to be drowned in the bathtub. So now the Libertarians
| are talking about limited government _and_ how Fauci created
| COVID for the Illuminati.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar?
| Discussion quality takes a sharp step down with posts like
| this. Please make your substantive points without doing that.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29423448.
| genousti wrote:
| Its not Trump that jailed chelsea manning and wage war against
| assange. Wake up
| lr1970 wrote:
| Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, AMD probably lobbying FTC against this
| deal.
| tempfs wrote:
| Finally, someone gets it. There is a lot of other well
| intended, intellectually driven arguments and opinions in this
| thread, but I am afraid that the people actually making the
| calls here are mostly likely being guided by their own self
| interests.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Usually I'd agree, but we're likely wrong on this one. I
| recommend this New Yorker piece detailing the new FTC [0].
|
| [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-
| bat...
| dcow wrote:
| No no, this is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. I
| don't see any way this is strictly _substantially_ bad for
| consumers or reduces competition in a way that antitrust law
| would apply, and I don 't see any way this is at all bad for
| the US strategically. So the FTC is issuing a complaint in
| response to ..something.. that goes against the interest of
| our own government and has nothing to do with consumers (hell
| I'd love to see an Nvidia N2 SoC that competes with the Apple
| M1). Bingo, it's _other big tech firms lobbying_. These other
| big tech firms most certainly have y 'alls interest at heart
| and are just looking out for you, small fry. Give me a break!
| yehaaa wrote:
| Nothing is stopping Nvidia from creating a N2 SoC that
| competes with the Apple M1. They don't need to own ARM to
| do that. They can even create their own SOC with a Nvidia
| GPU.
| max_ wrote:
| The point is that this was arbitrary use of power.
|
| Not if the intention was good or bad.
|
| [0]: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/a
| rbitra...
| kotxig wrote:
| It's easier that the US blocks it for diplomatic reasons than the
| UK. The UK will almost certainly block it if the US doesn't. It
| could be interpreted as a snub if the UK interferes with the
| deal, so the US has first dibs on blocking the merger.
| [deleted]
| kwere wrote:
| is softbank (ARM owner) in need of cash?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I wonder how much a business' valuation is determined by sale
| potential. If you have a business that is worth a lot, and yet
| nobody can or will buy it, how much is it really worth?
|
| Obviously it's still worth something, it's just that the
| valuation becomes really fuzzy except for the assets.
| ttt333 wrote:
| Formerly worked in Investment banking: it is a huge huge
| determinant of value.
|
| Particularly for a lower-dividend, higher growth company like
| Nvidia, the vast majority of the present value comes from the
| terminal value (what someone else will pay you for it when
| you're done holding the investment), made even more extreme
| by low interest rates.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Couldn't it transform into a high-dividend company?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Couldn 't it transform into a high-dividend company?_
|
| This is cigarette-butt investing. It ignores terminal
| value. If the terminal value is already close to zero,
| it's the right move, an orderly wind-down and re-
| allocation of assets. If there _is_ terminal value, it 's
| a pillaging. Cases like these, where the terminal value
| starts looking more theoretical than practical, are how
| those incentives shift.
| rswail wrote:
| What happens in the situation where there isn't a
| "terminal" point for a company?
|
| Coca-Cola has no reason to "terminate" itself, so why
| shouldn't it distribute profit excess to its operating
| requirements back to shareholders?
| ttt333 wrote:
| The terminal point doesn't necessarily have to apply for
| the company, or even the financial asset based on the
| company.
|
| There is an simple model in finance [1] that collapses an
| infinitely growing stream of cash flows into a finite
| present value. So to your example of coca-cola, even if
| you assume they will exist and distribute growing profits
| forever, you can still find a terminal value.
|
| [1]: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/know
| ledge/va...
| rodmena wrote:
| A big win for consumers.
| shmerl wrote:
| Good. Nvidia is a pretty lock-in oriented and anti-competitive
| company in general. So them getting ARM would have been bad.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Any ARM hardware that isn't? Jetson was way more open compared
| to all other ARM hardware I know of.
| shmerl wrote:
| Mots are pretty bad I guess. For example Qualcomm is
| horrible.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I'm excited for project mainline from google, maybe they
| can make a good generic kernel for all ARM processors.
