Nvidia Acquiring ARM for $40 Billion -- Good or Bad for the Industry? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 04:17:07 pm
content: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/nvidia-reportedly-to-acquire-arm-holdings-from-softbank-for-40-billion/

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 05:21:26 pm
content: It all depends what they are going to do.If they are like the previous buyer and just let them do their stuff I doubt anything will change.If they want a big ROI for their 40 billion some things might become more expensive.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 05:46:29 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 14, 2020, 05:21:26 pmWith RISC-V breathing down their neck, I don't think they can afford to increase their licensing fees much, if at all.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 06:55:10 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on September 14, 2020, 05:46:29 pmOn general purpose small microcontrollers - maybe. However all heavy-lifting processors, safety critical processors and microcontrollers, DSP stuff are way more advanced.

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 06:58:17 pm
content: This is Nvidia continuing their "Embrace, extend, and extinguish". Time to avoid ARM MCUs for future projects imo. The only way this ($41B deal) is profitable to Nvidia is if they squeeze the market. ARM makes about $300M annually. At that rate it would take over 130 years to pay for itself.

author: dmendesf
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 08:23:21 pm
content: Think they will make ultra high end cores just for them for supercomputer level stuff, more expensive cortex-A for everybody else (maybe with some twist like calling them "hands" to try not to give the ISA for free to Apple and other holders of perpetual licenses) and the microcontrollers will just die as RISC-V ate the lunch.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 10:44:34 pm
content: Pretty hard to avoid ARM cores these days, they are made by so many companies now, it's clear ARM is the future of microcontrollers, at least the foreseeable future. If NVidia killed off the company they would just be made by dozens of different companies in China.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 11:10:21 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on September 14, 2020, 10:44:34 pmThat's not possible... It's even in the US Constitution: "The right of the people to keep and bear ARMs shall not be infringed."

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 11:55:39 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on September 14, 2020, 10:44:34 pmThe former is true -- between ST, TI, SiLabs, NXP, Microchip and others, ARM is everywhere and I can't imagine that those companies would stand for having their product lines destroyed by NVidia.As for the latter, killing off ARM, I don't even seewhyNVidia would move to eliminate what is basically an easy revenue stream. Sure, NVidia could introduce their own line of ARM microcontrollers and microprocessors to compete with their licensees, but really the competition is all about features other than the processor core.One has to wonder if any of the vendors I mention have background projects based on alternative architectures, whether RISC-V or something else. Microchip still has MIPS products. (I don't know enough about MIPS to guess why that architecture fell from favor.)

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 12:36:03 am
content: Quote from: Scrts on September 14, 2020, 06:55:10 pmI won't name companies, but RISC-V is heading into cars and airliner avionics right now.Heavy lifting ... it was announced today that a RISC-V PC with A53-class CPU will be demonstrated at the Linley Processor Conference in October.https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200914005108/en/SiFive-To-Introduce-New-RISC-V-Processor-Architecture-and-RISC-V-PC-at-Linley-Fall-Virtual-Processor-ConferenceIf they've hit their MHz targets then that should come in at significantly better performance than a Raspberry Pi 3 or 3+, but below the Pi 4. So calling it a "PC" is maybe a stretch. In conventional PC terms it's probably around the last Pentium 3 or PowerPC G4 machines -- but quad core and 64 bit. So more like the first Kentsfield Core2 Quad's in early 2007 (and similar MHz) but maybe 1.5x to 2x slower microarchitecture.That U74 core was announced just under two years ago, and SiFive's A72-class U84 core was announced just under one year ago, so you can probably expect samples and demonstration of an A72-class SoC in about a year from now.Alibaba has announced an SoC with A73-class cores (Xuantie-910) and say they already have it in production use in their datacenter. It would be very interesting if they put those up for retail sale.Of course RISC-V is behind ARM and coming from a standing start, but the gap is narrowing.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 01:59:38 am
content: I worry what this will mean for the Cortex-M "embedded" ARMS (Cortex-R, too, I guess.)NVidia can be predatory or not with the high-end phone/tablet/desktop AI/GPU/64bit IP, and the industry can complain, take legal action, or follow alternatives. But I don't see NVidia as being very interested in the low-end, and it could just get neglected into irrelevance :-( (and ARM has been relatively active. M3, M0, M0+, M4, M7, M23, M33...)QuoteRemember that "RISC-V" is just an ISA, not an (essentially complete) core design that a (relatively clueless) semiconductor company can buy and plunk on silicon "easy peasy" (with customers having a high degree of confidence that they'll work and be compatible.) The equivalents of ARM as an IP provider are the likes of SiFive (um... That might be all? the other RiscV members seem to be mostly silicon vendors? Open Source?) And they're comparatively tiny.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 02:48:22 am
content: Quote from: westfw on September 15, 2020, 01:59:38 amAndes license cores. They do more RISC-V deals than SiFive does (at least in 2019, I don't know figures for this year) because they're a long established IP vendor who had their own ISA (supported by the Linux kernel, gcc, llvm) and a large existing customer base. They decided severa years ago to switch wholesale to RISC-V and plonked RISC-V cores into their existing ecosystem. They've said in 2019 their RISC-V sales overtook their legacy NDS32 sales.In Europe the PULP project RI5CY and Zero-RISCY cores seem to be going into a significant number of designs (and NXP is supporting that).There are a bunch of other RISC-V core IP vendors such as CloudBEAR, Codasip, IQonIC, Nuclei, Syntacore. I don't know what kind of sales they have.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 03:32:58 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on September 14, 2020, 11:55:39 pmIt makes no logical sense to kill of ARM but that doesn't mean that internal politics and shareholder pressure won't make them do it anyway. It would by implementing increasingly onerous licensing requirements or dicking around with qualcomm style patent extortion that would be annoying and expensive enough that customers are willing to sink some money into developing the RISC V ecosystem.This isn't a question of something happening overnight. Nvidia has claimed it is business as usual. The question is what do they do over the next 5-8 years.

