SoftBank considering selling ARM

[bitwelder]

Bllomberg reports that SoftBank may be selling ARM, and perhaps Nvidia would be interested in buying (and Apple isn't).
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/07/reports-arm-is-for-sale-and-nvidias-interested-apple-isnt/

[Bassman59]

"There may also be regulatory concerns about Apple owning a key licensee that supplies so many rivals."

This is why Apple is not pursuing a deal.

[MuhScopeBroke]

Isn't Apple all ARM processors now?

[ataradov]

But they don't need to run the company as well. They have architecture license. I assume there is some sort of continuation provision in case if company changes ownership. So Apple is not going to be affected by this at all.

I doubt they care about ARM itself in any meaningful way.

Imagine Apple dealing with licensing Cortex-M0+ core to lots of small companies. Do they need that headache?

[daqq]

Huh, I'm surprised that Intel isn't making a move. There's probably a whole department of people who do nothing else but bang their heads against the wall for not jumping on the ARM bandwagon a decade or more ago.

Isn't Apple all ARM processors now?

Nope. Some of their products are ARM, some of them are x64. Certainly the high powered stuff is Intel.

[ataradov]

Intel used to make ARM processors and even had their own architecture extension. They failed and sold that division.

And those processors were actually really nice from engineering point of view and were very well documented. One of the best documentation I ever had to read.

ARM64 changes things, but probably not that much.

And again, it is a different business - licensing cores and making your own devices. It can also create all sorts of conflicts of interest.

[floobydust]

SoftBank fund has made clown mistakes costing billions, i.e. WeWork, Wirecard etc. so they likely need to raise some money.
2016 they paid $32B for ARM, a 43% premium, seems overpriced for what, a design firm?
ARM's earnings fell 21% in 2019. It's not the cash cow people think.

[SiliconWizard]

Apple uses ARM cores, but also Intel processors. They have used other stuff in the past, and I'm pretty sure they will use something else in the future - IMO they certainly want to keep that option open. If they really wanted to design their own processors entirely, I think they would have already.

And yes, that would cause major issues with competitors knowing that ARM cores are used almost everywhere.

NVidia is another story. They don't have the same potential issues with competitors, and they are a (albeit fabless) semiconductor company. They sell ICs. They have a few products based on them, but mostly for show-off purposes IMO. Designing and selling ICs is their core business. Apple is NOT a semiconductor company, they probably wouldn't know how to run one and I don't think they ever want to be one.

Now what could be interesting with NVidia is that ARM was essentially selling IPs, not physical processors. If it becomes part of NVidia, NVidia may (and is likely to?) start designing and selling processors based on ARM cores, possibly augmented with NVidia coprocessors. That could be interesting, but also a game changer. That could be bad news for some vendors selling ARM-based processors.

[nctnico]

Now what could be interesting with NVidia is that ARM was essentially selling IPs, not physical processors. If it becomes part of NVidia, NVidia may (and is likely to?) start designing and selling processors based on ARM cores, possibly augmented with NVidia coprocessors.

NVidia has been doing this for many years already (ARM cores + NVidia GPU). Look for their Tegra SOC series.

[thm_w]

"There may also be regulatory concerns about Apple owning a key licensee that supplies so many rivals."

This is why Apple is not pursuing a deal.

That and they already paid for a v8 ISA perpetual license.
I'm not sure if they pay the IP royalty per IC on top of that, but seems quite small either way compared to ~40B.

[langwadt]

Huh, I'm surprised that Intel isn't making a move. There's probably a whole department of people who do nothing else but bang their heads against the wall for not jumping on the ARM bandwagon a decade or more ago.

Intel used to make ARMs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM

I'm not sure Intel would be allowed to buy ARM

[Rick Law]

Huh, I'm surprised that Intel isn't making a move. There's probably a whole department of people who do nothing else but bang their heads against the wall for not jumping on the ARM bandwagon a decade or more ago.

Intel used to make ARMs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM

I'm not sure Intel would be allowed to buy ARM

Even if Intel is permitted to acquire ARM by the FTC, it would be an invitation for perpetual scrutiny anyhow.

[MK14]

I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it.
E.g. They don't seem to have made a big push, of arm cores into the server market (but on the other hand, it could be the correct and wisest choice, in business terms). I don't know. (i.e. they were not going to succeed well enough, to make it financially viable, in that sector).

But, the new owners, could be even worse, so I will reserve judgement, until the new owners have succeeded for a while.

I wonder what would happen, if China or a Chinese company, took control of it. That could get interesting, especially if a trade war between the US and China, gets worse, or even turns into a cold war.
I suppose, in theory, the West could use emergency (cold war) powers, to allow the free use of arm licences/patents, without risk of being sued in court. Then later use and/or build up, alternatives to arm cores.
Best to leave politics out of the thread.

[Rick Law]

I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it.
E.g. They don't seem to have made a big push, of arm cores into the server market (but on the other hand, it could be the correct and wisest choice, in business terms). I don't know. (i.e. they were not going to succeed well enough, to make it financially viable, in that sector).

But, the new owners, could be even worse, so I will reserve judgement, until the new owners have succeeded for a while.

I wonder what would happen, if China or a Chinese company, took control of it. That could get interesting, especially if a trade war between the US and China, gets worse, or even turns into a cold war.
I suppose, in theory, the West could use emergency (cold war) powers, to allow the free use of arm licences/patents, without risk of being sued in court. Then later use and/or build up, alternatives to arm cores.
Best to leave politics out of the thread.

[RL: Bold added to quote]

re: "I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it...."

Softbank is a holding company owned by Investment funds.

A holding company is to keep the owned entities separate from the main/parent operating company so (in general) it can be separated (ie:sold) again with minimal entanglement.

Investment funds are not technology focus, they are financially focused.  They would likely restructure and do other financially beneficial things to maximize resale value in the near term.  So, yeah, from our perspective, they probably did not run it well, but that is not their focus.  They want to buy a company cheap, make it (looks) more valuable, and unload it for a profit.

In my view...  When the CEO of a technology company comes from a financial background, the technology/R&D staff better be watching their cheese carefully.  When the CEO of a technology company comes from an accounting background, your cheese is probably on a forklift driving towards the moving van.

[MK14]

re: "I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it...."

Softbank is a holding company owned by Investment funds.

A holding company is to keep the owned entities separate from the main/parent operating company so (in general) it can be separated (ie:sold) again with minimal entanglement.

Investment funds are not technology focus, they are financially focused.  They would likely restructure and do other financially beneficial things to maximize resale value in the near term.  So, yeah, from our perspective, they probably did not run it well, but that is not their focus.  They want to buy a company cheap, make it (looks) more valuable, and unload it for a profit.

In my view...  When the CEO of a technology company comes from a financial background, the technology/R&D staff better be watching their cheese carefully.  When the CEO of a technology company comes from an accounting background, your cheese is probably on a forklift driving towards the moving van.

That makes a lot of sense.
That's why I get worried (just like you just said), when big technological companies, such as Intel/HP, suddenly go from having CEOs (whoever really runs it at the top level), who are/were engineers, to
business/accounting/marketing people instead, it sometimes (in my opinion), goes sour, in the next 5/10/15 years.

E.g. Steve Jobs, being 'thrown' out of Apple, at one time, while he was alive. Being replaced by an ex-Pepsi marketing executive (president of PepsiCo), who became CEO of Apple. Then later, being virtually 'begged on bended knees', to come back, later. Which, of course he did, with great success.

I didn't realise the new owners were a business/holding company, kind of setup. In that case, their intention, may well have been to buy it, 'mess around with it', then a number of years later, sell it off again.

As you say, probably not the best of things for some/all of the workforce, especially in these (virus/economic), trying times.

[MK14]

A year ago China would be interested in buying ARM. Not anymore IMO.

China seems to like/want to control things. E.g. The Huawei/5G infrastructure equipment market.
So, I think they could still be interested in arm, as it would give them a bigger stake/control of the wider technological (especially electronics, mobile phones and computing) fields. It also, would make it harder for possible future sanctions to be placed, in the future.

Arm (presumably), gets all sorts of information, about what is going on in the electronics world, on a world-wide basis. Because so many things have arm chips in them, these days.
That information, could be very valuable to Chinese electronics interests, as it is giving them (sometimes very) advanced knowledge, about what is happening in the future, as regards the electronics/technology sector.

But, just as you were, I'm voicing my own opinion. Also, China could be interested, in the significant number of cpu (and similar), expertise. that arm employs and has built up, over a long period of time.
Especially, as existing trade sanctions (if I understand correctly, from the US), prevent the better cpus available, from legitimately being sold to China.

So, China have been trying to produce their own, home grown cpus, for use in super computers, e.g. for doing giant nuclear weapon simulations. Because the Intel server chips (maybe high end only), were barred from being sold to China (exported), because of US military trade restrictions.