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/android-project-mainline-
| modu...
| shmerl wrote:
| An improvement for sure if they'll require upstreaming
| drivers (as in making them FOSS), because Android is
| causing a rift as long as drivers have blobs due to
| bionic vs glibc.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If I was working for Qualcomm... I would say that the FTC suing
| right now is almost maliciously late.
|
| Edit: So much so, that I would almost start my defense with
| claiming that the FTC's charges are in bad-faith.
| barbacoa wrote:
| It's surprising the US gov would take action to stop this. One
| one hand yes, this isn't great for the industry. But on the other
| it would mean that ARM will become an American owned company
| which gives the US government enormous new tech war leverage
| against China.
| htrp wrote:
| The arm china saga is already absolutely insane.....
| bogwog wrote:
| I wonder if vague fears about China are part of the reason the
| FTC has been sitting on their ass doing nothing about the tech
| industry for the past decade+?
|
| It would be ironic if true, because their failure to intervene
| has hurt America's ability to innovate and created
| opportunities for China.
| e40 wrote:
| Anyone know what rights Apple has to ARM? Do they have a
| license that pretty much allows them to do anything?
| prewett wrote:
| The are one of 15 companies that has an architectural
| license, which is the most flexible type of license. I don't
| think the details of the license are public (not even all 15
| of the licensees are known). They were also an initial
| investor in ARM, so I suppose it is conceivable that they
| still own a small portion of it, together with SoftBank,
| although that seems unlikely.
| zarzavat wrote:
| It seems extremely unlikely that the UK will allow this deal
| anyway so it is somewhat moot what the FTC does.
|
| The original ARM sale to Softbank was made while everybody was
| distracted by Brexit, and is regarded as somewhat of an
| embarrassment. However Softbank appears to have played
| themselves because any attempt to sell ARM to a non-British
| owner will likely be denied as politically unacceptable.
| starfallg wrote:
| >However Softbank appears to have played themselves because
| any attempt to sell ARM to a non-British owner will likely be
| denied as politically unacceptable.
|
| Softbank gets to keep a cool $1.25 billion in cash from
| Nvidia if the deal falls through. It's standard M&A practice
| and so a win-win situation for them.
| Qub3d wrote:
| Is it that general? Its one thing if a deal fails because a
| party gets cold feet, or can't reach an agreement. Its
| another if the parties are all agreed and ready and a
| regulator steps in, isn't it?
| fomine3 wrote:
| The worst thing Softbank did is selling Arm China stock to
| China local. This is serious failure for western world.
| nus07 wrote:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-bat...
|
| A rather long read but it's starting to make sense .
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Came here to post the same thing. Very good read.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| I must signal my approval of this piece. They have a great
| audio narration available for free as well. I'll be following
| this new FTC closely.
| COGlory wrote:
| The FTC mentioned chips in vehicles multiple times.
|
| >The FTC's complaint alleges that the combined firm would have
| the means and incentive to stifle innovative next-generation
| technologies, including those used to run datacenters and driver-
| assistance systems in cars.
|
| and here:
|
| >According to the complaint, the acquisition will harm
| competition in three worldwide markets in which Nvidia competes
| using Arm-based products:
|
| >High-Level Advanced Driver Assistance Systems for passenger
| cars. These systems offer computer-assisted driving functions,
| such as automated lane changing, lane keeping, highway entrance
| and exit, and collision prevention;
|
| I wonder if this action is related to the automotive chip
| shortage concerns in any way.
| rswail wrote:
| Unlikely, it's more that the vehicle manufacturers would be
| affected directly if these things became less competitive.
| Vehicle manufacturers are essentially component assemblers that
| buy their components at various levels of assembly from 3rd
| party suppliers.
|
| It also is a major US industry so that enables the FTC to
| describe in the court cases the impact on competition outside
| of the specific chip design/manufacture industry.
| NortySpock wrote:
| The reason to block the merger is pretty straightforward:
|
| 1) Nvidia designs expensive chips and sells them by the millions.
| [1]
|
| 2) ARM designs cheap chips and sells them by the _billions_. [2]
|
| 3) Nvidia's "normal" product departments are incentivized to
| prevent ARM from competing with Nvidia's expensive chips, in
| various ways. This would hinder ARM's innovation and growth
| opportunities vs being independent.
|
| I am glad to see this motion to block the merger, for the sake of
| a competitive market for CPUs, GPUs, etc.
|
| [1] https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-hits-new-highs-in-
| gpu-...
|
| [2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/arm-6-7-billion-chips-
| per-...
| Apofis wrote:
| Arm is British, the FTC and Nvidia are American. Can someone
| that's not a technocrat explain to me the problem here?
| max_ wrote:
| Why don't we have newer chip companies?
|
| If barrier of entry is the issue isn't that what people should
| be striving for?
