I sorta thought it would never happen and now am conflicted. Amd has graphics and CPU, Intel is attempting gpu. Apple has hardware software and chips now. It seems only fair to let Nvidia get stupidly big as well, but they have to stop the madness of endless mergers and so forth at some point. "Welcome to Costco I love you"
This isn't really comparable. NV are free to use the ARM architecture however they want to as long as they have a license. Just like Apple. They are also able to modify and extend the capabilities of whatever they license, however they wish to. Again, just like Apple. Nothing prevents NV from making an Apple M1 style chip using ARM + NV IP if they wanted to.
This isn't like AMD and Intel where x86 is basically locked to those 2 companies and good luck getting them (mostly Intel) to allow you to use x86 however you wish.
Regards,
SB
Fully expect Nv not owning Arm ending up way worse than it would be otherwise.Not that I think Nvidia owning arm would be good.
But that's kind of a double standard, isn't it? nvidia has to license a cpu architecture or isa because they make gpus, but intel and amd can make gpus and tightly control x86 (if it's not just intel doing that exclusively). Not that I think Nvidia owning arm would be good.
If anything it seems like intel should be forced to break off part of it's business into an arm-like license holder, seperate from the actual intel cpu business. That would make things "fair", so to speak. You have x86 as a business that licenses designs and the isa, and Intel that designs, manufactures and sells cpus and gpus to the market.
Fully expect Nv not owning Arm ending up way worse than it would be otherwise.
Watch Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung completely sabotaging any future competition by pushing so much into their own Arm designs that reference SoCs won't be suitable even for low end applications.
Without a proper financial baking Arm will be dead in the water soon.
AMD is effectively licensing x86 from Intel so I fail to see the difference in that aspect. Sure Intel doesn't have to license x86, however, there are things they do have to license, like x64 (64 bit extensions to x86) from AMD.
Regards,
SB
Well, Apple might be willing to do that, but unlikely that Qualcomm or Samsung would be remotely as successful compared to ARM in improving the overall core arch.
So then why can't Nvidia own arm and continue to license the isa or arcthitecture to a select few?
Without a proper financial baking Arm will be dead in the water soon.
Where did I say that it would hurt Nv? Nv won't be hurt by any outcome of this (beyond the effective loss of the money they've paid to Softbank already of course).Nothing prevents NV from doing that as well. So this obviously wouldn't hurt NV in any way shape or form.
The aim is to move beyond what Arm offers, and Apple is already there - the rest of big players will have to follow if they want to compete. It's basically inevitable at this point.And while Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung could do that, they also benefit from not having to spend the R&D required to improve the core capabilities like ARM does. It's cheaper for them to modify and extend the architechture than to do the R&D necessary to keep up with the likes of Intel. Well, Apple might be willing to do that, but unlikely that Qualcomm or Samsung would be remotely as successful compared to ARM in improving the overall core arch.
Yep. Which means that all not-so-big customers will likely be screwed. Which is basically what big tech companies want and not what's best for the market.If ARM IPO's they are just going to become a small ISA licensing firm, with the big customers deciding ISA evolution by committee (which in a decade or less won't include Apple, they are going to ditch ARM regardless).
Anyway, I think that blocking the sale would result in an even worse outcome for Arm ecosystem. But whatever.
Not sure about what you mean with Apple offering "more than Arm offers". If you mean just the custom cores, there's plenty of companies which have successfully done just that for years with each company at some point going back to Arm cores at least for now (seeing Arm spread to more markets it might be time for Qualcomm for example to re-evaluate if they should go back to custom cores).
If Apple were to move away from ARM why on Earth would they necessarily move to RISC-V, or any other externally-derived alternative? They have more money than God and can afford to design their own proprietary ISA & architecture from scratch, and given the way they tend to work why would they not do that?
It would be interesting though. Just like old times.
Yup. It's the same reason why genuinely new instruction set architectures aren't introduced more often. The simple truth is they are hellishly complicated and when your goal is performance/watt/cost, starting from scratch means developing the hardware and the entire dev tool toolchain - and right now Apple lean heavily on LLVM which helps it stay competitive. Using a common architecture and common compiler technology (LLVM) means you benefit from general advances derived from everybody sharing the same technology versus being some technical isolationist.For the same reason they haven't done it so far. "Any possible alternative" by the way INCLUDES the possibility of a complete in house design from scratch.
This isn't really comparable. NV are free to use the ARM architecture however they want to as long as they have a license. Just like Apple. They are also able to modify and extend the capabilities of whatever they license, however they wish to. Again, just like Apple. Nothing prevents NV from making an Apple M1 style chip using ARM + NV IP if they wanted to.
Regards,
SB