[MK14]

I think they use to say (in the 1980s perhaps, or 1990s+), that there are only, something like 200 people, in the world. Who, (at a significant, high level), know how to do advanced cpu chips.
E.g. Intel bring out the new 486, and there were (I don't know), 500 to 1,000 people in the overall team(s), who designed (and other functions), created it.
But, there were only a handful of people (at Intel), who really properly understood how it really worked, and brought it all together (ran the show), Without those vital engineers/managers, it would be difficult to bring out the next generation 486 processor.
E.g. John Keller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
Who floats about, between AMD, Intel, and other companies, I believe.

So I agree, there are not many people round the world, who really know how to properly/well design cpus, and other stuff.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

 

[coppice]

Intel used to make ARM processors and even had their own architecture extension. They failed and sold that division.

And those processors were actually really nice from engineering point of view and were very well documented. One of the best documentation I ever had to read.

The Intel X-scale processors started out well, but went completely off the rails. They kept cranking up the clock speed and die area, with commensurate increases in energy consumption, without improvements in performance.

[coppice]

If any silicon vendor buys ARM its dead in the water. The rest of the industry is not going to licence something of that nature from a competitor for one day longer than they need to. People like DEC, Intel and TI knew this from the start. They all made heavy use of ARM, but knew it could only flourish and provide a common core architecture as a business with a high degree of independence. ARM being bought by someone like nVidia would be a dream come true to people in the RISC/V business. There is nothing that could propel them faster.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Ideally, when you do:

./configure
make

It shouldn't matter much what CPU it is or isn't.

[langwadt]

A year ago China would be interested in buying ARM. Not anymore IMO.

First I need to debunk a common myth. Many people think when ARM licenses you an advanced (Axx) core, you get an IO specification and the core itself is implemented by the fab, so the designer never sees how the core works.

That might be true in the past, not in SoftBank's reign. I know a few SoC designers that have worked on ARM SoCs with advanced ARM cores like A7 and A53, and what ARM provides is the whole synthesizable source code, detailed synthesize and PNR guidelines and optimization tricks, plus everything you get from ARM document website.

Not one of the big cores but I worked on some arm7tdmi-s SoCs back the early 2000s

[SiliconWizard]

I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it.

Really? Given where they started and where they're at now, and the fact ARM cores are virtually EVERYWHERE, I don't think they have done a bad job at all.

E.g. They don't seem to have made a big push, of arm cores into the server market (but on the other hand, it could be the correct and wisest choice, in business terms).

So? It appears they have realized a long time ago now that their best positioning would be the "mobile" market, so they have essentially focused on that, and have been successful as they have managed to crush the competition on this market - even the big Intel never managed to get good positioning for mobile devices.

In other words, you seem to think their strategy has been the wrong one, for instance because they have never really done anything to capture the "server", or even the desktop computing markets. I do think it's deliberate and likely a wise move. They have just done what they could to first crush, then avoid competition instead of having to deal with it IMHO. But I guess they were lucid enough not to think they had even a tiny chance at crushing the competition on the two above markets.

Now apparently ARM is not doing all that well anymore financially? I haven't really followed that or the possible causes, but this may be due more to their licensing schemes rather than untapped markets.

[coppice]

I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it.
E.g. They don't seem to have made a big push, of arm cores into the server market (but on the other hand, it could be the correct and wisest choice, in business terms). I don't know. (i.e. they were not going to succeed well enough, to make it financially viable, in that sector).

Did you notice how much money went down the drain trying to get more ARMs into the data centre BEFORE Softbank bought ARM?

[MK14]

I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it.

Really? Given where they started and where they're at now, and the fact ARM cores are virtually EVERYWHERE, I don't think they have done a bad job at all.

Before I delve into answering your post more fully. Your answer confuses me ?

When you say "fact ARM cores are virtually EVERYWHERE".

That was essentially the situation, when SoftBank purchased arm, in 2016, almost exactly 4 years to the day.

I.e. I wasn't criticising the original owners of arm, who did a rather good job.

https://www.ft.com/content/235b1af4-4c7f-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc

SoftBank to acquire UK’s Arm Holdings for £24.3bn

[MK14]

I'm pleased they are selling it. Because I don't think they have done a brilliant job of running it.
E.g. They don't seem to have made a big push, of arm cores into the server market (but on the other hand, it could be the correct and wisest choice, in business terms). I don't know. (i.e. they were not going to succeed well enough, to make it financially viable, in that sector).

Did you notice how much money went down the drain trying to get more ARMs into the data centre BEFORE Softbank bought ARM?

By and large, yes. That's why, I said it could of been a correct 'business' decision.

But (even if it was the CORRECT business decision), maybe, I'm not 100%% convinced. because there was a potential 'small server and small PC like computer' markets, such as microservers.
Which, seems to have been absorbed by the likes of Raspberry PI's and similar, single board (tiny) computers.

I.e. We already have many mobile phones and tablets, being arm based.

Why not have many microservers and tiny (not PC compatible) PC's, as well ?
(Although there are some/many arm based microservers, such as some NAS boxes).

EDIT:
But I concede. That I DON'T have the market size/profit information, that arm would have available. So, maybe the market place there, is too small, competitive and unprofitable.
Also, arm DON'T actually sell the processors or hardware as such. It is up to other companies, to licence the available arm cpus, put them into production and then sell the microservers, servers and small (non-PC compatible) PC computers, to others.
If that doesn't take place, you can't fully blame arm for that.

AMD, seem to be having a very successful time, with the various new Ryzen cpus, in the desktop and server, market places. So, even Intel are having difficulties, let alone arm in those market areas, who weren't even in those market segments (arm), to any great extent (unless you count the rather small units, such as Raspberry PI's, which have been a success).

[SiliconWizard]

When you say "fact ARM cores are virtually EVERYWHERE".

That was essentially the situation, when SoftBank purchased arm, in 2016, almost exactly 4 years to the day.

I.e. I wasn't criticising the original owners of arm, who did a rather good job.

OK, I probably got confused a bit by that too, as I was mainly talking about the general history of ARM.
But as coppice said, their late attempts at trying to get into the server or desktop computing markets were essentially mistakes and cost them a lot of money.

I don't know how much of the current situation is due to SoftBank. They probably just tried to cut the losses.

I still don't think there's really a market for "microservers" or "small PC computers", at least beyond what already is there. I don't really believe in the microservers thing. What purpose would that serve exactly? Are you thinking about "home" servers or NAS stuff? Many of them are already ARM-based, so that's not a new maket to tap into.

As to small PCs? Traditional desktop computing has already largely declined in favor of mobile devices, in which you already find - mainly - ARM-based processors. Is there really an intermediate market worth investigating at this point? Not so sure. There's a very fine line these days between a small, low-power laptop and a decent tablet. As to any low-power PC that's not a laptop - yeah, this is declining, so targeting a declining market is probably not really smart.

As to what could ARM do to get better results, I don't know. As I mentioned, I suspect they should rethink their licensing schemes to begin with. And yes, address long-term issues such as RISC-V. RISC-V is still not much of a threat in the western world, but still something to keep an eye on, and it's going to be in China soon and probably other eastern countries. I'm wondering whether open-sourcing some ARM cores could be a long-term solution for instance. It would have to be thought through with a complete strategy. Don't know how that would work out.

[MK14]

Are you thinking about "home" servers or NAS stuff? Many of them are already ARM-based, so that's not a new maket to tap into.

As to small PCs?

Those are exactly what I was referring to (but I was also referring to bigger real (arm based) servers) as well, in my earlier posts.

You and coppice, can easily be right.
I am just not geared up to the right, precise business information, to know, if they (various owners of arm), could have done any better in those markets. I.e. take those comments with a large grain of salt (that is, not very correct or accurate, as regards the business merits of that market for arm, tl;dr = Yes I could of been wrong).

I agree, you can already buy, arm based microservers, such as (some versions of) Synlogoy NAS's (which in real terms are microservers, marketed as NAS's). But what I wanted is something which is general purpose, and usable without being tied into someone else's software base, and which doesn't let you install your own OS's and software, in a custom sort of way.
Ie. The Synology NAS's, primarily are limited to Synology software, and their (somewhat limited) packages.

The Raspberry PI (e.g. 4), serves the role of (home use) microserver and/or tiny PC. But, it would be nice to have something ready cased, and more ready to go. Also, having Sata port(s), and one or two other things, would help as well.

Late EDIT: Shortened, turned business section of post into more like a summary.

[bsfeechannel]

A year ago it was China vs the US, and now after the pandemic, it seems the answer is clear -- it is China vs the entire West

On December 18, 2018, Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders awarded ten foreigners with the China Reform Friendship Medal, China's highest award, at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up.

Those were:

Alain Mérieux, French, head of a medical conglomerate, who has contributed since 1978 to China's health care industry and worked closely with China during major public health issues.

Werner Gerich, German, engineer, dubbed Mr. Quality by the Chinese,  who, arrived in 1984, was hired as a consultant at a state-run factory in Wuhan. Contributed to reforming aspects such as product quality, factory hygiene, company organisation structure and factory workers’ livelihoods. Died in 2003. There's a bronze bust of him in Wuhan.

Klaus Schwab, German, engineer and economist, founder and executive chairman of the WEF, who is an openly supporter of the "Belt and Road Initiative".