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Looking at GPU cost and availability, I agree with you.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Many companies licensed ARM ISA. If Nvidia wants to hinder
| competition by only licensing them low performance cores, isn't
| it still possible for them to design their own cores?
| masklinn wrote:
| > isn't it still possible for them to design their own cores?
|
| Most companies license the cores, so they can build ARM-
| designed cores and integrate those into an SoC.
|
| In order to design your own core, you need to license the ISA
| itself, and that's a wholly different kettle of fishes: there
| are only about a dozen architectural licensees, and not all
| of them license both 32 and 64b ISAs.
| dcow wrote:
| ARM doesn't _sell_ chips. They license the instruction set. Ask
| Apple or Qualcomm if the final ARM SOCs they build and sell are
| cheap...
| scotty79 wrote:
| They are responsible through licensing for huge number of
| cheap chips on the market. It really doesn't matter they
| don't sell it themselves. If they stop licensing it would
| have the same effect as if they werse selling them directly
| and they stopped selling.
| irrational wrote:
| Wouldn't the effect be Apple and others creating a new (and
| hopefully better) replacement for ARM?
| ivirshup wrote:
| "just create a new instruction set"?
|
| It's taken the better part of a decade for workable
| alternatives to CUDA to emerge.
| techdragon wrote:
| I hope you're not calling ROCm a workable alternative...
|
| it's really not close. I love that they are trying, I
| just honestly feel they need to be trying with 10 times
| as much funding/resources behind them.
|
| Or do you mean Apple's Metal Compute? useful only with
| inconvenient (at scale) Apple hardware.
|
| If workable CUDA alternatives were really here, I feel
| people would be talking about them more given how large
| the hate is for Nvidia on multi fronts from multiple
| different user groups.
| ivirshup wrote:
| I was, but mostly through XLA or Vulkan layers. Also, I'd
| define workable as a pretty low bar.
| techdragon wrote:
| That's fair, for me it never worked with any of the
| hardware or software I wanted it to and I'm not enough of
| a GPU expert to really fix that myself, so for me and
| many others I found with similar problems it definitely
| has yet to become a workable solution, but I was probably
| a bit harsh if I came across like I thought it didn't
| work at all, I've seen it demoed and I know it works, but
| for such a restrictive set of hardware and software that
| Ive never seen it in use myself outside of
| demonstrations.
|
| As for Vulkan, I tend to think of CUDA at the driver
| level given how closely coupled it is to Nvidia's
| hardware. So I wasn't really thinking about broader cross
| compatible APIs like Vulkan which tend to get implemented
| on top of the drivers providing low level access like
| CUDA gives... but with the exception of Apple (because we
| know they will never change their mind) I'm hoping the
| broader industry gets behind Vulkan compute shaders
| enough we finally get something that delivers on the
| promises made when the OpenCL effort began. I want clean
| understandable abstractions over the top of all the
| different SIMD and MIMD capabilities we have these days
| it doesn't have to magically compile my code down to FPGA
| hardware but how about actually being able to get the
| best matrix multiplication performance out of both my CPU
| or GPU or both if I have a CPU with the right kind of
| integrated GPU that they can efficiently enough share
| memory and both work together without slowing each other
| down when working on an embarrassingly parallel matrix
| multiplication task. Is this really too much to ask of
| software in an an era that gives us near magical JIT
| performance in multiple languages, and manages to build
| cross compile/transpilation tools that can convert entire
| assembly code bases into JavaScript and all the other
| nice things we have as software developers... it never
| felt like too much to me but the fate of OpenCL appears
| to disagree.
| torginus wrote:
| I never understood the dominance of CUDA. I did GPGPU
| more than half a decade ago, and I feel like stuff has
| hardly changed. There are thread groups, group shared
| variables, global, and group shared atomics etc.
| Underneath, all GPUs run the same-ish wide SIMD
| architecture, so I'm pretty sure most stuff is semi-
| performance portable. DirectCompute, OpenCL and CUDA and
| probably all the others expose this same programming
| model. Why is CUDA so dominant?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Why is CUDA so dominant?_
|
| nvidia decided they wanted to be the market leader, and
| spent $$$$ developing tools, training materials, and
| libraries (like cuDNN) which they gave away for free.
|
| Other GPU vendors chose not to outspend them.
| ivirshup wrote:
| They also hire software engineers to integrate CUDA into
| open source projects. On the one hand, those projects can
| now take advantage of advances in hardware. On the other,
| users will have to buy NVIDIA to use it, so how open is
| it? Also NVIDIA will not provide any help with CI, so
| those costs are borne by the project - or the code isn't
| tested.
| irrational wrote:
| By that logic there will never again be another workable
| alternative. Why not start now rather than wait a few
| decades?
| vxNsr wrote:
| It's likely that there are many new designs being spun up
| everyday by various people, but that doesn't mean that we
| want to remove competition from the market.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Innovation is not an on-off switch. Market forces create
| an incentive to _attempt_ to innovate, but they don 't
| magically make innovation happen.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| There's nothing that prevents you from doing that as it
| stands.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Which alternative? When it comes to ML there is no
| alternative to CUDA.
| ivirshup wrote:
| JAX/ XLA seem quite popular, especially since you can use
| them in Colab on TPUs. IIRC, there are people who have
| managed get jax compiled with ROCm support.
|
| Tensorflow lets you deploy to quite a few backends.
|
| oneAPI support in GPUArrays.jl seems to be coming along.
