In Apple they must be really happy@StinkyPinky
To build on what @Stuka87 has said:
Apple, Samsung, and any other design firm that has an unlimited license to ARMv8 will be able to continue making their own ARMv8 CPUs. Samsung has previously halted their in-house Exynos development (in favor of reference ARM designs), but there is no reason why they can't go back.
Any firm that licenses specific designs from ARM will continue to be able to use those designs. A76-A78, etc.
Any future ISA improvements nVidia makes (ARMv9 and beyond) will require new licensing agreements. New specific designs (Matterhorn/whatever comes after A78) will require new licensing agreements.
Future iterations of the Neoverse reference design and associated interconnects will require new licensing terms/agreements.
@SarahKerrigan
I don't think Apple will owe nVidia anything unless they sign new licensing agreements. The existing ARMv8 license should cover all their in-house CPU design needs, at least for awhile. And there's nothing stopping them from just staying on that ISA in perpetuity.
My understanding is that the ARM licensing terms say they have to. Not to mention the licensing terms (and the rates!) are probally not perpetual. That's what I mean by an out, Apple has to have a plan, because they are not paying a dime to nVidia.
Exactly. Apple is certainly no friend of Samsung's, but they had no problem spending billions to buy OLED displays from them because at the time they were the only company who could deliver what Apple wants. People who want to place human emotions and motivations on a corporation just expose their complete and utter ignorance of the business world.Apple doesn't have a choice this time. It is just like Apple's relationship with Samsung. They will not attempt to avoid them to the point of hurting their own bottom line.
I don't think Apple will owe nVidia anything unless they sign new licensing agreements. The existing ARMv8 license should cover all their in-house CPU design needs, at least for awhile. And there's nothing stopping them from just staying on that ISA in perpetuity.
Apple's emotions are really just a projection of personal emotions.Exactly. Apple is certainly no friend of Samsung's, but they had no problem spending billions to buy OLED displays from them because at the time they were the only company who could deliver what Apple wants. People who want to place human emotions and motivations on a corporation just expose their complete and utter ignorance of the business world.
the quickest way NV can kill arm is to complete with its own customers.I wonder what NVIDIA will do when it comes to PC CPU market. I would imagine that they'd like to sell ARM CPUs for people in the future.
Interesting, I didn't know the licensing deal required them to make repeated payments to ARM. I guess NV gets that money now.But who cares, they will owe Nvidia exactly as much as they would owe ARM if they continued to operate independently.
I for one have only ever said for a truly competitive market, AMD needs to be on far more than 20% of units (and 1% of profits).For all the emotional hand wringing over this deal I wonder what the correlation rate is for those that are against it from a market competitiveness standpoint on the other hand are not only fine with AMD becoming the dominant x86-64 CPU leader and GPU leader but supportive of it?
There is no way outside of severe double standards involving mental gymnastics that one can be fine (and even supportive) of the x86-64 CPU and GPU situation with respect to AMD and Intel while taking the opposite stance here.
Ah, interesting. I'm only familiar with the HPC side of things- thanks! I was under the impression that they weren't making a successor to the SPARC64 XII, and that's a 20nm part from 2017- felt like the end of the line for SPARC, given the ARM transition in their HPC line.Fujitsu hasn't ditched SPARC in the areas where they deal with Oracle.
They could do whatever they want in desktop and laptop space though. Powerful ARM chip with GeForce graphics would be quite nice compared to Qualcomm's beefed up phone SoCs.I don't think NVidia is going to directly compete in the phone market. They never had a credible 4G modem, and they certainly don't have a 5G modem- and without a good modem they don't really have a product that can compete with Qualcomm. Better to keep selling licenses to that market, plus try to sell them on NVidia GPU IP- they might have more success than Mali did. Surely the big prize would be getting Qualcomm to wind down their internal GPU and AI efforts and switch over to NVidia IP.
Oh yes, I'm sure everyone would love to cooperate with company which increases license fee 100xThere's no way Apple would have agreed to a non-perpetual license, and accept the risk that ARM (or some future owner) could wait for them to become too dependent and then jack up the pricing 100x at renewal time. I'll bet it is either perpetual, or the term is so long that for all practical purposes it is. Even if ARM's other architectural licenses are shorter term Apple would have just said "how much of a lump sum payment do we need to pay to make that a perpetual contract?" and got it done. Only a fool would believe Apple would leave themselves exposed to a risk of this size. You don't get to be a $2T company by being stupid.
ARM CPU development might speed up as Nvidia might want to fight in server market.The buyout of the year. My guesses might be:
- ARM CPU development won't be affected by now. But with the current situation some licenses will be stuck in certain version (ARM v8 or v9 if they made a negotiation before)
- ARM GPU development on the other hand seems to meet it's end after this generation. nVIDIA would introduce their own approach after said generation in order to win more money
- The licenses might be perpetual, but they might pay if they want to meet the standards of ARM. I see Apple and Huawei starting their own way to be apart from that standard. But for different reasons each one.