Konosuke Matsushita, Japanese, founder of Panasonic, who advised Deng Xiaoping in 1978 on how China could work with overseas companies on technical matters and on establishing joint ventures. Panasonic became a household name for Chinese families. Matsushita died in 1989.

Masayoshi Ohira, Japanese foreign minister, who established formal diplomatic relations between China and Japan in 1972, advised Deng, and provided long-term financial assistance and support in the early stage of the opening up. Ohira died in 1980.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's prime minister, who developed a long friendship whith Deng. Deng said, in 1992, that Singapore was an example for China. Although of Chinese descent, Lee's first language was English and he attended the London School of Economics and graduated from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, in law. Lee died in 2015.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, Spanish, former president of the International Olympic Commitee, who helped China emerge as a major sporting power and fulfill China's 100 -year dream of hosting the Olympics in 2008. Samaranch died in 2010.

Stephen Perry, English, chairman of the 48 Group, an independent business network commited to promote links with China. He continues the work of his father Jack Perry, who in as early as the 1950s, developed business ties to break China's isolation from the West. He's considered one of Britain's top experts on China.

Maurice Greenberg, American, former chairman and CEO of American International Group. AIG was founded 100  years ago by the American Cornelius V. Starr in Shanghai, China. Greenberg was pivotal in helping China to have US governmental approval for permanent trade relations, for China to join the WTO, and donated millions of dollars to environmental, educational, medical and cultural causes in China.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, American neuroscientist, investment banker and corporate strategist. Kuhn is a long-time advisor to China's leaders and the Chinese government, to multinational corporations on China strategies and transactions. He's a columnist of China Daily and host and co-producer of "Closer to China" and "China's Challenge" TV series. Heck, he's even an advocate of Xi's eternal presidency and is the author of books with themes dear to the CCP.

Of those ten foreigners, seven are Westerners. Five are alive. And of those, two are American. Although you might find people out there who would say that Japan and Singapore are also part of the West, what is important to see here is that the West, directly or indirectly, is not an enemy of China. The West is a supporter.
.
Maybe what the Covid-19 pandemic made clear is that everybody is a bit disappoint.



And some may be confusing it with enmity.

[olkipukki]

Bllomberg reports that SoftBank may be selling ARM, and perhaps Nvidia would be interested in buying (and Apple isn't).

Let's be positive, neither IBM or Oracle are not interested right now 

Although, why not? ARM-only world became too boring 

[soFPG]

There are some chinese bluetooth SoCs with a proprietary 32-bit RISC CPU claiming they have better power / performance ratio than Cortex M0.

Not sure how valid that statement is but seems like ARM technology is not the way to go for some companies (incl. Espressif). Of course, proprietary CPUs often have worse debug interfaces / software support.

I doubt that with licensed ARM cores something like the ESP8266 or ESP32 could be as cheap as they are.

In case it is not clear, we are not racist. We welcome anyone who is willing to contribute to China and to abide by Chinese laws.

Most engineers are driven by their excitement for the subject. Maybe USA didn't offer to those people what they were searching for, so they went abroad.
This doesn't necessarily mean that they accept the Chinese system.

[soFPG]

W600/W601 is a family of low cost...

Very interesting, learned something new today

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Realtek makes those too (ARM+WiFi): Realtek RTL8720DN, dual-band 2.4Ghz / 5Ghz Wi-Fi

E.g.:
https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-Terminal-p-4509.html

[soFPG]

And more you can learn is -- don't touch them.

I've already looked at them some time ago and just didn't remember. But what I am remembering now is exactly what you said. Bad software support.
Pretty much the same for chinese bluetooth SoCs. Don't know why they went with their own core (e.g. Telink, which already is the best in terms of software support I came across) if ARM licensing doesn't seem to be a monetary problem.

[SiliconWizard]

The Raspberry PI (e.g. 4), serves the role of (home use) microserver and/or tiny PC. But, it would be nice to have something ready cased, and more ready to go. Also, having Sata port(s), and one or two other things, would help as well.

You can find many different SBCs these days, some with SATA, even M2, PCI express, etc.
Some have cases you can buy too. On most of them, you can either install Android or some Linux distribution.
Look up SBCs - there are now A LOT of them available beyond the RPi.

There are various sources to find them, you can start here for instance: https://www.hackerboards.com/home.php
Example: http://www.banana-pi.org/w2.html

As to ready to go, well, you can also find small boxes, essentially based on some kind of SBC. Most of them are either sold as NAS solutions, or as multimedia boxes. The latter usually provided with Android. Installing another OS is rarely possible though, as they are essentially fully-custom, undocumented boards. But if you want an Android device with an ARM processor that isn't a mobile phone or a tablet, you can certainly buy that.

Else I would stick to SBCs. But still - keep in mind that most issues with them these days (when they are decently designed) is not with the hardware, so ARM could not do much here to promote them, but with the software. Software support is often NOT complete, documentation is sometimes lacking, etc. That is probably due to... the lack of market.

[MK14]

You can find many different SBCs these days, some with SATA, even M2, PCI express, etc.
Some have cases you can buy too. On most of them, you can either install Android or some Linux distribution.
Look up SBCs - there are now A LOT of them available beyond the RPi.

There are various sources to find them, you can start here for instance: https://www.hackerboards.com/home.php
Example: http://www.banana-pi.org/w2.html

As to ready to go, well, you can also find small boxes, essentially based on some kind of SBC. Most of them are either sold as NAS solutions, or as multimedia boxes. The latter usually provided with Android. Installing another OS is rarely possible though, as they are essentially fully-custom, undocumented boards. But if you want an Android device with an ARM processor that isn't a mobile phone or a tablet, you can certainly buy that.

Else I would stick to SBCs. But still - keep in mind that most issues with them these days (when they are decently designed) is not with the hardware, so ARM could not do much here to promote them, but with the software. Software support is often NOT complete, documentation is sometimes lacking, etc. That is probably due to... the lack of market.

Thanks!
There is a bewildering amount of choices, at various price points. Also, some difficult choices to make.
Especially, to go the arm route e.g. Raspberry PI, the X86 direction, or an off the shelf NAS box solution (which sometimes is also an arm processor).

EDIT:
What I've found (or been told, and/or from other sources), is that although there is a huge number of options. Many of the options, are rather poorly supported as regards, OS's, other software, and drivers (especially in the x86 world, where it might mean your favourite operating system, can't install and/or be truly useful, because of a lack of drivers, for the new Soc devices).
Taking that into account, it dramatically reduces, your choices, to only a few (well supported) options.

[wraper]

NVidia is another story. They don't have the same potential issues with competitors, and they are a (albeit fabless) semiconductor company. They sell ICs. They have a few products based on them, but mostly for show-off purposes IMO. Designing and selling ICs is their core business. Apple is NOT a semiconductor company, they probably wouldn't know how to run one and I don't think they ever want to be one.

Apple IS a fabless semiconductor company since quite a while ago. Their CPUs use ARM instruction set but have custom cores since A6 SoC.

[SiliconWizard]

NVidia is another story. They don't have the same potential issues with competitors, and they are a (albeit fabless) semiconductor company. They sell ICs. They have a few products based on them, but mostly for show-off purposes IMO. Designing and selling ICs is their core business. Apple is NOT a semiconductor company, they probably wouldn't know how to run one and I don't think they ever want to be one.

Apple IS a fabless semiconductor company since quite a while ago. Their CPUs use ARM instruction set but have custom cores since A6 SoC.

No they aren't.
They have been designing their own CPUs (at least for their mobile products) based on ARM cores for a while, but AFAIK, that's strictly for their own use. I don't think they sell a single Apple processor to any third-party. Or do they?
So that doesn't make them a semiconductor company. They don't sell ICs. They sell products. So, yeah, they have the internal resources and know-how to design CPUs around ARM cores, but that's not their core business and they still wouldn't want nor probably be able to become a semiconductor company, marketing and selling processors to third parties, handling the tech support for that, even architecturing processors for other uses than their own, and so on. That's a whole other business.

[SiliconWizard]

What I've found (or been told, and/or from other sources), is that although there is a huge number of options. Many of the options, are rather poorly supported as regards, OS's, other software, and drivers (especially in the x86 world, where it might mean your favourite operating system, can't install and/or be truly useful, because of a lack of drivers, for the new Soc devices).
Taking that into account, it dramatically reduces, your choices, to only a few (well supported) options.

Another factor beyond software support is cost. Sure the basic SBCs such as the RPi are cheap, but at this point, the more capable, ARM-based SBCs (with SATA, M2, several GB of RAM, etc) can often be more expensive, in the end, than, say, a typical Mini-ITX motherboard with an entry-level x86 CPU, especially when you factor in all required accessories, additional components, etc.

Yet another factor, hardware-wise, is heat management. Many of them do not come with any heatsinking solution, and the additional heatsinks you can buy are often not enough to get proper heat dissipation unless you use the board with pretty light loads. Finding or making proper heat management may be a bit of a headache, and will add cost.