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's the idea behind all the revolutions, that good
| things will spontaneously come after we destroy something
| we have. They rarely do.
|
| It's better to create a better thing first, even
| unfairly, and let it outcompete the incumbent.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| ARM is hardly a "good thing". These things rise and fall
| almost purely by chance since the differences between
| ISAs are menial at best. If the stars had aligned
| differently this could very well have been a SuperH
| world. Or a MIPS world.
| scotty79 wrote:
| ARM singlehandedly made the smartphone happen. No other
| leading company had anything remotely similar in terms of
| power draw. Many still don't.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| This is ridiculous. ARM was already pretty much well-
| settled-in in the PDA way before the smartphone, so it
| definitely didn't "single-handedly made it happen". And
| during the early PDA era, when they got settled in that
| market, it most certainly did not win due to "low power
| draw". Back in the day where SH(-3) PDAs where still a
| thing, the battery life was measured in days out of 2 AAA
| cells (even for ARM devices). That was destroyed due to
| forced backlight usage in most screen techs rather than
| any change in ISA.
|
| Today MIPS is still used in network devices, SH is still
| used in things like optical drives, SPARC is still used
| on some servers, x86 is still used on many servers and
| desktops and mobile devices, and so on and so forth. Do
| you think that there is something technical that warrants
| the choice of these architectures for their usecases ? Do
| you think that there is something in SH that makes it a
| better ISA particularly for CD-ROM drives ? Or that there
| is something in SH that made it a better ISA for some
| videogame console generations, then something changed and
| the better ISA was PPC, then ARM, then x86 again ?
|
| It's mostly arbitrary marketing decisions, which
| manufacturer happened to be doing well that day, and some
| "historical reasons"/network effects which define these
| choices. There's very little difference at this
| ISA/architectural level, and a lot in the actual design
| and manufacturing level, where ARM is not doing poorly
| but hardly shines. Apple, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, even
| nVidia all do better than ARM there.
|
| If we the wind had blown even slightly differently some
| day 20 years ago, we may very well be using anything
| else, even say Itanium in our smartphones. And before you
| complain that Itanium/EPIC are hardly suited for low
| power, remember that Transmeta made their money selling
| _low-power_ VLIW processors emulating x86 instructions.
| And actually they were lower power than their x86
| competition those days. Perhaps Torvalds would still be
| there rather than making Linux...
| scotty79 wrote:
| Do many smartphones run on Intel, AMD or Nvidia chips?
|
| Qualcomm makes ARM chips for phones.
| zibzab wrote:
| Actually, it's kind of the other way around.
|
| When Nokia and Ericsson switched to ARM the company was
| probably saved from bankruptcy.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There were many other CPUs with the same or lower power
| draw.
|
| The advantage of ARM has always been the cost. For given
| requirements of performance and power draw, you could
| find much cheaper ARM CPUs than the existing
| alternatives.
|
| This happened because there were many competing ARM CPU
| vendors.
|
| Motorola could give you a PowerPC CPU with the same or
| better performance and power draw, but they were not
| willing to lower their prices, falsely believing that
| there are no alternatives.
|
| Therefore everybody abandoned the other CPU architectures
| and switched to the cheaper ARM solutions.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'm sure many companies could do low power performant and
| cheap chips when high resolution small screens, lithium
| batteries and large capacitive touch surfaces matured
| enough to be harvested.
|
| The thing is only Arm did actually designed appropriate
| chips at the right time and licensed those designs in the
| best way possible. Arm was IBM PC of the smartphone era
| and I don't understand how people might not appreciate
| that.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| What's that about sparc? Or a PA-RISC world, maybe even
| an AlphaWorld. (Granted, the last two were way less
| likely than the others)
| adrian_b wrote:
| None of those 3 even tried to have a product for
| applications with low cost and low power consumption.
|
| The only competition was from Motorola/IBM POWER (and
| MIPS in some niche products), but neither Motorola nor
| IBM ever tried to offer low cost products.
|
| During 2000 to 2005, I have ported some products with
| embedded computers from POWER to ARM.
|
| The porting was not very easy, because the ARM CPUs had
| much lower performance, but they were much cheaper, so
| the conversion was done anyway.
|
| The ARM advantage has always been in its business model,
| which created a lot of competing CPU vendors, willing to
| give you the best price, not in any technical advantages
| of its CPU architecture.
