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