But software support is certainly a problem, as I already mentioned. It's often pretty poor, and a given SBC is rarely maintained for more than a year, maybe two, after which the manufacturer usually releases a new one and stops supporting the old models. And when some SBC comes out, software support is often not complete.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Armbian works very well in all these chinese ARM SBCs. Install your favourite desktop manager if you need one, apt install whatever else you need, and if there isn't a package simply download the sources and ./configure and make. That's all folks, everything works 99.9% of the times.

https://www.armbian.com/download/

My favourite least expensive SBC is the Orange Pi PC (1GB / 4 cores @1.4GHz / $15), and on the more expensive side the Odroid XU4 (2GB / 8 cores @2GHz / $49).

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Apple IS a fabless semiconductor company since quite a while ago. Their CPUs use ARM instruction set but have custom cores since A6 SoC.

No they aren't.

Yes, they are fab-less, as far as I know, they buy Intels and Samsung makes their ARM chips (or is it TSMC now?)

[nctnico]

The Raspberry PI (e.g. 4), serves the role of (home use) microserver and/or tiny PC. But, it would be nice to have something ready cased, and more ready to go. Also, having Sata port(s), and one or two other things, would help as well.

There is a whole flurry of ATX motherboards with an ARM CPU on it. A random pick from Google:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2015/03/27/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-is-an-arm-server-motherboard-powered-by-applied-micro-x-gene-1-soc/

[SiliconWizard]

Apple IS a fabless semiconductor company since quite a while ago. Their CPUs use ARM instruction set but have custom cores since A6 SoC.

No they aren't.

Yes, they are fab-less, as far as I know, they buy Intels and Samsung makes their ARM chips (or is it TSMC now?)

You didn't read what I wrote, nor what the point was.

[MK14]

Another factor beyond software support is cost. Sure the basic SBCs such as the RPi are cheap, but at this point, the more capable, ARM-based SBCs (with SATA, M2, several GB of RAM, etc) can often be more expensive, in the end, than, say, a typical Mini-ITX motherboard with an entry-level x86 CPU, especially when you factor in all required accessories, additional components, etc.

Yet another factor, hardware-wise, is heat management. Many of them do not come with any heatsinking solution, and the additional heatsinks you can buy are often not enough to get proper heat dissipation unless you use the board with pretty light loads. Finding or making proper heat management may be a bit of a headache, and will add cost.

But software support is certainly a problem, as I already mentioned. It's often pretty poor, and a given SBC is rarely maintained for more than a year, maybe two, after which the manufacturer usually releases a new one and stops supporting the old models. And when some SBC comes out, software support is often not complete.

That is exactly what I think as well!
Word perfect!

The Raspberry PI 4, seems to tick most of the (good) boxes, and what limits it has, often have cheap/easy workarounds.
 E.g. There are stick on heatsinks available for it (and even tiny fans, I think, if you really want them).
The software availability for the Raspberry PI 4, is rather good as well (relatively).
But it still has to take a big back seat to a popular X86 solution (i.e. mainstream, such as Ryzen, not a very cheap Intel Atom, SoC, with limited/poor driver support for Linux and other non-windows OS's).

I suppose, part of the blame is arm themselves (NOT arm as a company necessarily, buy the entire industry surrounding the arm cpus).
Because, with the X86 (ignoring some too cheap, incompatible driver, SoC, Intel cheapo processors, i.e. very cut down Atoms and stuff, which mainly only really work well, under Windows OS's), they show huge compatibility, between even some ancient processors in the line up Intel/AMD/Cyrix(gone now)/Via(rare now) etc. Even future cpus, will tend to be compatible as well.

I.e. You can take some software X86, and run it on todays cpis, or old Pentiums, or new cpus, which haven't even been designed yet, but will be downwardly compatible.

Conversely, there is a bewildering range of arm chip architecture versions. Which, although sometimes offer maybe 1 (or 2 ?) generations of compatibility. In general, can be completely incompatible, between different versions, without recompiling software, and potentially other (various levels of difficulty) changes, to make it work//compatible again.
I.e. Early Arm1 software (if there ever was an Arm1, so whatever the first was, maybe Arm2 or 3), won't work on the latest Arm processors (ignoring emulation, recompiling and other workarounds).

But, 386 software (for example), should still work, even on the latest Intel/Amd X86 cpus. Although it might need an updated version of DOS, or virtualisation. In order to actually run it.
But that is more because Windows 10 doesn't support ancient software, rather than the cpu, which actually probably still does.
As far as I know, an ancient 8088 program, would still run on the latest X86 cpus.

Although arm have their reasons for not supporting older generations (except perhaps the last generation). because it makes their chips a bit faster, cleaner and better/cheaper.
It hinders (arguably), the software creation process.
The various (non-standard) SoC features, are another layer of incompatibility.

tl;dr
In theory, a quick recompile, and the old software (arm), can run on the new arm hardware. In practice, things are never, anywhere near, as simple/quick as that in practice. Unfortunately.
So to me, that significantly favours X86 over arm. If OS's are involved.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Also, having Sata port(s), and one or two other things, would help as well.

Most do not have SATA, if you need it use a USB(3?)->SATA and Bob's your uncle. Most of these SBCs can't or can barely keep up with gigabit ethernet (125 MB/s), and the same goes for SATA: you won't get full SATA throughput speeds in any of them.

If the performance were comparable to an Intel CPU, Intel would be bankrupt by now, thus it is NOT, keep that in mind. What you get is the CPU of a mobile phone in a pcb: that's what these SBCs are.

EDIT:
Oh, and by the way, mobile CPUs are not designed to run at full chooch all the time.

[MK14]

The Raspberry PI (e.g. 4), serves the role of (home use) microserver and/or tiny PC. But, it would be nice to have something ready cased, and more ready to go. Also, having Sata port(s), and one or two other things, would help as well.

There is a whole flurry of ATX motherboards with an ARM CPU on it. A random pick from Google:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2015/03/27/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-is-an-arm-server-motherboard-powered-by-applied-micro-x-gene-1-soc/

Over the years. Whenever I've heard about things like that. They have been some combination of:
>>Way, way too expensive (e.g. £1100 for a motherboard including cpu), when much cheaper and more powerful options (X86), are available, for a fraction of that cost.
>>Completely unavailable, or unavailable in my country and/or unavailable except for big business orders
>>Had useless (opinion), ancient, very low (processing power cpus. When even the latest Raspberry PI's, have much more modern/faster arms.
>>There are continual promises, that it will be ready and launched 'NEXTYEAR'. Where nextyear, just never occurs, and the project gets cancelled.

E.g. AMD K12 Arm cpus.  https://www.fudzilla.com/news/pc-hardware/39179-jim-keller-was-not-a-big-fan-of-k12

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

[ ... ]
As far as I know, an ancient 8088 program, would still run on the latest X86 cpus.
[ ... ]

You seem to think in terms of .exe(s), like a windows user... but Linux doesn't work like that. You apt install things, and if it isn't in the apt repository, you download the sources and ./configure and make it. That's how it works in Linux. And it works very very well, 99.999% of the times.

Edit:
A .exe program has no value in Linux... because the source code is available. You don't need to keep it saved like if it were a treasure, a .exe, because you can always recompile the thing for the latest and greatest CPU you just bought.

[MK14]

Also, having Sata port(s), and one or two other things, would help as well.

Most do not have SATA, if you need it use a USB(3?)->SATA and Bob's your uncle. Most of these SBCs can't or can barely keep up with gigabit ethernet (125 MB/s), and the same goes for SATA: you won't get full SATA throughput speeds in any of them.

If the performance were comparable to an Intel CPU, Intel would be bankrupt by now, thus it is NOT, keep that in mind. What you get is the CPU of a mobile phone in an pcb: that's what these SBCs are.

Thanks for that.
That is exactly what I am planning to do (unless the onboard SD card, is fast enough, big enough and its relative lack of data integrity/reliability/endurance, is acceptable for the intended uses).
Essentially, just buying an external type USB3 interfaced HDD/SSD, or even a flash pen. Depending on the intended applications.
The Lack of real Sata port(s), does kind of hurt, if you are trying to do big things. Such as have one or two 4TB HDDs, to make a big NAS box. USB3 is usable for that, but a bit of a limiting factor.
I suspect heavy duty, fast, totally reliable, uses, would much prefer Sata, over USB3, connections.
If you want RAID mirrors (soft raid, as hard raid, would need proper server hardware, to do it any justice), for improved data-integrity, then Sata becomes even more important.

Disks are changing anyway. As everyone is gradually migrating from HDDs, to SSDs. Which further complicates the issue (since SSDs can be really fast, if you have interfaces that support their full high speed nature).

[wraper]

NVidia is another story. They don't have the same potential issues with competitors, and they are a (albeit fabless) semiconductor company. They sell ICs. They have a few products based on them, but mostly for show-off purposes IMO. Designing and selling ICs is their core business. Apple is NOT a semiconductor company, they probably wouldn't know how to run one and I don't think they ever want to be one.

Apple IS a fabless semiconductor company since quite a while ago. Their CPUs use ARM instruction set but have custom cores since A6 SoC.