|
| The NVIDIA acquisition certainly threatens this business
| model, despite all contrary claims of the NVIDIA
| management.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Alpha and PA-RISC died before the smartphone revolution
| (end 90s vs mid 00s). x86-32 killed them, before AMD64
| (x86-64) took off.
|
| Laptops were all x86-32/64. There has been an UltraSPARC
| laptop (one AFAIK), and Apple switched away from POWER
| because of power inefficiency. Also before the smartphone
| revolution.
|
| Intel was busy with Moblin and PowerTOP back in the 00s.
| This before iPhone.
|
| MIPS and RISC-V also exist. Without ARM it would've
| happened but slower/later.
| Eelongate wrote:
| Apple supposedly has a indefinite 'architectural' license
| to design and manufacture ARM chips. Presumably that
| cannot be revoked.
| freemint wrote:
| Does that also include access to new versions of ARM not
| yet released?
| bni wrote:
| Why would Apple even care about those?
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Considering they've even gotten away with breaking the
| rules (custom ISA extensions), I imagine nothing ARM does
| could realistically cause Apple to be unable to continue
| manufacturing ARM-compatible chips.
| handelaar wrote:
| I would imagine that Apple (which put money into Acorn
| and ARM JVs over thirty years ago and I _think_ was the
| first third-party company to do so, by a very wide
| margin) has a much older license than anybody else.
| garblegarble wrote:
| Yeah, turns out when you're one of the founders of ARM
| you get a pretty broad license!
| sircastor wrote:
| Apple has a very broad and safe license for their
| Designs. They would largely be unaffected by the merger
| and likely not change anything.
|
| That said, the replacement ISA already exists IMO: RISC-V
| fulafel wrote:
| It's not correct to say they just license the insn set. They
| license ready to use cpu and gpu core designs (like the
| Cortex family in most Android phones).
| yosefk wrote:
| It depends on the customer. Apple and Nvidia indeed license
| just the ISA and build their own CPU implementation from
| scratch. At the other extreme, you can make a complete chip
| just from ARM IP - they have way more than CPU and GPU IP,
| they can sell you pretty much everything else, too. At the
| middle are chip makers taking eg ARM CPU IP but no other
| ARM IP and making other IP themselves or licensing from
| other vendors.
| StreamBright wrote:
| Depends. Apple does not sell chips. Apple sells a vertically
| integrated platform that has many components from cloud
| services to physical devices. The price of one component in
| the physical device is not that important.
| chaboud wrote:
| ARM also licenses CPUs, GPUs, and just about everything that
| one would need to build an SoC.
|
| And those elements are used to enable the manufacture and
| sale of cheap chips. Semantics aside, ARM is _the_ critical
| player in several market segments.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| But we have pi and many others. If all these are slowly
| killed may be they moved to more expensive chips.
|
| The business model does not fit.
| kadoban wrote:
| I don't see that that really changes anything here.
| dcow wrote:
| Well the argument is that ARM is cheap and good for
| consumers because it's cheap. I wanted to make it clear
| that you can't go to ARM and buy <cheap arm chip>. You have
| to go to Qualcomm or Apple or Broadcom and buy <not quite
| so cheap arm chip>. So that kinda impacts the argument.
|
| Whatever Nvidia wants to do with licensing they have to
| combat market forces already in play. There's a market for
| somewhat less expensive arm chips, for one, so they'd lose
| that revenue. Two, if they want to royally fuck arm shops
| and become the only ARM vendor, well, good luck... you just
| killed the ISA you bought for 40 billion...
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| 40 billion isn't much to sabotage the vast majority of
| your competitors
| porknubbins wrote:
| Going through my stock app the other day I thought Nvidia market
| cap had to be a typo... since when is a graphics card company one
| of the biggest companies in the world? 800B is 4x the market cap
| of Intel, not that far off Apple. How many people realize this?
| sounds wrote:
| Because the market thinks Nvidia's potential for future
| earnings is similar to Intel, Apple, and similar tech companies
| (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebeta or whatever-it-is).
|
| While I can guess what the collective market is thinking, it's
| anybody's guess. If you disagree, then short Nvidia?
| porknubbins wrote:
| I'm not taking issue with the valuation. I never short tech
| companies that could have an unpredictable breakthrough
| success. For all I know they sell millions of GPUs at high
| prices to justify it. I'm just saying if you asked what are
| the biggest companies in the world I would never have guessed
| Nvidia.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Nvidia has the market cornered but anyone else can do the
| same thing they're doing for less. It's just branding and
| being first to market at this point.
| foepys wrote:
| That's assuming that the market is always rational. It might
| be in this case but it not always is. See the more or less
| recent mortgage crisis for an extreme example.
