[HN Gopher] SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B
___________________________________________________________________
SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 196 points
Date : 2025-03-20 01:58 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (group.softbank)
(TXT) w3m dump (group.softbank)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Ampere is still the only people making a decent purchaseable ARM
| server. Not loving the idea of there being a bunch of new debt
| hovering over them now.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I use their servers in a couple of cloud environments. That
| little things are snappy, for what I have given them as tasks.
| Wish them best of luck to the future.
| tracker1 wrote:
| The same goes for most recent/powerful mini pc options. Been
| using an R9-5900X based one for a few years now, runs great
| as a home server.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What about
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack#
| Eikon wrote:
| That's not a server. It is a rackable desktop.
|
| You won't run general purpose server apps on this.
| sitkack wrote:
| Not with that attitude you won't. Clearly the machine is
| the wrong color for your workloads.
| bayindirh wrote:
| What is a general purpose server app?
|
| Does Apple prevent their users running applications which
| listen to outside connections?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I think the issue is that you'll have the base macOS
| system with GUI and all taking up resources.
|
| Compare that to a bare metal install of Proxmox or
| similar.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yeah, I know, but given that you leave the user not-
| logged in and set the items system-wide startup items,
| the memory pressure on a 64GB system can be seen as
| negligible with some mental flexibility.
|
| I think the primary use for a rackable server like this
| is automating building and testing of macOS native, or
| macOS specific applications you develop, or build them.
| Or as a shared remote desktop host for specific tasks.
|
| Also we had (recently deprecated) macOS Server package
| for quite some time. So it's not unsuitable for servers.
| It's _more_ suitable for specific jobs as a server.
|
| Installing Linux servers are _too_ easy now, so I don 't
| think macOS should evolve a "server-specific" version
| either.
| oneplane wrote:
| Proxmox runs fine on M-series Macs. macOS also runs fine
| with no GUI.
|
| Either way, it wouldn't be a good fit when Ampere exists.
|
| For low power modular compute, the way GitHub and Amazon
| re-package Mac Minis is not the moest efficient way to
| get Apple hardware in a rack with remote management (and
| still no ECC), but it does have a performance per watt
| and compatibility for macOS CI workers that you can't get
| any other way.
|
| Ideally, this stops being an issue when the ARM64
| ecosystem can build those apps natively. We're pretty
| close on that one, and it means you can use Ampere and
| Graviton for that.
| znpy wrote:
| have fun when that cheese grater hangs in the datacenter
| and you have to physically go in there to push a button,
| connect a display, a keyboard and a mouse to do
| troubleshooting, because apple in their infinite wisdom
| has decided that a rackable mac should not have ipmi.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Why not use JetKVM [0], and a remotely switchable
| datacenter PDU?
|
| [0]: https://jetkvm.com/
| znpy wrote:
| you certainly could... but when you're spending mac-pro
| money you might as well get a machine with built-in ipmi.
|
| it's not that you can't -- it's just inefficient: you're
| spending more money for less features.
| terinjokes wrote:
| No BMC, severally limiting remote management, so operations
| teams responsible for physical servers don't want to touch
| it.
|
| JetKVM is a remote KVM, not remote management. It does not
| have the same integration into the internals of a server.
| ahoka wrote:
| But it comes with a ... checks notes ... magic mouse!
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| Upvoted to save you, out of pity for this terrible joke.
| :)
| indrora wrote:
| Great, I can still make the HMS Courage[0]
|
| [0]https://www.igen.fr/accessoires/2015/11/non-la-magic-
| mouse-n...
| Twirrim wrote:
| They also won't provide any guarantees about components
| continuing to work, such as booting over thunderbolt that
| some clouds rely on. There's an awful lot of financial risk
| in providing MacOS as a service.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| Apple has a BMC on the Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro.
| It's called Lights Out Management (LOM).
| https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/lights-out-
| manage...