No they aren't.
They have been designing their own CPUs (at least for their mobile products) based on ARM cores for a while, but AFAIK, that's strictly for their own use. I don't think they sell a single Apple processor to any third-party. Or do they?
So that doesn't make them a semiconductor company. They don't sell ICs. They sell products. So, yeah, they have the internal resources and know-how to design CPUs around ARM cores, but that's not their core business and they still wouldn't want nor probably be able to become a semiconductor company, marketing and selling processors to third parties, handling the tech support for that, even architecturing processors for other uses than their own, and so on. That's a whole other business.

You have some strange logic. How by not selling ICs to 3rd party you stop being a semiconductor company? Their ICs go into every single phone/tablet/laptop they sell, and that's a huge amount. Way more than many "true semiconductor companies" produce. Not a core business? If production is halted they will have nothing to sell at all. Also those are not "ARM" cores in a meaning that they are cores designed by ARM. They design their own cores. If they wanted to start selling SoC to 3rd parties, they could start doing so in a blink of an eye.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

The Lack of real Sata port(s), does kind of hurt, if you are trying to do big things. Such as have one or two 4TB HDDs, to make a big NAS box. USB3 is usable for that, but a bit of a limiting factor.
I suspect heavy duty, fast, totally reliable, uses, would much prefer Sata, over USB3, connections.
If you want RAID mirrors (soft raid, as hard raid, would need proper server hardware, to do it any justice), for improved data-integrity, then Sata becomes even more important.

No problem at all, because 125MB/s (gigabit ethernet speed) is less than the max speed of SATA(3), so the disk(s), even if connected through USB3, won't be the bottleneck.

Software RAID is fully functional in Linux and works very very well, it's called mdadm (apt install mdadm). You can make any raid you want with that, look: https://linux.die.net/man/8/mdadm

[MK14]

No problem at all, because 125MB/s (gigabit ethernet speed) is less than the max speed of SATA(3), so the disk(s), even if connected through USB3, won't be the bottleneck.

Software RAID is fully functional in Linux and works very very well, it's called mdadm (apt install mdadm). You can make any raid you want with that, look: https://linux.die.net/man/8/mdadm

That's useful to know, thanks.

I prefer software raid (if using raid), over hardware raid. Because if the hardware breaks, with softraid, you are not forced to buy/find, the exact original hardware. Which can be difficult.

[nctnico]

[ ... ]
As far as I know, an ancient 8088 program, would still run on the latest X86 cpus.
[ ... ]

You seem to think in terms of .exe(s), like a windows user... but Linux doesn't work like that. You apt install things, and if it isn't in the apt repository, you download the sources and ./configure and make it. That's how it works in Linux. And it works very very well, 99.999% of the times.

Edit:
A .exe program has no value in Linux... because the source code is available. You don't need to keep it saved like if it were a treasure, a .exe, because you can always recompile the thing for the latest and greatest CPU you just bought.

No. Not at all. Linux programs depend heavily on library versions and compiler versions. Compiling a Linux program 5 years later can be a major challenge. The best way by far is to pack the binary together with all the libraries it uses and store that. You'll have a much bigger chance of being able to run the program later on.

[SiliconWizard]

NVidia is another story. They don't have the same potential issues with competitors, and they are a (albeit fabless) semiconductor company. They sell ICs. They have a few products based on them, but mostly for show-off purposes IMO. Designing and selling ICs is their core business. Apple is NOT a semiconductor company, they probably wouldn't know how to run one and I don't think they ever want to be one.

Apple IS a fabless semiconductor company since quite a while ago. Their CPUs use ARM instruction set but have custom cores since A6 SoC.

No they aren't.
They have been designing their own CPUs (at least for their mobile products) based on ARM cores for a while, but AFAIK, that's strictly for their own use. I don't think they sell a single Apple processor to any third-party. Or do they?
So that doesn't make them a semiconductor company. They don't sell ICs. They sell products. So, yeah, they have the internal resources and know-how to design CPUs around ARM cores, but that's not their core business and they still wouldn't want nor probably be able to become a semiconductor company, marketing and selling processors to third parties, handling the tech support for that, even architecturing processors for other uses than their own, and so on. That's a whole other business.

You have some strange logic. How by not selling ICs to 3rd party you stop being a semiconductor company? Their ICs go into every single phone/tablet/laptop they sell, and that's a huge amount. Way more than many "true semiconductor companies" produce. Not a core business? If production is halted they will have nothing to sell at all. Also those are not "ARM" cores in a meaning that they are cores designed by ARM. They design their own cores. If they wanted to start selling SoC to 3rd parties, they could start doing so in a blink of an eye.

That's not strange logic. Making your own chips doesn't make you a "semiconductor company" when it's absolutely not your core business. Just like when they design specific cables at Apple, and have them manufactured elsewhere, they are not a cable company. They just design specific components for their products that they can't find off-the-shelf. They design a myriad of parts actually. They have always designed they own cases. Does that make them a case/enclosure company? Nope.

Additionally, even for CPUs, they still do use off-the-shelf CPUs for some products, they have in the past, and IMHO they are likely to in the future as well. Sure they design their own ARM-based CPUs these days for some of their products, but if tomorrow better off-the-shelf CPUs come up, at a better price, I'm pretty sure they could abandon their own CPU line and move on.

And no, they wouldn't get into the business of selling their CPUs that easily. It's a completely different thing. Once you do that, you need a different mindset. You need to know how to promote and sell semiconductors. You need to design them with compromises in mind - something I'm sure Apple would never want to do - you need to take customers' requests into account, you need to provide support, a lot of things that would completely derail Apple from what they do and are good at.

And with that in mind, you seem to have focused on that term instead of seeing the difference between Apple and NVidia. Apple's business is again not to sell semiconductors, it is for NVidia. It's a completely different business, and it's easy to see why Apple wouldn't want to do that (and probably why it would be likely to be a very bad move for Apple IMHO.)

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

No. Not at all. Linux programs depend heavily on library versions and compiler versions. Compiling a Linux program 5 years later can be a major challenge. The best way by far is to pack the binary together with all the libraries it uses and store that. You'll have a much bigger chance of being able to run the program later on.

You can always touch the source code, use the (new) library headers, look at the (compiler) errors and do what it takes to match the two things to compile, can't you? Unless the new libraries' API is now completely different (very rare!), that's easy and the right way to do it, IMHO.

[Bassman59]

SoftBank fund has made clown mistakes costing billions, i.e. WeWork, Wirecard etc. so they likely need to raise some money.

This is the whole of the truth.

The rest, like the following three pages, is, as the rabbi said, commentary.

[novicefedora]

NVIDIA uses ARM in Nintendo Switch(they are selling their Tegra which they couldn't sell as a tablet), they also use it in their Jetson devices. What would NVIDIA buying ARM mean for consumers? Good or bad?

I'm surprised Qualcomm and Broadcomm are not interested in buying ARM.

[MK14]

NVIDIA uses ARM in Nintendo Switch(they are selling their Tegra which they couldn't sell as a tablet), they also use it in their Jetson devices. What would NVIDIA buying ARM mean for consumers? Good or bad?

I'm surprised Qualcomm and Broadcomm are not interested in buying ARM.

I don't think it would suit, "Qualcomm and Broadcomm"'s style.

Arm seems to need to go into lots of different companies (round the world), and support them. Such, that they buy arm licence(s), along with all the technical support they need (hopefully), to get the arm cores successfully implemented, into the various silicon dies, that the customer ends up using/choosing.
I think, customer support, is a big part of the business model.

Whereas "Qualcomm and Broadcomm", seem to have a business model (I have been led to understand), which has very few customers, but they are very big ones, who buy huge number's of their products. So, "Qualcomm and Broadcomm"'s, only has to support a relatively small number of very big customers.

Which is why (I have also been led to believe), they ("Qualcomm and Broadcomm"), don't sell (or allow to be sold), their chips (as in bare ones, e.g. as used on Raspberry PI's) to one-off consumers, such as hobbyists, or small, one man band businesses.
Unlike, e.g. Microchip with their PIC (and other) chips, who do (probably actively) support such things.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I'm surprised Qualcomm and Broadcomm are not interested in buying ARM.

A curiosity: Sophie Wilson is currently a director at the technology conglomerate Broadcom Inc.

[SiliconWizard]

NVIDIA uses ARM in Nintendo Switch(they are selling their Tegra which they couldn't sell as a tablet), they also use it in their Jetson devices. What would NVIDIA buying ARM mean for consumers? Good or bad?

This is oddly put. *Nintendo* uses NVidia Tegra SOCs. NVidia doesn't "use" anything in Nintendo products, they "sell" SoCs to Nintendo.

Jetson boards are NVidia products - which IMO are in the category I mentioned earlier, show-off products rather than products meant to sell on a very large scale, make lots of cash and really be used widely in any end-product. I'm pretty sure they are just meant to give more exposure to their Tegra SOCs which they'd probably like to sell more than they actually do.

ASUS has also used Tegra SOCs though, both in phones and tablets. I don't know if they still do in their latest models?