|
| I, for example, don't agree with Tesla's current valuation
| but I wouldn't be stupid enough to try to compete with Musk's
| memeing on Twitter.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Well, clearly lots of investors are aware of this...
| klelatti wrote:
| One further reason why this takeover is problematic:
|
| Nvidia would gain unprecedented information on its competitors
| businesses.
|
| - sales volumes for all arm based products
|
| - plans to license arm cores for new designs
|
| - some details of new designs - eg possibly process technology
| etc
| emodendroket wrote:
| The idea that you can possibly have a bunch of small companies
| competing in the modern semiconductor space is risible. If a big
| private concern makes you feel bad you could think about bringing
| the government into it but I see little other way forward.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It's a pity MIPS died as a consequence of Apple killing PowerVR.
| It could provide some competition to ARM.
| fredoralive wrote:
| MIPS hadn't been providing much competition to ARM[1] in the
| decade or so leading up the 2016 bust up between Apple and
| Imagination, so why would it suddenly start doing so after?
|
| [1] In general terms, I know it has (had?) a few niches like
| routers (IIRC).
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| PowerVR is still around and selling designs, some of which are
| reportedly still used by Apple. Apple is also still paying
| licensing fees for PowerVR.
|
| MIPS just got long in the tooth and died because the company
| (Wave Computing) that was licensing MIPS designs just didn't
| have enough customers. They have now switched to RISC-V.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| This is the most megalomanic thing I've ever heard of. ARM has
| high chances to be both the next x86 and the most common embedded
| architecture. While at the same time Nvidia GPUs are already the
| de facto standard for GPU computing. So Nvidia would have
| monopolies in 2 verticals. No reasonable and competent antitrust
| commission could ever allow that - although probably everyone was
| betting the latter wasn't the case...
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I totally agree... what's interesting is that some of the
| reasons that FTC provide are totally not what's interesting
| (self driving).
|
| I have a MacBook Pro with M1 ARM chip, and I love it, it's
| extremely power efficient, I don't really have to think much
| about charging it. It wouldn't be possible if NVIDIA could
| force its chips on Apple.
| effie wrote:
| How long can you use the M1 laptop on single charge?
| barsonme wrote:
| I go about 2-3 days without charging it under moderate
| (regular) use. While developing (compiling, lots of tabs,
| etc.), I'll use about 80% in a day.
|
| For reference, the last zoom call I was on (2 hours) with
| nearly max brightness only drained the battery ~5%. My
| Intel MBP would've been down at least 20%.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I feel like a lot of people are comparing their old Intel
| machines to brand new M1s with fresh batteries. Of course
| there will be a drastic difference. Every time I get a
| new laptop, the battery life is incredible, and then
| after a few years goes to shit. I'm sure the M1 is
| generally more efficient, but the difference might not be
| as big if you compared new vs new.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Not just that; how long does it last while idle/sleeping?
| Pretty much forever; the MacBook Air I have for random OSX
| tasks and testing Linux on sporadically goes over a week
| between charges.
|
| These things are very power efficient while actually
| computing, but they are _extremely_ power efficient while
| idle. The whole SoC uses a couple dozen milliwatts while in
| active idle state (e.g. screen off, machine up and
| responding to pings via WiFi).
| runeks wrote:
| I use an M1 Air for my daily development, and under full
| CPU load the battery lasts about 2.5 hours, while under no
| load and low screen brightness it will last for 15-20
| hours.
| Joeri wrote:
| Was that an artificial load test? The heaviest continuous
| load I've put my m1 air under was playing one of the tomb
| raider games, which puts a heavy load on cpu and gpu, and
| it still lasted 3 to 4 hours on battery.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/kb/SP824?locale=en_US
|
| The official number is 17 hours, bu I never had to test it
| in real life. The crazy thing is charging to 50% in 30
| minutes, and 50% is enough to get me through my trips.
| xxs wrote:
| >The crazy thing is charging to 50% in 30 minutes,
|
| There is zero crazy about that part, it's just 1C
| charging which is not even extra hard on the batteries.
| effie wrote:
| That's great. Yeah, once the on-battery time is slightly
| greater than one workday requires, increasing it further
| stops being interesting.
|
| For battery longevity, in general I would charge to 90%
| and then use it until 20%, then recharge to 90% again.
| This makes the most out of the battery charge cycles, and
| avoid the increased stress of close-to-0% charge (bad if
| there for longer time) and close-to-100% charge (less bad
| but still better not to go there often). But maybe M1
| battery system is different for some reason, I don't
| know.
| masklinn wrote:
| It's not different. In theory recent macs are supposed to
| "learn" about your habits and lock charging at around 80%
| when you're not going to move a while ("optimised battery
| charging"), but from what I've heard it's not super
| reliable. And I've never seen it work properly on my
| iphone, whose usage is about as reliable as you could be
| (plus iOS has all the alarms so it knows exactly when I'm
| going to wake up) so I didn't exactly have high hopes.