| terinjokes wrote:
| AFAICT LOM only has three commands "PowerON", "PowerOFF",
| and "Reset", a far cry from what other BMC provide. It
| also requires another Mac in the same LAN to be the
| controller, and you cant use static IPs (which is pretty
| common for BMC VLANs).
|
| Also it seems unsupported for the Mac Pro (2023) this
| thread is about?
| dvdkon wrote:
| In addition to the problems other people have pointed out, it
| just doesn't have comparable specs to something like Ampere's
| Altra or AMD's Epyc.
|
| 24 CPU cores and 192 GB of memory might be enough for a small
| company's single on-site server, but those will likely want
| lots of storage and not want to deal with an exotic platform.
| Anyone who's willing to deal with ARM and macOS on a server
| will likely want a lot more performance per 1U.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Agreed. Rack density is the biggest thing once you get away
| from "a handful of servers", be it CPU, memory, or storage
| density.
|
| Side note: I'm curious where this 1:8 ratio of cores:memory
| came from. Everyone seems to be standardising on it, even
| at VM levels
| pjc50 wrote:
| SEVEN AND A HALF THOUSAND DOLLARS? No wonder we do all our
| Mac CI work on Mac minis.
|
| Macs remain completely horrendous to remote-administer.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| Bro, come on. Apple hasn't even tried to pretend they're in
| the server game for at least a decade now. You're paying for
| dozens of features you'll never use. They don't even have
| drivers for their own hardware outside of fucking _windows_ ,
| let alone documentation about how their machines are intended
| to work.
|
| I love my macs but apple will _never_ be a cost or
| reliability solution to computation unless they do a complete
| 180. They 're a boutique/luxury firm that can choose which
| markets they want to dominate. If you think there's not a
| small horde of people at Apple trying to figure out how to
| pitch bringing the xserve back, I have a bridge to sell you.
| But unless they can convince CTOs to become sysadmins it'll
| never be a viable way for a company as large as Apple to
| drive hardware development.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think they could be a decent provider for SOHO options...
| such as the space filled by Synology on the lower end. It's
| pretty competitive on cost, but Apple could really play it
| in concert with their wifi/airplay solutions etc. Like a
| home-base for SOHO.
|
| Then again, the more I think on it, the worse an idea it
| is. Too locked-in and out for being able to run the likes
| of Jellyfin, etc. It could be a good option for a "Server"
| mac.. but would still make more sense for it to run Linux
| as a base.
| ciupicri wrote:
| There's no mention of ECC memory.
| burnte wrote:
| Apple products are not server grade equipment.
| mort96 wrote:
| 24 cores isn't that much, and you end up with a huge hulking
| GPU just sitting there doing nothing, you can't run a well-
| supported server OS on it so it can't really be used as a
| server, and it's extremely expensive for what it is. I'm not
| really sure what makes you think it's worth bringing up.
| pdpi wrote:
| That's a rack-mounted workstation, not a server.
| hereonout2 wrote:
| Got a chance to play about with the Altra Max to do some batch
| jobs last year.
|
| 128 cores going 100% in htop was fun!
| tempest_ wrote:
| The main problem with those is the memory controller starts
| to degrade a lot when you use all 128 of those cores.
|
| We were doing some testing and > 96 cores at 100% caused a
| massive degradation in performance. We ended up going with
| dual 32C/64T Epycs (which cost twice as much) as a result. If
| they fix it in the Altra One chips they will be back on the
| table though because they were very good power wise for our
| workload and quite price competitive in a supermicro chassis.
| kcb wrote:
| You can buy Nvidia Grace CPU only systems. Neoverse V2 is
| actually pretty solid.
|
| https://www.supermicro.com/datasheet/datasheet-NVIDIA-MGX-1U...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well, I guess it was either them or Oracle, given previous
| acquisition rumours.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Given Oracle's tendency to use pillows on processor
| architectures and bury them at night, Softbank is possibly the
| better of two evils?