As to what the merge would mean in the end, nobody knows. Whereas that could be opportunity to release some interesting processors/SOCs in the short to mid-term, I'm not sure it would be that good in the long term. ARM model, which has been to only sell IPs, not actual chips, has had the big benefit (IMO) of not having to deal with end-products. That means (IMO) they could better focus on architectures. If ARM merges with an actual semiconductor company, that may mean some internal "conflicts" of interest, and decreased innovation in the long run. So whereas NVidia looks like a better candidate than Qualcomm, and of course even a lot more so than Apple, I'm not too sure this would be good news, and least in the long term. But if the merge ever happens, I'm not sure it will last forever either anyway.

Your mention of Tegra SOCs is interesting as Tegra may be an indication that NVidia may not manage to do much wonders owning ARM - after all, Tegra doesn't seem to have been all that successful so far, for instance. And if, over time, NVidia realizes they can't really manage to sell enough ARM-based SOCs even when owning ARM (which I can't predict, but is not unlikely), they would just end up having to "maintain" ARM just as it is now, selling IPs to third parties, and at some point may then decide to sell it.

Point is, I'm wondering whether companies like ARM are not better off being completely independent.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

What I thought when the japanese (softbank) bought ARM: that's the end of it.

[nctnico]

NVIDIA uses ARM in Nintendo Switch(they are selling their Tegra which they couldn't sell as a tablet), they also use it in their Jetson devices. What would NVIDIA buying ARM mean for consumers? Good or bad?

This is oddly put. *Nintendo* uses NVidia Tegra SOCs. NVidia doesn't "use" anything in Nintendo products, they "sell" SoCs to Nintendo.

Jetson boards are NVidia products - which IMO are in the category I mentioned earlier, show-off products rather than products meant to sell on a very large scale, make lots of cash and really be used widely in any end-product. I'm pretty sure they are just meant to give more exposure to their Tegra SOCs which they'd probably like to sell more than they actually do.

Well, the Jetson modules seem to be fairly popular. NVidia has a reasonably sized eco-system around it (with a lot of active users), there is a broad range of models with different price/performance levels and there is long term availability. I designed a Jetson module into a board of a customer recently. The modules seem easier to get in small quantities compared to Tegra chips. Still the total solution isn't cheap but for lower volume it is viable.

[nctnico]

No. Not at all. Linux programs depend heavily on library versions and compiler versions. Compiling a Linux program 5 years later can be a major challenge. The best way by far is to pack the binary together with all the libraries it uses and store that. You'll have a much bigger chance of being able to run the program later on.

You can always touch the source code, use the (new) library headers, look at the (compiler) errors and do what it takes to match the two things to compile, can't you? Unless the new libraries' API is now completely different (very rare!), that's easy and the right way to do it, IMHO.

That is a major PITA to do and often impossible to do in a reasonable time frame. The compiler can be incompatible too. Recently I had to downgrade GCC on a Linux machine (VM) to compile a huge project.

[MK14]

I'm surprised Qualcomm and Broadcomm are not interested in buying ARM.

A curiosity: Sophie Wilson is currently a director at the technology conglomerate Broadcom Inc.

As regards, Sophie Wilson, it gets complicated.
They did (arguably with others) invent/start/create the arm processor chip. In her case, especially the original instruction set.
But, they were working for the 'original' arm company, that had produced the BBC microcomputer in the UK.
As later arm cores began to be created, they (arm) invented/created the 'Thumb' instruction set(s). But, ironically, Sophie Wilson, (reportedly), actually disagreed with the 'Thumb' instruction set concept, when it was first proposed.

So, historically, they carried on and decided to go with the 'Thumb' instruction set incarnations. Also, at some point, Sophie Wilson, left the company.
I think that was BEFORE, the arm company existed, as we know it.
So, the arm core licencing company, didn't actual have Sophie Wilson, working for it, ever, as such.
If I remember my arm history, correctly. (I could look it up, but hope I don't need to).
tl;dr
Sophie Wilson, never actually worked for 'arm', as we think of the modern 'arm' companies. They worked for the original one (Acorn computers, or whatever it was called, a long time ago, originally).
Best to seek out and read the history, if you want to know more.
They did work on the original, ancient, first arm chips (and maybe a bit later than that).
But not the later, licenced arm cores, we think of these days, when someone mentions 'arm'.
I.e. They were different companies, one followed on from the other, but not all employees, stayed with the new company.
So, Sophie Wilson, was one of the people that left, and didn't actually join the new company (a quick lookup, they left in 1990, when the new company was split off (Arm Ltd), but did do some consultancy work, with them.  Source:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson  ). A very long time ago, before most people had even heard of 'arm' processor chips, unless they were involved with the early UK computer scene, especially related to educational computers (Archimedes).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

[novicefedora]

I don't think it would suit, "Qualcomm and Broadcomm"'s style.

Arm seems to need to go into lots of different companies (round the world), and support them. Such, that they buy arm licence(s), along with all the technical support they need (hopefully), to get the arm cores successfully implemented, into the various silicon dies, that the customer ends up using/choosing.
I think, customer support, is a big part of the business model.

Whereas "Qualcomm and Broadcomm", seem to have a business model (I have been led to understand), which has very few customers, but they are very big ones, who buy huge number's of their products. So, "Qualcomm and Broadcomm"'s, only has to support a relatively small number of very big customers.

Which is why (I have also been led to believe), they ("Qualcomm and Broadcomm"), don't sell (or allow to be sold), their chips (as in bare ones, e.g. as used on Raspberry PI's) to one-off consumers, such as hobbyists, or small, one man band businesses.
Unlike, e.g. Microchip with their PIC (and other) chips, who do (probably actively) support such things.

But it would align perfectly with what ARM is doing, they sell their IPs to others and let those companies deal with the customers, similar to how Qualcomm and Broadcomm to operate.

[novicefedora]

This is oddly put. *Nintendo* uses NVidia Tegra SOCs. NVidia doesn't "use" anything in Nintendo products, they "sell" SoCs to Nintendo.

Jetson boards are NVidia products - which IMO are in the category I mentioned earlier, show-off products rather than products meant to sell on a very large scale, make lots of cash and really be used widely in any end-product. I'm pretty sure they are just meant to give more exposure to their Tegra SOCs which they'd probably like to sell more than they actually do.

ASUS has also used Tegra SOCs though, both in phones and tablets. I don't know if they still do in their latest models?

As to what the merge would mean in the end, nobody knows. Whereas that could be opportunity to release some interesting processors/SOCs in the short to mid-term, I'm not sure it would be that good in the long term. ARM model, which has been to only sell IPs, not actual chips, has had the big benefit (IMO) of not having to deal with end-products. That means (IMO) they could better focus on architectures. If ARM merges with an actual semiconductor company, that may mean some internal "conflicts" of interest, and decreased innovation in the long run. So whereas NVidia looks like a better candidate than Qualcomm, and of course even a lot more so than Apple, I'm not too sure this would be good news, and least in the long term. But if the merge ever happens, I'm not sure it will last forever either anyway.

Your mention of Tegra SOCs is interesting as Tegra may be an indication that NVidia may not manage to do much wonders owning ARM - after all, Tegra doesn't seem to have been all that successful so far, for instance. And if, over time, NVidia realizes they can't really manage to sell enough ARM-based SOCs even when owning ARM (which I can't predict, but is not unlikely), they would just end up having to "maintain" ARM just as it is now, selling IPs to third parties, and at some point may then decide to sell it.

Point is, I'm wondering whether companies like ARM are not better off being completely independent.

The reason Tegra didn't do well is because of the price and the segment they were targeting, they positioned it as a premium product with a premium price. No company was interested in creating a tablet around it because it's cost would have been similar to an iPad. Tegra wasn't really about showing off their ARM design, it was meant to show NVIDIA's graphics capabilities, back then there weren't any tablets which had the same graphical capabilities as Tegra.

[MK14]

But it would align perfectly with what ARM is doing, they sell their IPs to others and let those companies deal with the customers, similar to how Qualcomm and Broadcomm to operate.

The companies that arm licence their cores to. Do, handle/service their own customers.
But, what I meant was those companies (the licensee's), need/get paid (I suspect), support from arm. To put those cores, into the silicon devices, that those companies are using.
Such help, can get extremely complicated, because it is dealing with complicated integrated circuits, which can cause all sorts of unforeseen problems and issues.
I watched some kind of TV (or youtube) programme about it, a long time back. It explained all about it. Possibly on UK TV, I can't remember precisely.

[novicefedora]

The companies that arm licence their cores to. Do, handle/service their own customers.
But, what I meant was those companies (the licensee's), need/get paid (I suspect), support from arm. To put those cores, into the silicon devices, that those companies are using.
Such help, can get extremely complicated, because it is dealing with complicated integrated circuits, which can cause all sorts of unforeseen problems and issues.
I watched some kind of TV (or youtube) programme about it, a long time back. It explained all about it. Possibly on UK TV, I can't remember precisely.

If you find the link to the programme, let me know.