|
| A more reliable solution is to manipulate pmset directly,
| or use something like AlDente which handles it for you
| (the paid version has lots of extra features but the free
| one suffices to avoid charging above 80% by default).
|
| Obviously when charging time arrives you need to realise
| yourself and plug in somewhere between 20 and 40%.
|
| The only annoyance is the magsafe's LED remains amber
| even when the mac stops charging at 80%.
| Joeri wrote:
| On my iphone it pretty reliably charges up to 80%, waits
| a few hours and then charges to 100% when I put it on the
| charger for the night.
|
| On my m1 air I've only known it to charge to 80% after a
| period of several weeks where it was docked. As soon as I
| started using it away from power for significant amounts
| of time it went back to charging to 100%.
| masklinn wrote:
| > On my iphone it pretty reliably charges up to 80%,
| waits a few hours and then charges to 100% when I put it
| on the charger for the night.
|
| I just checked what happened last time. I went to bed
| around 2300, it quickly charged to 80% (getting there a
| bit after 2400), then stayed there until 0200, at which
| point it decided to charge to 100 which it had reached by
| 0400.
|
| As it does every workday, and has since before I had that
| specific phone (which is 2 years old), the alarm woke me
| at 0600.
|
| So over a 7h night it managed to spend more time at 100%
| than it did at 80. I'm not going to say I'm impressed,
| because I'm not. Based on usage pattern I _could_ see it
| fail to reach 100% by 0600, but I don't think I've woken
| at 4 once in the last 3 years.
| TomVDB wrote:
| Apple has a perpetual ARM architecture license. Nvidia
| wouldn't be able to force chips on Apple at all.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| This is of course related to the fact that ARM was
| initially a joint venture between Acorn, Apple, and VLSI
| Tech way back in 1990. Apple was a major early investor and
| has been using ARM ISA chips in products since the 1990s.
|
| If anyone is curious, third parties can license specific
| designs and drop them in their chips, or architecture
| licensees can design their own chips, like the M1, based on
| the instruction set architecture. There are around a dozen
| or so companies with an architecture license.
| bhouston wrote:
| But I believe there is a new instruction set released by
| ARM every couple of years. Would Apple get automatic
| access to say ARMv10 architecture because of their
| architectural license? Or would they have to renegotiate
| with ARM (or NVIDIA?)
|
| If they have to renegotiate with NVIDIA to get access to
| ARMv10, it would be quite nasty if NVIDIA decided they
| wanted a bigger piece of Apple's pie, especially if Apple
| has developed competitive GPU technology that made
| NVIDIA's somewhat obsolete.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I haven't read the license of course, but what I have
| read from others is that Apple has a perpetual license
| that gives them access to all future architectures as
| long as they fulfill their side of the deal (fees, etc.).
| That deal is with ARM, so if someone buys ARM the
| purchaser is still bound by the terms of existing deals.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| Seems like a good reason to block it. Apple could only do
| it with a perpetual license. Competitors would
| (potentially) have to abide by rules that Apple avoids.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Several companies have the same 64-bit architectural
| license, including Nvidia,AMD, Qualcomm, Samsung,
| Broadcom, Cavium, HiSilicon, Applied Micro, and Apple.
| There are probably some others.
| sbr464 wrote:
| But you can't play call of duty on it.
|
| (Important, not just trolling)
| officeplant wrote:
| I've been using Win11 ARM via Parallels to play older 32bit
| games and some newer 64bit games. It's enabled me to
| continue my addiction to playing on P1999 Classic Everquest
| Server. At the moment the main problem has been a lack of
| GPU power (M1 Mac Mini). Although some games run into
| larger issues, I assume, with the GPU itself like
| Borderlands 2 & 3 having a stutter every 30 seconds or so
| regardless of graphical settings.
|
| Although I imagine the problem with a lot of newer crap
| will be draconian DRM measures freaking out at being ran in
| Parallels. Which are games I will never buy.
| rnjesus wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Y-bDgsJKTqc?t=45s
| cruano wrote:
| >(Important,
|
| For whom ?
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| Its coming
|
| https://boilingsteam.com/box64-can-now-run-crysis-on-arm-
| wit...
| [deleted]
| bobsmooth wrote:
| I'm conflicted. As an NVDA holder, I'm disappointed. As a tech
| lover, this is for the best.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Tegra from a tech lover standpoint is awesome. Nobody making
| ARM is good with drivers off the top of my head. Qualcomm with
| their shitty non updated drivers is BS compared to the updated
| Jetson.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| And nvidia can keep making tegra, even without buying out ARM
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Great if you don't need better hardware. But they'll never
| be able to make an APU like AMD.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Huh? Apple doesn't own ARM either, and have a GPU with an
| ARM CPU, Nvidia has an architectural license just like
| Apple does.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| GPU with ARM CPU isn't an APU.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Apples CPU design is absolutely an APU, I advise knowing
| what the market actually looks like before constantly
| posting.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Care to post a source?
|
| Why doesn't the SoC mention APUs but mentions Intel CULV?