|
| Jokes aside, I don't believe Oracle would evolve the A1s beyond
| what they need, and stagnate them for years instead.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Might be, but that is the thing, while it is tradition to
| complain about Oracle, in many cases their are the only ones
| that show up at the door with the suitcase full of money.
|
| So where are the others that supposedly are better than them?
|
| In this case, Softbank will be having ARM and Ampere.
| bayindirh wrote:
| This depends on definition of "better". Maybe your question
| is better suited as "So, where are the others that
| supposedly are _richer_ than them? "
|
| In that case, we have the CPU manufacturers, which already
| do this as the business, Google, which is not _that_
| interested, or already make their own chips, Apple, which
| has an in-house CPU /GPU company, and probably IBM, which
| also designs and builds their own processors.
|
| So, the only interested shopper in the vicinity is Oracle,
| and they happen to have the money. The others have the
| money, but not the interest.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Indeed, which kind of proves the point, in the scenarios
| where the only shopper at shows at the store is Oracle,
| the alternative is bankruptcy.
| mbreese wrote:
| Was Ampere going bankrupt though?
|
| I think the fear is that if Oracle was the purchaser,
| then that would be good for Oracle, but not necessarily
| the rest of the ARM ecosystem. Given Softbank's ARM
| investment, it is in their interest to try to keep the
| ecosystem healthy.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I was speaking in general.
|
| In the specific case of Ampere it remains to be seen, it
| wasn't that healthy also.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/oracle_ampere_stak
| e_c...
| whizzter wrote:
| I think SB might've upped the bid a bit extra with Oracle as
| the other suitor. With Graviton and Ampere processors owned
| by hyperscalers it would've been a very unfortunate time for
| the ARM server market to become stagnant.
|
| Right now ARM is in a golden position to take server market
| pieces, higher compute densities with simpler i-set and good
| software support thanks to years of mobile and now Apple
| support (most language implementators wants things to run on
| Mac's so bugs and perf have been getting fixed)
|
| If Oracle would've bought them, third parties (in this case
| including both Microsoft with Azure and Google) would
| probably have held back on ARM investments (not to mention
| smaller operators), Qualcomm being in lawsuit mode would also
| had sown doubt, maybe some other manufacturer would introduce
| chips in the meanwhile but they would be small and given time
| Risc-V might even pop up on the horizon as an alternative
| hurting ARM on server chances even more.
|
| Now they're "independant", with better software support than
| ever, guaranteeing availability to smaller parties (at a time
| when many of those are outside the US and wanting
| alternatives) and a chance to benefit from vertical
| integration.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Not sure on that... AMD's 128+ core servers are competitive
| to ARM on power per unit of work and exceed them on total
| compute. It's still very competitive.
| twoodfin wrote:
| I'd love for someone more informed to provide some insider
| detail, but by appearances Oracle really, really tried to
| make SPARC a differentiator for them after the Sun
| acquisition.
|
| They were shipping new systems (M8) based on a consistent in-
| house evolution of SPARC almost 8 years after the
| acquisition, a veritable eternity in tech time.
|
| Eventually the market just said, no, we want x64 and a path
| to Cloud.
|
| One wonders if they'd kept at it for a few more years whether
| they'd have needed to bid for Altera at all, given the gaps
| opened up by Intel's struggles.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Which is a pity, given that Solaris SPARC has been doing
| hardware memory tagging in production for a decade now.
| klelatti wrote:
| So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've
| missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access
| to confidential information on Arm's customers' businesses
| (plans, volumes etc). Hmmm.
| whizzter wrote:
| It kinda makes sense though, ARM has been creeping upwards over
| the years and yet afaik outside of Ampere no ARM server
| supplier has become serious (outside of inhouse variants such
| as Amazon Graviton).
|
| So combining ARM and Ampere operations doesn't hurt any current
| big customers in the mobile field (apart from perhaps Qualcomm
| but they're in lawsuit mode there anyhow).
|
| They also make sure to make the ARM alternative available to
| smaller customers (As an option besides AMD and Intel servers)
| instead of being gobbled up by f.ex. Oracle (making the big
| server ARM implementations inhouse to 2 of the big platform
| operators).
