Nvidia abandons deal to buy ARM *spawn*

Why would most licensees care if they got a Mali or a Geforce GPU with newer generation cores? Most don't compete with NVIDIA.
Mali IP is known to be pretty cheap AFAIK. If nvidiarm happens and Mali gets shelved, nvidia won't charge the same for Geforce as ARM did for Mali, and that might cost the viability of the smaller SoC makers (AmLogic, Rockchip, etc.).
 
Mali IP is known to be pretty cheap AFAIK. If nvidiarm happens and Mali gets shelved, nvidia won't charge the same for Geforce as ARM did for Mali, and that might cost the viability of the smaller SoC makers (AmLogic, Rockchip, etc.).

I don't know what NV's plans are, but for the time being it's times cheaper to keep the Mali team developing for ULP SoCs then to develop a ULP GeForce GPU.
 
Exactly what I said 3 pages ago :
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/4-key-things-nvidia-just-shared-about-its-plans-for-arm

Only difference is that Nvidia plans to continue MALI effort for customers only interested by graphic acceleration.

the important piece of information is obviously:
4. Nvidia Plans to ‘Turbocharge’ ARM’s Server CPU Efforts

Huang, whose company gets over 40% of its revenue from data center products following the recent Mellanox Technologies acquisition, stressed that Nvidia will build on ARM’s already-sizable investments in its Neoverse platform for server CPUs and other “infrastructure” processors. He also signaled Nvidia plans to use its server GPUs, Mellanox’s data processing units (DPUs) and ARM’s server CPU IP to develop end-to-end silicon and software platforms for servers.

“In the data center, NVIDIA will turbocharge ARM's R&D and meet cloud computing customers' demand for a higher-velocity ARM server CPU roadmap,” Huang said. “We are a computing platform company that is able to innovate from the chips to the systems, system software, all the way to the application stacks on top.”

Huang also left the door open to Nvidia developing and selling its own ARM server CPUs, as opposed to simply licensing ARM’s IP to third-party CPU developers. However, he also suggested that whether or not Nvidia develops its own server CPUs matters far less than creating an end-to-end platform.
 
ARM being owned by an American company also means that the architecture could be "weaponized" against China, since a lot of cheap mobile/embedded/IoT processors are made there, by Chinese companies and using ARM licensed cores. What happened to Huaweii could happen again to any other company, thus making business with ARM may become a liability now; alternatives like RISC-V seems like a safer bet due to their 'open' nature.
 
ARM being owned by an American company also means that the architecture could be "weaponized" against China, since a lot of cheap mobile/embedded/IoT processors are made there, by Chinese companies and using ARM licensed cores. What happened to Huaweii could happen again to any other company, thus making business with ARM may become a liability now; alternatives like RISC-V seems like a safer bet due to their 'open' nature.

Tech owned by any nation (other than China, obvs) can be weaponised against China by the US. It's fairly standard operating procedure for the US, when it imposes sanctions on a country, to turn around and threaten all third-party countries that unless they follow suit they will also be the subject of sanctions. ARM being owned in the UK specifically would be no guarantee of anything, given the sub-dom nature of the UK-US relationship over the past couple of decades.
 
Mali IP is known to be pretty cheap AFAIK. If nvidiarm happens and Mali gets shelved, nvidia won't charge the same for Geforce as ARM did for Mali, and that might cost the viability of the smaller SoC makers (AmLogic, Rockchip, etc.).

Is Mali business model different than ARM? Are ARM licensees allowed to modify it? Or is it sold as is? If the former I can't see Nvidia using GeForce like that at all. Regardless it's not like Mali represents a substantial part of the market anyway, much less the high margins tier. Really doubt Nvidia would start selling GeForce tech to third parties. AFAIR they've tried that before and didn't work very well. It's not like suddenly the bottom feeders of the Mobile Market would have the budget to pay for it.
 
Is Mali business model different than ARM? Are ARM licensees allowed to modify it? Or is it sold as is? If the former I can't see Nvidia using GeForce like that at all.
AFAIK Mali are IP blocks and except for deciding the number of "cores" and clock speeds there's no further customization possible. nVidia will want Geforce in everything as controlling the ecossystem is what they'll try to do in the long run.
They successfully did that with CUDA on the GPGPU market by not contributing to open standards while pressing their proprietary ones, then physics in games by forcing single-core x87 paths on CPU PhysX so that only Geforce GPUs could run them at decent performance, and later on the CUDA AI acceleration, and they keep imposing custom code / features on PC games aimed specifically at reducing performance on the competition (like sub-pixel triangles in Hairworks and tesselated invisible seas in the Kepler/Maxwell era).

This is the exact kind of practices we should expect from nvidia (e.g. block ISA evolution and optimization from their competitors and use that leverage to expand into new markets and crush the competition).
This is not good for anyone, industry or consumer. nVidia is obviously not going to use ARM just to boost their server offerings in the long run.

I don't even know how handling the keys to the castle to a single SoC maker can ever be considered a good choice for the consumers, the industry and even the technological advancement in society. It's just a bad event for everyone but nVidia.


I really hope regulators take nvidia's known past of corrupted practices into consideration. And let me be very clear that my opinion on this has nothing to do with the obviously enormous talent of nvidia's engineers. These are just the directors'/executives' trends of choices in the company, nothing else.


Regardless it's not like Mali represents a substantial part of the market anyway, much less the high margins tier.
Mali is in all current SoCs from Samsung, HiSilicon, Amlogic, Rockchip and Xilinx, and save for a few with PowerVR GPUs it's in most SoCs from Mediatek and Unisoc.
If there aren't more Mali GPUs than Adrenos out there, then it's probably a very close second.