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Is it? Nvidia gave plenty of good examples of what it has been
| able to accomplish with ARM tech in their previous keynotes. If
| anything, I've come around from thinking this was simply a
| power play on Nvidia's part, to seeing this merger as a win-
| win-win for Nvidia, the ARM ISA, and ISA competition as a
| whole.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Whatever neat things Nvidia is doing with ARM can be done
| with ARM being independent.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Nvidia is building ARM supercomputers. The only other
| company that has shown interest in ARM supercomputer chips
| is Fujitsu. The ARM ISA has mostly been left to mobile
| chips, low-powered computer kits, and experimental desktop
| computing (StrongARM,XScale, etc.) decades since its
| inception. If ARM, inc. or Softbank were interested in
| high-powered chips, either of these companies would have
| done it by now. But they haven't. Nvidia is the kick in the
| rear needed to push the ARM instruction set further.
| klelatti wrote:
| AWS Graviton and Ampere are both based on Arm Neoverse
| designs.
|
| Plus Apple M1.
|
| Arm ISA does not need Nvidia for a 'kick in the rear'.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| All very recent developments, but they all have
| limitations. Graviton is meant for data centers, Ampere
| is a GPU solution. M1's top configuration, while
| impressive in the prosumer space, is barely past the
| teraflop barrier. I doubt Apple and Amazon have any plans
| to build HPCs.
| klelatti wrote:
| If only HPC counts as powerful then you've already quoted
| that Nvidia and Fujitsu are using Arm under the existing
| ownership structure.
|
| > If ARM, inc. or Softbank were interested in high-
| powered chips, either of these companies would have done
| it by now. But they haven't.
|
| Just factually incorrect given what is happening at the
| moment with Neoverse.
|
| (And Ampere Computing not the Nvidia GPU design)
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Can you show evidence of this?
|
| There has never been a good open ARM processor for mobile
| computing ever, the Jetson is the best open one while the
| Apple chips and M1 is the technically best one.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| You answered your own question. Nivida doesn't need to
| own the entirety of the mobile processor market.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| So then they're no good reason to block it. They would do
| a better job than it currently it currently is in now,
| mobile processors aren't all ARM either.
| mijoharas wrote:
| > mobile processors aren't all ARM either
|
| How many non-Arm mobile processors are there?
| volta83 wrote:
| > DPU SmartNICs,
|
| Which other companies beyond NVIDIA sell DPUs ?
| Zandikar wrote:
| Marvell, Fungible, Broadcom, and Intel (though they may brand
| them as IPU or something else, they're in the same market/use
| niche), possibly more.
| nikolay wrote:
| I guess, the government is friends with Apple. The corruption in
| the US is beyond imagination, just on a totally different level
| than anywhere else in the world! When iPhone was a monopoly, it
| was fine. When Facebook is a monopoly, it's fine. When Google is
| a monopoly, it's fine, but when it comes to more traditional
| businesses - no, it's not fine as chips can't be used as
| political tools unlike Apple's, Google's, and Facebook's
| platforms!
| [deleted]
| matthewmcg wrote:
| I think you need to recognize that the FTC is governed by its
| commissioners and chairperson, and those people have their own
| priorities that are going to be different than their
| predecessors. Lina Khan, current chair, is much more focused[1]
| on controlling tech monopolies than Trump's appointees, who had
| what you might charitably call more "market oriented"
| priorities[2] (to me, a euphemism for "bought by big
| business").
|
| [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-
| bat...
|
| [2]: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/08/ftc-chairman-
| congr...
| nikolay wrote:
| Is there are more a blatant monopoly than Meta? Or Google for
| search?
| mercy_dude wrote:
| There goes my NVDA calls. I should have sold when it hit the ATH.
| lvl100 wrote:
| This is not material in my view in the sense that it was going to
| get blocked by EU. And to be perfectly honest, it's really not
| Nvidia's fault that ARM sold out to Softbank, a known player with
| hard investment return mandates. I am sure Apple gave this a big
| push along with other players mentioned in comments. As for the
| validity/veracity of the suit, it's 50/50.
| rswail wrote:
| It's likely to be blocked by the UK first, then potentially the
| EU, then the FTC.
|
| There are plenty of people lining up against NVidia on this.
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