|
| Not to mention the silver lining, combining the ops will give
| it more credence in the enterprise market that seems to have
| damn good margins (some have attributed AMD's resurgence and
| Intel's troubles to Intel slipping in server sales).
| klelatti wrote:
| Largely agree. Arm / Softbank is in a tricky place if there
| are no credible customers in a given market. Does it just sit
| on its hands or actually get out there and build some chips!
| It has helped fund or help some startups that were using Arm
| designs to get into new markets (eg Annapurna Labs) but
| sometimes that doesn't work out at all (Nuvia!)
|
| And to be fair I think Rene Haas has been fairly upfront
| about changing their approach.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud GPU
| services?
| klelatti wrote:
| Somewhat but not competing with its customers has been a
| central part of Arm's proposition for three decades, for good
| reason. There are at least a lot of competitors for Nvidia's
| design. Your options if you want to build a server core are a
| lot more limited.
| re-thc wrote:
| > Kind of like Nvidia selling GPUs and also offering cloud
| GPU services?
|
| Different in that ARM only 'designed'. It's more like a
| framework / library / tool (a very feature complete 1).
|
| The Nvidia case is more similar to having a self-install and
| then a cloud hosted version of the same software.
| alberth wrote:
| Isn't Ampere essentially the only company making _server_ grade
| ARM chips.
|
| And all the rest of ARM customers are making mobile/desktop.
|
| So Ampere is going after a completely different segment that
| the rest of ARM customers aren't addressing.
| jsheard wrote:
| They're the only company _selling_ server grade ARM chips but
| others are rolling their own for internal use, such as
| Amazons Graviton line. That 's Ampere's problem really, their
| biggest potential customers are so big that they can afford
| to cut out middlemen like Ampere.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Even if Ampere could afford to undercut the internal
| development of these hyperscalar ARM chips (which to my
| knowledge they cannot), there is more value in in-housing
| ARM chips like Amazon / Microsoft are doing: you can more
| easily try out wacky ideas in chip / firmware design.
|
| Often times these companies might have an idea for how to
| save power / tweak cores in a weird way on a CPU, but have
| a chicken-and-egg problem with not knowing exactly how much
| it'll reduce COGS. Not knowing that and having to negotiate
| with a vendor (who will often want to charge more for the
| feature) means that it's difficult to do unless it's an
| obvious slam-dunk.
|
| By bringing chip development in-house, adding new features
| skews more towards a political decision that requires less
| rigorous financial calculations (e.g. "how much power will
| this save relative to the vendor_cost++ and our own
| developer cost?" for 3rd-party chips). It basically allows
| these cloud providers to ship new features more quickly in
| their CPUs.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah and you can solve exactly your problems without
| worrying about anyone else.
| wmf wrote:
| Yeah, Ampere's only customers appear to be Oracle Cloud and
| some hobbyists. I was kind of expecting Oracle to buy them.
| jsheard wrote:
| Hetzner offers Ampere boxes too, but they're not exactly
| a hyperscaler.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| ++ ScaleWay has Ampere ARM too
|
| I use Hetzner ARM machines myself and they're great, and
| something something i THINK there's less abuse and noisy
| neighbors on ARM since it's slightly less skiddie
| friendly (can't run random x86 binaries)
| Moose_the_Goose wrote:
| Mikrotik some how got a hold of Graviton cpu's for their
| Flagship router and now their new NAS/Router/Container
| Server.
|
| https://mikrotik.com/product/rds2216
|
| Interesting enough Mikrotik announced a co-development with
| Ampere last year. https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS
| /blog/2024/09/24/27...
| jsheard wrote:
| Interesting... that AL73400 part they're using is the
| first generation Graviton, and AFAICT that's not
| available on AWS anymore. Maybe Amazon considers it
| obsolete and is selling their stocks off to third parties
| like MikroTik?