What I thought was ARM create it's processor architecture and ISA and sells licenses to use it, companies buy it and fabricate the processor and put in their devices or they may buy prebuilt processors. And software is built around by those same companies or collaboration of companies and used in smartphones, etc. I don't think ARM has to deal with providing support to make ARM processor work with other integrated circuit, etc. Maybe in the past they had to do it but now they are literally the world leaders in smartphones, and they don't have to provide such support. What other alternative do smartphone and SBC makers have to ARM.

RISC-V might have to provide such support if they want their processor to be used. Because I don't think it will work well with modem, etc.

[MK14]

If you find the link to the programme, let me know.

I tried, and couldn't find it. EDIT: But the 4th (last video I added, is rather similar (or even the same, probably not) video). But it has similar content, to what I was looking for, and is around 9 minutes or so, long.

As a consolation prize (I'd suggest, quickly skimming through bits of it, if it seems good, watch that video), I did find these 2 videos (+ 3rd bonus one, edited in). The first seems interesting, I've only glanced at the second one, which is a much longer one. So, I'm not sure about it.

Seems reasonably worth watching, talk by CEO of Arm, 2013:



Not sure, brief glances seems promising, but rather long:



Unwatched, bonus video. To me, it seems rather interesting (from tiny glances):



Closest find so far, here:

[donotdespisethesnake]

There is a good history of ARM here



The real genius at ARM seems to have been Dave Jaggar. Sophie Wilson helped create the original inefficient design, which Dave fixed in an ingenious way, maintaining some back compatibility at the same time providing a future path. Sophie Wilson then tried to sabotage his work (some time after she had left the company), which I find quite unethical behaviour (and with hindsight technically inept). We only get Dave's side of the story, but Sophie Wilson went seriously down in my estimation after watching that video.

[unitedatoms]

The CEO Of Chinese branch went out of control

https://www.techpowerup.com/270474/arm-china-goes-rogue-ex-ceo-blocking-the-business

Will it reduce the value? Its hard to think in whose interest is it happening. The sell of ARM to japanese was a mistake.

[Marco]

I think NVIDIA want their GPU as the standard GPU and they want to tie directly into the processor (cache wise etc). Which they would never be able to license out as a SoC to third parties at the moment (because the customer would need a flexible access license, a step up from even an architecture license). They need to be able to define what is an ARM architecture to do it, so they need to own ARM.

[kaz911]

SoftBank fund has made clown mistakes costing billions, i.e. WeWork, Wirecard etc. so they likely need to raise some money.
2016 they paid $32B for ARM, a 43% premium, seems overpriced for what, a design firm?
ARM's earnings fell 21% in 2019. It's not the cash cow people think.

hmmm..... I can't talk much about this subject due to where my better half works ..

But SB has not lost any cash on Wirecard. SB does not need to raise money but is busy buying back stock (read their IR documents - it is all in there) - WeWork - hmm yes not the "at the time" smartest decision - but I actually think they will have a giga revival post covid.. SB still own 25% of Alibaba with $705b current market value.

And the CEO - Masa-san has a financial degree but studied computer science as well while at Berkeley.

He is actually an amazing person - almost lost everything in the Dotcom crash and worked his way back to the top. For the old timers - he used to own Comdex - the at the time largest IT exhibition running in Las Vegas.

So the last thing one should do is underestimate the drive of Masa-san.

[floobydust]

Careful with the kool-aid SoftBank Vision Fund Posts $17.7 Billion Loss on WeWork, Uber  "The losses are the worst ever in the company’s 39-year history." "SoftBank under-reported FY2019 income by $380 million"  OOPS.

I'm not a fan of mega-funds because the money they toss around is simply too big, too fast. Great for scandals, scams- but ultimately they wreck companies because either a stupid acquisition gets carelessly unloaded (ARM?) or they throw billions into a stupid business model (WeWork) that is all hype and fiction. The greed needs to slow down and look at the business case, the fundamentals instead of how to spew cash to instantly make cash.

I think ARM is massively overvalued- because the core is in trillions of devices does not mean it's a cash cow.

ARM Co-Founder: Sale to Nvidia Would Be a Disaster  "It’s one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody” BBC Dr. Hermann Hauser

[coppice]

ARM Co-Founder: Sale to Nvidia Would Be a Disaster  "It’s one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody” BBC Dr. Hermann Hauser

Every silicon vendor realises this, which means nVidia would have to have lost touch with reality to buy ARM. I doubt that even a consortium of silicon vendors buying ARM, and setting it up like SRC, could work.

[floobydust]

It's too late, ARM china has gone rogue and the fired CEO has refused to step down. I'm sure the IP is safe. Thanks Softbank /s.

[Bud]

CEO is a seasonal position. Likely the guy has little clue about microprocessors.  Chances are he was selling chinese noodles or persian rugs before being assigned to run ARM china.

[floobydust]

It's not a Benny Hill episode, it's just IP theft in progress. ARM was severing ties with huawei in light of the US export ban.

"Allen Wu, chief executive of Arm China, has refused to step down from the joint venture after being sacked by Arm and other investors.
"Arm China has since engaged in a social media campaign to distance itself from its UK parent company. This week, it posted a letter on WeChat signed by 200 staff claiming it was a “strategic asset” for China and urging Beijing to “protect it”.
"The employees said: “We plead with the government to pay attention to the turbulence Arm China is facing now, and intervene to protect this strategic asset.”
"They added Arm China was a “Chinese-controlled joint venture that should abide by Chinese laws”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/29/arm-accuses-china-boss-creating-culture-fear-boardroom-row-escalates/

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

There's a typo: "Chinese ARM division goes rouge"



And TSMC: a(nother) reason why the CCP wants to seize Taiwan asap.

[kaz911]

Careful with the kool-aid SoftBank Vision Fund Posts $17.7 Billion Loss on WeWork, Uber  "The losses are the worst ever in the company’s 39-year history." "SoftBank under-reported FY2019 income by $380 million"  OOPS.

I'm not a fan of mega-funds because the money they toss around is simply too big, too fast. Great for scandals, scams- but ultimately they wreck companies because either a stupid acquisition gets carelessly unloaded (ARM?) or they throw billions into a stupid business model (WeWork) that is all hype and fiction. The greed needs to slow down and look at the business case, the fundamentals instead of how to spew cash to instantly make cash.

I think ARM is massively overvalued- because the core is in trillions of devices does not mean it's a cash cow.

ARM Co-Founder: Sale to Nvidia Would Be a Disaster  "It’s one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody” BBC Dr. Hermann Hauser

You are mixing up some things. SoftBank != SoftBank Vision Fund.

SoftBank is an LP in SVF like the other investors.  And check just the value growth of Alibaba... Just this year market cap has gone up by at least $100B - of which SB owns 25%.  So unrealized gains of $25B just in this year to date.

When you invest and own companies - losses are part of the story.

And valuations: The value of a company is what another company will pay for it. There is no math behind it. There can be estimates based on previous experience but how much is a 80%+ market share worth? That is not something most analysts would like to actually put a value on.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Capitalism has no patriot factor in it.

That's very true. We keep buying an ever increasing % of goods from you, have dismantled our industries, and are borrowing to pay your goods with credits => deficits => our public (and private) debts are through the roof and keep growing. I'm not sure for how much longer can this go on.

[coppice]

Capitalism has no patriot factor in it.

That's very true. We keep buying an ever increasing % of goods from you, have dismantled our industries, and are borrowing to pay your goods with credits => deficits => our public (and private) debts are through the roof and keep growing. I'm not sure for how much longer can this go on.

If you are in Turkey then your countryfolk have also gained a lot from assembling Chinese components and modules into consumer equipment for the EU market. That has built up a lot of industry in Turkey. The interactions between countries is complex.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

If you are in Turkey then your countryfolk have also gained a lot from assembling Chinese components and modules into consumer equipment for the EU market. That has built up a lot of industry in Turkey. The interactions between countries is complex.

But the macro economic indicators, don't tell a different story?

[coppice]

If you are in Turkey then your countryfolk have also gained a lot from assembling Chinese components and modules into consumer equipment for the EU market. That has built up a lot of industry in Turkey. The interactions between countries is complex.

But the macro economic indicators, don't tell a different story?

Isn't that mostly due mostly to political issues, and a massive drop in the value of the currency?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I mean Europe and the USA, look at the debt figures, both public and private. Already through the roof and ever increasing. Except Germany: they're no fools.

Here's a spanish site to see the indicators: https://datosmacro.expansion.com/

For example:

[bsfeechannel]

You just found me a new avatar.

Is that a political statement?

[Marco]

ARM Co-Founder: Sale to Nvidia Would Be a Disaster  "It’s one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody” BBC Dr. Hermann Hauser

So who exactly would refuse to license SOCs from NVIDIA? AMD and perhaps Intel ... woopdedoo, what a huge change.

IMO Apple's huge lead on implementation is a much bigger danger to ARM's viability than NVIDIA owning it ... and perhaps NVIDIA could help decrease that lead.

[bsfeechannel]

You just found me a new avatar.

Is that a political statement?

Yes it is.

Isn't that against the forum rules?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

"1 year later - Did the Huawei ban work?"