- Qualcomm, Samsung and everyone who has CPU custom cores won't be that affected at all. Well.. not that much for Samsung, they need to make their little cores custom too then if they want to go with AMD GPU
- However the ones who might be totally affected would be Mediatek, UNISOC, Amlogic and the ones who goes to the standard licence in order to save cost. It might be even mean the end of the road for them.
Even worse if the politics enters with full force and bans the chinese companies to renew the licence. This won't look well, since only Huawei seems to have the full licence to make a fully custom core from CPU to GPU.
I don't see how that could happen at this point. The reason China could stop that Qualcomm/NXP merger was because Qualcomm had most of its revenue coming from China. That's not true for Nvidia and there is a separate ARM China subsidiary (where ARM only owns 49%) which has pretty much already gone rogue at this point. That along with the U.S. bans for tech IP for China, Nvidia has to be prepared to just cut out China from their business and move on leaving China no power to stop the merger.There's a real risk of Chinese authorities blocking this deal just as it happened between Qualcomm and NXP ...
Relevant quote:Well...
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NVIDIA to Acquire Arm for $40 Billion, Creating World’s Premier Computing Company for the Age of AI
NVIDIA and SoftBank Group Corp. today announced a definitive agreement under which NVIDIA will acquire Arm Limited from SBG and the SoftBank Vision Fund in a transaction valued at $40 billion.nvidianews.nvidia.com
Additional Transaction Details
Under the terms of the transaction, which has been approved by the boards of directors of NVIDIA, SBG and Arm, NVIDIA will pay to SoftBank a total of $21.5 billion in NVIDIA common stock and $12 billion in cash, which includes $2 billion payable at signing. The number of NVIDIA shares to be issued at closing is 44.3 million, determined using the average closing price of NVIDIA common stock for the last 30 trading days. Additionally, SoftBank may receive up to $5 billion in cash or common stock under an earn-out construct, subject to satisfaction of specific financial performance targets by Arm.
NVIDIA will also issue $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees.
NVIDIA intends to finance the cash portion of the transaction with balance sheet cash. The transaction does not include Arm’s IoT Services Group.
The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals for the U.K., China, the European Union and the United States. Completion of the transaction is expected to take place in approximately 18 months.
I don't understand this. What do you mean by compete with its own customers? What customers? ARM buyers or GPU buyers? The idea is Nvidia would sell ARM CPUs for desktop use. How is that an issue?the quickest way NV can kill arm is to complete with its own customers.
if its customers are pushing into the PC space with ARM NV should do nothing.
Qualcomm is already trying to create an 'ARM PC' market, so if Nvidia sold chips targeted for such a market they would be directly competing with one of their largest licensees who is hoping to expand into a new market.I don't understand this. What do you mean by compete with its own customers? What customers? ARM buyers or GPU buyers? The idea is Nvidia would sell ARM CPUs for desktop use. How is that an issue?
What exactly are current chip-makers going to do?! Spend years and billions to (separately) create new hardware and software ecosystems that may or may not succeed at competing with ARM? Let's build a brand new standard and compete from scratch with mature ecosystems such as x86 and ARM.If Nvidia jack up the price of its licenses for the IoT and mobile processors, that will disincentivize their own customers from staying with ARM, so I don't see that as likely.
Reports are that ARM makes about a half billion dollars a year. In other words a P/E of around 80, which is not far from Nvidia's overall P/E. So I guess they at least will fit in with the rest of the business as far as being overvalued.So if the goal was to create ready-to-license ARM servers with Nvidia IP built-in, was $40B worth the price of admission? If I'm not mistaken, ARM doesn't make that much money off of licensing business (maybe even operating at a loss), so the addition of NV IP into license-able products needs to be super profitable in the long-term to make the entry fee worthwhile, no? If Nvidia jack up the price of its licenses for the IoT and mobile processors, that will disincentivize their own customers from staying with ARM, so I don't see that as likely. This leaves ARM+Nvidia developing an in-house, state-of-the-art ARM server processor with high licensing fees, which I thought could be developed already by Nvidia as they currently have an ARM license. In other words, is ARM IP and owning its in-house engineer team worth $40B? Nvidia must have thought so, and I guess the price is easier to bear since Nvidia stock is pretty much at an all-time high.
Are you saying that you're in favor of opportunistic price gouging then? Why not have Nvidia jack up the licensing fee by 10x because it's all about making money and screwing the customers, right? Martin Shkreli would be proud.What exactly are current chip-makers going to do?! Spend years and billions to (separately) create new hardware and software ecosystems that may or may not succeed at competing with ARM? Let's build a brand new standard and compete from scratch with mature ecosystems such as x86 and ARM.
It will only take them a decade.