| bionade24 wrote:
| Isn't Marvell/Cavium still in the ARM server business, too?
| sgerenser wrote:
| Not since 2020:
| https://www.networkworld.com/article/969117/marvell-exits-
| th...
| rabunite wrote:
| Nvidia is making arm server cpus.
| indrora wrote:
| Ampere is the only one with a _license_ to make server-grade
| ARM chips.
|
| There's a distinction that has to be made here.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Isn't Arm now venturing into the product, rather than just
| specification, market and so this acquisition could help Arm?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| And Google just spent five times that to acquire a cyber security
| startup with 1000 customers.
|
| Is hardware so much less valuable?
| sitkack wrote:
| They are totally separate the Wiz thing is a reverse IDF
| merger.
|
| The SB purchase is part of Arm completely restructuring their
| IP philosophy and business model. Ampere was sold for "so
| little" because Arm could effectively just cut them off as soon
| as their contract ran out. This was a cleaner transfer.
|
| Arm is bringing everything back in house, ceding the low end to
| RISC-V and taking the high end back in and producing their own
| silicon.
| mola wrote:
| A what?
| sitkack wrote:
| https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjfc118vn1e
| riffraff wrote:
| perhaps you think this explains something but honestly it
| does not.
|
| I mean, yes, these people are ex-israeli army, but why
| would Google want to pay 32B for ex-IDF people? Surely
| there's more of them out there?
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Israel have National Service so pretty much every working
| there is ex-Army.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| These people are from an intelligence agency, not just
| army.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Wouldn't it be expected that those most capable with
| technology and software be routed to the intelligence
| agency, rather than the front lines or something?
| snotrockets wrote:
| Not if you know how militaries and intelligence agencies
| are run.
| snotrockets wrote:
| This is a wild exaggeration - very few people are a good
| fit for serving in a military, and while the Israeli army
| ignores that, and drafts many it shouldn't (resulting in
| high suicide rates on one hand, and alleged war crimes on
| the other), it still only drafts ~69% of AMAB and 55%
| AFAB.
|
| It does gives free technical education and experience for
| some recruits (not necessarily the top, and that
| experience isn't always teh best), but of course that
| affects tech employment - you'd see higher rates of
| service across tech employees, as that service gave them
| a jump start on their tech education.
|
| That said, even if the Israeli military decides to draft
| a person, that person can stand up and refuse. It ain't
| "free" (may result in imprisonment,) but it's a choice
| that even if too few make, it is one, and making it is a
| strong signal about what kind of person they are.
| awongh wrote:
| They're referring to this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
|
| You can scroll down to see the companies founded by
| alumni.
|
| The Meta CISO is ex-8200.
| mola wrote:
| The unit gets to pick the most talented before the rest
| of the army. Most israeli startups are founded by unit
| alumni.
|
| I'm not sure I understand what reverse merger means, or
| what OP is implying
| mola wrote:
| So, israeli tech is built by ex idf? You know most
| israeli are ex idf?
| asdffdasy wrote:
| but not all are previously high ranking ones.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Is hardware so much less valuable?
|
| Margins and TAM.
|
| Those 1000+ customers at Wiz have 7-8 figure TCV deals (I have
| personally seen a couple of those contracts), and have pipeline
| in multiple industry verticals - Tech, Telecom, ONG,
| Healthcare, Finance, Insurance, etc
|
| An embedded and telco oriented firm like Ampere has weaker
| margins as they have to manufacture hardware, which drastically
| reduces the amount of money available.
|
| It's also a smaller and more consolidated market with a weaker
| TAM.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes. Hardware costs money to scale.
| yapyap wrote:
| Softbank is such an odd company.
| ksynwa wrote:
| TIL .softbank is a TLD now
| myself248 wrote:
| Opening up TLDs beyond the originals and CCTLDs completely
| invalidated assumptions about what domains and domain names
| should mean. A massive disservice to everyone whose intuition
| was helping them avoid scams and squatting, but hey, at least a
| lot of money changed hands.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Yeah... I'm pretty burnt on them too... then again, I own
| about 20 I'm not actively using. Still not fun when you are
| just trying to come up with a domain name for an idea and
| everything is parked and/or they want thousands for the name.