[Simon]

I thought we were talking about ARM being sold off?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I thought we were talking about ARM being sold off?

In the video they talk about it too.

[MK14]

"1 year later - Did the Huawei ban work?"

Thanks, I liked watching that video. It doesn't sound too good for Huawei.
Although Huawei have the home Chinese market, their competitors, will be given a big boost, with easy access to the big, world-wide markets and access to everything they want to buy.
Russia/USSR had a similar situation (Cold war), which seemed to hinder their home grown companies success/products.

E.g. The East German Trabant, was just about the worst car ever. Made out of paper coated in plastic. A motorcycle engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

The arm situation is complicated. Because it is not clear, who will take them over now. I guess whoever takes them over, it may cause controversy. I suppose some possible buyers, may actually improve arm, as a product and company.
But it would be equally easy, for some possible buyers, to end up causing arm difficulties, and lead to it diminishing in the future.

E.g. Microsoft buys arm, and then charges users a new 'improved' subscription service, where you pay them $5.99 a month, or the cpu disables itself automatically.
It also automatically sends your data stuff, back to Microsoft.
It also, seems to like doing forced updates, even if you are about to make a very important phone call.
Yes, if Microsoft bought arm, that would be good for every single person, in the world (who works or is a share holder, of Microsoft   ).

[bsfeechannel]

Isn't that against the forum rules?

You are not welcomed to come to post just to offend me.

Offend? That hasn't even crossed my mind. I just made a question whose answer is yes or no.

Go * yourself.

Ah! The Widlar salute. We are truly brothers in arms.

"1 year later - Did the Huawei ban work?"

Telecom, if I'm not mistaken, is the second largest market in the world (US$1.74 trillion). The largest is oil and gas (US$3.3 trillion). It's a dog-eat-dog business. It's impossible not to get governments involved.

[Marco]

The problem is, whether Nvidia will license ARM cores without CUDA cores and a corresponding hefty fee to other players?

I don't think they are planning for any other GPU architecture to be remotely competitive per mm2, per Watt or per dollar ... and I think they have the ability to deliver on that intent. They want to dominate mobile to offset the damage of AMD dominating consoles I think, disrupting the ability of ARM to serve existing niches price wise would not be conducive to that. They'll give the licensees a deal they wouldn't want to refuse even if they could.

Why should the CPU ISA be a tight noose for ARM licensees, but if GPU ISA becomes part of that noose for new licensees it's somehow fundamentally different? I just don't see it.

I don't particularly like increased vertical integration, because I like the competition and variety ... but I don't like Apple running ahead either. Better to have two big competitors than 1 premium one and a couple also rans competing for scraps. Of course if Apple decides they can't compete with NVIDIA and just gets a new license for their stuff it's back to square one, but oh well.

[kfnight]

Aieieiaeieiaieieieiie!!! Don't do it Jensen!

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-close-to-buying-arm-for-dollar40-billion-report

[Simon]

Why not? Obviously softbank just want the profit on the sale.

[coppice]

Why not? Obviously softbank just want the profit on the sale.

For Softbank its just an investment. For a silicon vendor, like nVidia, it is a fundamental, and almost certainly destructive, change to the industry. The RISC/V people must be rubbing their hands, and laughing at this prospect.

[olkipukki]

That's official now 

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for-40-billion-creating-worlds-premier-computing-company-for-the-age-of-ai

[BravoV]

The RISC/V people must be rubbing their hands, and laughing at this prospect.

+1 

[daqq]

Oh bollocks.

[Simon]

So what does it mean for ARM µC's? shall I just go off and learn some other chip series?

[filssavi]

So what does it mean for ARM µC's? shall I just go off and learn some other chip series?

Nothing. If nVidia is to jeopardize the ARM MCU market, do you think your UK government will let it happen and f* all UK engineers? Unless ARM says f* off UK market, UK government has the rights to vote.

In the short term I expect no changes, especially for microcontrollers.

In the long run though I expect nvidia to drop there ARM branding altogether, and fire/relocate the UK team as soon as they can wiggle themselves out of the UK government protection clauses.

I expect them to stop selling the IP for the A series of cores and start doing their own silicon, much better than anything else other parties have to offer (by giving other people the specs for the next architectures at the last minute for example), Quickly becoming the dominant player in the Android space (maybe aided by selling at a loss at first, undercutting the competition). This will almost certainly push Qualcomm out of the mobile processors market, and probably Samsung as well. Once they have a solid lead in market share( 80%+) they will start jacking up the prices significantly (as they did with GPUs) so I expect prices of phones to raise significantly as a result.

In the server market they will come out with their own chips, they will also stop licensing stuff to other companies in that space, or if they legally can’t (unlikely) thy will jack license prices up so much (shkreli stile) that they will drop out of the race

Amazon, apple and other similar size companies will probably not be affected, as I assume their legal department will have gone over everything in the contract with an extremely fine toothed comb, making sure they can continue to use and develop aarch64 autonomously.

The microcontroller space will ignored at first, in the long run I see two scenarios, best case nvidia will keep operating as ARM is now so they are able to pretend to support competition, market and all of that if the antitrust authorities wake up to the shady anticompetitive practices they have been pulling for decades. The second, frankly more probable scenario is that they will abandon the segment and stop developing new cores, as there just isn’t enough money to be made (the margins on MCUs are way to low for an nvidia style company). That said the current offer is probably more than good enough for the foreseeable future in terms of pure MCUs. For the more IoT/edge computing use cases where a little more grunt is necessary I guess RISCV could fill the gap, if nvidia doesn’t decide to compete

[filssavi]

So what does it mean for ARM µC's? shall I just go off and learn some other chip series?

Nothing. If nVidia is to jeopardize the ARM MCU market, do you think your UK government will let it happen and f* all UK engineers? Unless ARM says f* off UK market, UK government has the rights to vote.

UK government only cares about the jobs, not what products the engineers are developing, nvidia will keep the UK team, for the time being (no way they don’t find a way to sack them in the future 5-10 year).

The only hope would have been a EU level movement to retain the talent given that the USA are not our allies anymore, however with Brexit and BoJo desperate for a UK-US  trade deal, I don’t think we can really count on that happening

Thus new MCU development will probably stop as soon as the deal goes through

[TomS_]

I wonder what this means for Nvidias RISC-V interests.

AFAIK they are one of the biggest producers of RISC-V cores, embedded in their GPUs. If they now own ARM, will they ditch RISC-V and start embedding ARM cores instead?

Seems like a big loss to RISC-V if such a thing were to come true.

[filssavi]

Keeping two processors design team just for the good of the RISCV community doesn’t seem very nvidia like 

Also any RISCV processor nvidia might be using is just some random core embedded deep into their GPU and it is probably very far from being user programmable, especially given the secrecy around even the GPU low level interface, thus I don’t think a RISCV -> ARM transition would not even be noticed by the GPU users

[westfw]

I remember when Apple bought PA Semi.
It sucked.  We were going to use those chips.  :-(

[coppice]

So what does it mean for ARM µC's? shall I just go off and learn some other chip series?

Nothing. If nVidia is to jeopardize the ARM MCU market, do you think your UK government will let it happen and f* all UK engineers? Unless ARM says f* off UK market, UK government has the rights to vote.

Using the UK as an example doesn't really work. The UK MCU market is now too small for anyone to care about losing it.

[TheNewLab]

Wait, I am just waking up to this. When did Nvidia become USA? I thought it was ROC Tawan manufacturer?

[coppice]

Wait, I am just waking up to this. When did Nvidia become USA? I thought it was ROC Tawan manufacturer?

nVidia is an American company. They don't actually make anything. All their production is in Asia, at TSMC and a bunch of assembly and test sub-contractors, but the company is American.

[Simon]

TSMC make all the ARMs?

[coppice]

TSMC make all the ARMs?

Everyone makes ARMs.

[Simon]

Yea i mean they are a huge player in the phone market aren't they? they are the actual fab that make's most phone ARM chips, I'm not talking about micro controller makers (low M series)

[coppice]

Yea i mean they are a huge player in the phone market aren't they? they are the actual fab that make's most phone ARM chips, I'm not talking about micro controller makers (low M series)

This depends on the season. Some years TSMC seems to make almost all phone chips. Some years Samsung and others get a fair chunk of the work. Its all a matter of who has the best performing process that year, the best prices, and adequate capacity. Phone chips are usually made in the finest geometry processes available, so there aren't many fabs which can handle them. The great danger for the people farming out work to these fabs is the number of suitable fabs may shrink to one, and they will be in a monopoly situation, with all the problems that brings.

[Doctorandus_P]

Gosh Simon,

you just motivated me to add a rule to my add blocker for the whole simonelectronics domain.
I'm not sure if that was your intention.

[Simon]

Gosh Simon,

you just motivated me to add a rule to my add blocker for the whole simonelectronics domain.
I'm not sure if that was your intention.

obviously not and your choice, it's been like that a while and I am not the only one. As for Ad blocker, it's part of my signature. I spent a long time looking at sizes to get a balance compromise of being able to see it but not too big.