Really doubt Nvidia would start selling GeForce tech to third parties. AFAIR they've tried that before and didn't work very well.
What didn't work for nvidia was 4G modem integration after they purchased Icera. After that failed, they saw that competing against Qualcomm on high-margin SoCs would be nearly impossible.
Their ULP GPUs were never considered a failure AFAIK. If the current rumors and inside info are anything to go by, they're about to release a new SoC for an upgraded Switch.
 
Mali is in all current SoCs from Samsung, HiSilicon, Amlogic, Rockchip and Xilinx, and save for a few with PowerVR GPUs it's in most SoCs from Mediatek and Unisoc.
If there aren't more Mali GPUs than Adrenos out there, then it's probably a very close second.

In terms of high tier he mentioned, a very high percentage goes to Apple/IMG GPU IP, the closest second should go to Qualcomm Adreno (as Samsung also uses QCOM SoCs for it's high end smartphones) and Mali coming in third. Outside of the mobile consumer markets IMG has still the lions share in units sold, irrelevant if they don't make any profit from them (like automotive f.e.).

What didn't work for nvidia was 4G modem integration after they purchased Icera. After that failed, they saw that competing against Qualcomm on high-margin SoCs would be nearly impossible.
Their ULP GPUs were never considered a failure AFAIK. If the current rumors and inside info are anything to go by, they're about to release a new SoC for an upgraded Switch.

It wasn't ever a success either; neither in volumes nor in turnover until the high end automotive market started moving for them and they departed from the mobile market. A handheld console design win or two doesn't really suggest that Tegras flooded the smartphone/tablet market at any stage, otherwise they wouldn't had left the market in the first place.
 
It wasn't ever a success either; neither in volumes nor in turnover until the high end automotive market started moving for them and they departed from the mobile market. A handheld console design win or two doesn't really suggest that Tegras flooded the smartphone/tablet market at any stage, otherwise they wouldn't had left the market in the first place.
Regardless, the Switch's success effectively made the ULV Geforce a success.
That accounts for ~65 million ULV Geforces out there.
 
Regardless, the Switch's success effectively made the ULV Geforce a success.
That accounts for ~65 million ULV Geforces out there.

By the time the Switch kicked in they probably already made the first profits from automotive, for which the Switch got more like leftovers from them moving out the mobile consumer market than anything else. 65Mio units isn't going to give you even a break even point for designing, developing and supporting an entire SoC Project like Tegra.
 
Nvidia’s Deal for Arm is a Game Changer
September 18, 2020
The antitrust issues raised by Nvidia’s gambit are clear. A merger would give the GPU leader first crack at Arm’s low-power chip IP, strengthening its AI portfolio encumbered by high-performance but power-hogging graphics processors. The $40 billion deal for Arm—and astounding figure when one stops to consider — gives Nvidia a potentially unassailable position in AI workloads while threatening Intel’s stranglehold on the enterprise datacenter.

Along with Intel, wireless chip maker Qualcomm is also in Nvidia crosshairs. “Nvidia never could get their power budget down and finally gave up trying,” Peddie notes. “Arm could never get their performance up and finally settled for almost good enough.

“Now the magic of those two teams come together and in two, max three, years [and] you’re going to see GPUs that will rival, if not exceed Qualcomm on performance [and] power.”
...
“There will be the naysayers who will whine that the deal is anti-competitive,” analyst Peddie acknowledges. “But why is it any more anti-competitive for Nvidia to have Arm and GPUs than it was for Arm to have CPUs and GPUs or AMD and Intel and Via to have x86 and GPUs?”
https://www.eetimes.com/nvidias-deal-for-arm-is-a-game-changer/#





 
https://www.windowscentral.com/micr...ust-regulators-regarding-nvidias-purchase-arm
Microsoft, Google, and Qualcomm are among major tech companies that have complained to U.S. antitrust regulators regarding NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm Ltd. Bloomberg reports that at least once complaining company wants the deal killed, though it did not specify which. The concern from the tech giants is that NVIDIA purchasing Arm will hurt competition. Microsoft, Google, and Qualcomm are asking antitrust officials to intervene with the deal, according to sources that spoke with Bloomberg that have asked to not be identified because they aren't authorized to speak on the subject publicly.

NVIDIA officially started to acquire Arm limited in September 2020, though rumors of a potential deal started in July 2020. The deal price was valued at $40 billion and was announced by NVIDIA. Arm licenses out its chip designs and software to several major tech companies, including Apple, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Amazon, and many others. You've likely used one of their chips on a phone, tablet, or PC at some point. Bloomberg calls Arm the "Switzerland of the industry" and highlights the concern that NVIDIA owning Arm could limit access to chips for rival companies. According to Bloomberg, NVIDIA claims that there isn't any incentive to change the neutrality of Arm. The company cites the purchase price of Arm as a reason to not change what's working, but Bloomberg states that rival companies and many people don't believe that to be the case.

The irony...
 
Thank God, I hope this kills the deal.
Nvidia becoming the Intel of embedded, mobile, and moving upward computing, without even an AMD to keep them borderline honest or share monopoly spoils is a horrible proposition.
I’d rather see the chinese government, or TSMC buy ARM. Or an industry consortium, but the politics of that would be tricky. But better.
Or perhaps not play capitalistic games with a vital industry function, but keep letting ARM do their thing. That’s not going to happen though.
 
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