| npongratz wrote:
| Indeed, since January 2016: https://icannwiki.org/.softbank
|
| And confirmed by the Wayback Machine:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160116175915/http://data.iana....
| alephnerd wrote:
| A lot of people are ignoring the fact that SoftBank Group is also
| one of the largest players in the telco market globally (that's
| how they started) [0] and that played a role in their Arm
| strategy and Eutelsat OneWeb strategy.
|
| It's useful to look at the Ampere acquisition from the same lens,
| as Ampere is heavily used for telco usecases [1]
|
| SoftBank Group has heavily invested in O-RAN to act as the base
| technology for what will become 6G, and they have been making a
| number of partnerships, investments, and acquisitions
| specifically around this [2][3].
|
| SoftBank has been working on a 6G/Beyond 5G strategy for several
| years now [4] - primarily targeting embedded usecases such as
| autonomous vehicles [5][6]
|
| [0] - https://www.softbank.jp/en/
|
| [1] - https://amperecomputing.com/press/ampere-accelerates-
| expansi...
|
| [2] -
| https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sbkk/2024/2024022...
|
| [3] - https://www.o-ran.org/membership
|
| [4] - https://www.suasnews.com/2021/08/softbank-corp-
| unveils-6g-co...
|
| [5] -
| https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/technology/research/news/051...
|
| [6] -
| https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/technology/research/news/069...
| downrightmike wrote:
| Is anyone happy with telco price gouging? In spite of whatever
| else they are doing, they always price gouge and allow
| spam/ransom calls.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Did anyone get a haircut?
| wmf wrote:
| A $6.5B exit on ~$800M invested actually looks decent.
| zoobab wrote:
| Softbank is BigOil money.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Wrong. It's telco money - SoftBank Group is primarily a telco
| vendor and provider, and works closely with NEC, DoCoMo,
| T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Airtel.
|
| SoftBank Vision Fund is a separate subgroup of SoftBank
| targeted at VC, and was largely operated and managed by ex-
| Deustche Bank alumni due to Rajeev Misra and Colin Fan poaching
| their colleagues like Ziyad Al-Ashaikh (the guy who helped land
| the Saudi PIF deal), Akshay Naheta, Munich Verma, Saleh Romeih,
| etc
| Havoc wrote:
| The fund LPs are definitely oil heavy so wouldn't say he's
| wrong
| alephnerd wrote:
| In Vision Fund yes, but Vision Fund is just a part of the
| larger SoftBank Group, and did NOT partake in this
| transaction. This was a transaction done by SoftBank Group
| directly.
|
| And much of Vision Fund's MENA LPs would leave if a couple
| key Vision Fund partners were to leave - they did the same
| with Desutche Bank.
| lvl155 wrote:
| Are we peak ARM yet? Jokes aside, with coming decline in x86, why
| is AMD so slow to introduce ARM products?
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| AMD has an entire line of ARM chips and there's an ARM in every
| x86 CPU they make. They've been making ARM chips for a long
| long time.
|
| https://www.amd.com/en/products/adaptive-socs-and-fpgas/soc....
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...
| rnrn wrote:
| I assume the question is why AMD is not making EPYC or Ryzen
| processors with Arm cores for the application processors.
|
| AMD continuing to have the Xilinx line of FPGAs with some
| Cortex cores and having Arm management cores that run
| firmware doesn't really address this.
| toast0 wrote:
| AMD said in 2021 that they were ready to build ARM
| chips[1], but honestly, I don't see the market for it. AMD
| could put an ARM frontend on Ryzen (and various interviews
| said they've prototyped it), but I don't think it would
| make a significant difference in compute/watt or whatever
| other metric, and there's not much in the way of ARM only
| software that people want to run. Maybe macOS, but you can
| still run that on amd64 afaik.
|
| amd64 is still the default platform for desktop and server
| software. You can have arguments about the ISA, but for the
| most part that doesn't actually matter; amd64 is good
| enough, upstart cpu makers choose ARM not because it's
| better than amd64, but because it's at least good enough
| and licenses are available.
|
| [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-we-stand-ready-
| to-make...
| tracker1 wrote:
| Also worth noting that AMD is doing quite well on the
| server market with the c cores in terms of compute per
| watt over ARM options.
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't think ARM cores doing system management stuff that's
| not exposed to the user as a general purpose CPU really
| counts. But those SoCs count for sure, I didn't know they
| made those.
| rnrn wrote:
| I don't think x86 as an ISA is necessarily declining much and
| AMD has products with zen4c / zen5c compact cores intended to
| compete with Arm server products. AMD doesn't have to pay
| licensing / royalties for x86 AFAIK and probably would prefer
| to keep x86 and not start paying arm and creating any adoption
| barrier form a change of ISA (however small) if they can make
| competitive x86 cores.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Because people are (mass generalisation) mostly only buying Arm
| to save money over x86. For AMD to get into Arm would be to
| kill their profit margins. Same curse that Intel had.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >with coming decline in x86
|
| What indication is there that x86 is on the decline? Intel
| might be on the decline, but AMD seems to be doing fine, and
| Windows on ARM looks to go nowhere, even with Qualcomm's latest
| Snapdragon
| trynumber9 wrote:
| What ARM core is available for AMD to use that is better than
| what AMD has been shipping in Turin?
|
| Adapting Zen to a simpler-to-decode architecture would cost
| more than licensing a core from ARM. The Zen 5 front-end is
| adapted for working around deficiencies of x86 with dual-decode
| SMT craziness.
| siavosh wrote:
| Can someone knowledgeable explain SoftBank? Is it partly a
| Japanese sovereign fund...I've become less and less interested in
| its investments as it seems to simply act like a giant government
| money channel with questionable investments that don't seem to
| make sense from a typical VC/PE perspective. Ie is its ultimate
| goal not merely profit?
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's an investment company that primarily specializes in
| Telecom and telecom adjacent industries (eg. Internet
| companies, Energy, Space Tech, Hardware).
|
| Most people on HN have only heard of SoftBank's Vision Fund,
| but that's basically an autonomous organization within SoftBank
| staffed with Deustche Bank alumni who left in droves in
| 2017-2020.
|
| > Ie is its ultimate goal not merely profit?
|
| Yes. Their goal is profit.
|
| > I've become less and less interested in its investments as it
| seems to simply act like a giant government money channel with
| questionable investments that don't seem to make sense from a
| typical VC/PE perspective
|
| This investment is part of their strategy for 6G and IIoT,
| which is synergistic with their telecom focus.
|
| There has been work over the past 4-5 years to become the
| leader for creating the standards for 6G, and SoftBank is
| trying to position themselves to be that player.
| alephnerd wrote:
| ^ Left DB (not SoftBank) in droves. SoftBank is relatively
| hands off compared to most Japanese firms. Son's experience
| at Cal (go bears!) def helped
|
| MunichRe is trying the same strategy. You'll see their name
| in the next 10 years just like SoftBank ;)
| re-thc wrote:
| > Ie is its ultimate goal not merely profit?
|
| This isn't the vision fund or any of those VC initiatives from
| SoftBank.
|
| I'd see this as SoftBank who owns ARM is now buying something
| useful in the same group / segment to consolidate.
|
| Having said that interest in Japan is at record lows (compared
| to the rest of the world) so financing is a lot easier.
| alberth wrote:
| It's just a VC.
|
| But it's so big (maybe biggest in the world), so its reach and
| influence is immense. And as a result, it has raised money from
| nations and other enormous entities.
|
| Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed
| massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid
| of big.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed
| massive bets years before other people and those bets have
| paid of big.
|
| I'm not sure how many folks these days would consider him an
| "oracle". He clearly did fabulously well with some early
| Internet investments, but he also was famous for folly after
| folly of overpriced investments in the 2010s (the Softbank
| "Vision Funds").
|
| I'd be curious if there is a simple accounting list of
| Softbank's major investments ranked from biggest winners to
| biggest losers. I guess it pretty much highlights the
| dynamics of the VC business model - you only need a few giant
| winners to offset the boatload of losers. In Softbank's case,
| I'm guessing their biggest winners are Yahoo Japan (which was
| the dominate site in Japan for a long time, and long after
| the US Yahoo fell into irrelevance) and Alibaba, which saw
| their early $20 million investment balloon into billions.
|
| But did Softbank have _any_ winners from their 2010s spending
| spree (along the time where they shoveled good money after
| bad into WeWork)?
| alberth wrote:
| He made a big bet on NVIDIA when no one else did.
|
| (Though he sold too soon and missed out)
| jonas21 wrote:
| They've made close to $100B on ARM (which they acquired in
| 2016). This dwarfs the $14B they lost on WeWork. Of course
| WeWork gets far more attention because it's a such an
| entertaining story.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks very much, I had forgotten about ARM.
|
| The Vision Fund lost on tons more companies than just
| WeWork though. But your overall point is correct - there
| were a couple outsized winners (also just found another
| article that they made a huge gain on DoorDash) that I'm
| guessing took care of the majority of their losses.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| These aren't realized gains though, I think only 10% of
| shares actually float, it's not clear that the demand
| would sustain in a selloff
| huijzer wrote:
| VCs are indeed partly about giant winners offsetting the
| losers. But according to Taleb, the main part is to
| convince other people to put money in your fund and get
| rich from the management fees. So from that perspective, VC
| is mostly about pretending your fund does well and getting
| people to buy in. That's probably why VCs love to buy
| companies in overhyped industries.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It realized $5.6B in gains on Uber.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/08/softbank-sells-entire-
| stake-...
| jawiggins wrote:
| SoftBank was founded by Masayoshi Son. It was originally a tech
| company that resold software (imagine Steam but for desktop
| apps), but very quickly it morphed into something like a PE
| firm that would do continual leveraged buyouts of existing
| firms. They've bought companies that run conferences, tech
| magazines, one of their more formative M & A deals was to buy
| the Japanese Vodafone arm. Many of these deals actually went
| pretty poorly, with Masayoshi overpaying for the firms he
| bought and then being saddled with very large debts to repay
| the loans. Masa was wiped out and faced bankruptcy multiple
| times.
|
| Later on the would move away from leveraged buyouts and start
| investing in startups more similar to how a VC firm would in
| the US. He notably invested early in Yahoo and Alibaba.
|
| The company is not a sovereign fund - it's really run at the
| behest of it's founder. If you want to read more about the
| story, there was recently a great biography that chronicled the
| story: Gambling Man (https://www.amazon.com/Gambling-Man-
| Greatest-Disruptor-Masay...)
| flakiness wrote:
| And it's so un-Japanese.
|
| See what the Japanese government (or old power in Japan) has
| been spending the money on recently:
|
| - Honda-Nissan merger (failed) - Seven Eleven counter buyout
| https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/the-fight-
| for-7-eleven-i...
|
| Masayoshi Son is in a different league, for good or bad.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > old power in Japan) has been spending the money on
| recently
|
| Investing in SoftBank.
|
| MUFG, the Custody Bank, and Master Trust all have
| significant ownership stakes in SoftBank, and most Japanese
| conglomerates like NTT, NEC, etc tend to work closely with
| SoftBank on strategic deals
| caycep wrote:
| I think he is Korean, that may account for the cultural
| differences
| uxp100 wrote:
| Yes, Ethnically Korean, his grandparents were immigrants.
| As for cultural differences, I think you could credit his
| extensive time spent living in the US as much as the
| immigrant Korean culture.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Puts on Masa.
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