author: boz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 04:17:38 am
content: When I see a $1 RISC-V in LQFP that I can buy from digikey.. Sign me up, until then ARM all the way

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 04:37:06 am
content: My guess is that future licenseable ARM cores will be crippled in favor of the processors NVIDIA sells. This will not affect companies that have an architecture licenses and design their own cores like Apple, at least initially, but it will sure affect all of Apple's competitors including Samsung who not long ago disbanded their development team.ARM documentation previously made publically available by ARM will be placed behind NDAs, or worse.And if Oracle wins their copyright lawsuit over APIs, NVIDIA will release hell on developers.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 04:48:05 am
content: Quote from: boz on September 15, 2020, 04:17:38 amThat's not the way to look at it. Its "When the people making $1 microcontrollers decide to start using RISC-V". Right now, the ARM ecosystem is in pretty good shape and the licensing costs are low enough there isn't a lot of incentive for chip designers to rock the boat. But if NVidia decides to extract more cash out of customers to justify the acquisition they are going to be initially successful but create a lot of incentive for an alternative. I have no idea what NVidia is going to do, but "lets squeeze our captive customers for a lot of money this quarter, long term viability be damned" is definitely the kind of failure mode that a lot of businesses demonstrate so it isn't out of the question.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 05:16:16 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 15, 2020, 12:36:03 amInfotainment? ADAS?I really don't see RISC-V going anywhere near the engines right now as i don't know of any implementation from the big guys. And in any case ARM had just begun entering that space, TriCore and Power Core still going strong..Also i don't see it being used for dumber actuators, still probably Power Core if safety critical like fuel pump controllers and 8bit ST/PIC if really dumb like door or seat controller.so if i had to guess, probably some coprocessor for ADAS applications..I too fear of what's going to happen to Cortex R. Cortex M, i don't care that much

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 08:40:13 am
content: So can we hope for more AI and Graphics into ARM Cortex M profile soon!

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 09:12:16 am
content: Quote from: boz on September 15, 2020, 04:17:38 amHaven't hit $1 yet, but there have been $5 chips for about three years already:https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Crowd-Supply/cs-hifiveb-02?qs=Zz7%252BYVVL6bGRLEumsP1bRg%3D%3D(it's not clear from that page, but it's a 5-pack)

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 09:12:57 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on September 14, 2020, 11:55:39 pmMIPS has been sold 3x times in last 7y, afaik. Some of the buyers reported losses, afaik..

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 09:18:02 am
content: Or $9.50 for dual core 64 bit 800 MHz with 8 MB onboard RAM and "AI accelerators" (neural network, AES, SHA256, FFT). Includes an MMU (though nonstandard) so you can technically squeeze some kind of very minimal Linus on it)https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Seeed-Studio/114991695?qs=u16ybLDytRZ0%252BIE52cskuA%3D%3D

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 09:26:00 am
content: Or $1.70 from AliExpress for a 108 MHz STM32F103 clone with RISC-V core from a Chinese company that has been making ARM based STM32F103 clones for a few years.https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000843847611.html

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 10:17:57 am
content: I don't know yet. People where screaming like their house was on fire when GitHub was bought by Microsoft. Yet, Microsoft hasn't renamed it to Azure DevOpsyet.This is kind of the same I think, but at a much larger scale.And I don't know if it happened in history before that someone acquired the body behindthe industry standard.It would be the same as Daimler buying Bosch gmbh.I am notworried, one bad move from Nvidia and a lot of vendors will diversify.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 01:43:14 pm
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on September 15, 2020, 10:17:57 amI see the situation more like when 3dfx bought STB, which put them in competition with their customers. Do you think NVIDIA will resist manipulating the ARM standards to the detriment of their competitors, who are also their customers through ARM?

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 02:01:05 pm
content: I think what will happen is that Nvidia will optimize future ARM to fit their proprietary architecture to work better with ARM then the competitor.Perhaps even bundle discounts.This way competitors are legally not harmed in any way, but in subtle ways their developments are disturbed.Like a rediculous stupid change sold as "revolutionary", but since you're the first to know and have adapted all your products, the competitors have delays of years.A bit like Apple saying (we'll know tomorrow), as of next year no more x86 macbooks will be sold!Companies like Adobe will have a problem.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 02:11:09 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on September 15, 2020, 01:43:14 pmLets say they stop selling Tegra as an IC, what remaining customers are competitors? Apple and Fujitsu?Apple is a problematic monopolist in and of themselves, so I can't really give a shit about them getting into some bother if NVIDIA gets ARM. That leaves Fujitsu. It's a shame, but I'm sure they can find some other core to bolt their vector processing engine on to.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 02:55:16 pm
content: Apple wanted to get independent by moving Macs to an ARM-based CPU of their own making. Microsoft makes PCs with ARM. ARM is ready to march into the PC market. That's where the big money is.Also, ARM is in every phone.I don't think MCUs were even a consideration.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 04:28:00 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 15, 2020, 09:12:16 amThat's the SiFive FE310, which is a toy chip with no internal flash and a tiny set of peripherals (no USB, no Ethernet, no DMA, no ADCs, etc.)

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 04:31:21 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 15, 2020, 09:18:02 amWhich Linus?This one?or this one?

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 06:00:12 pm
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on September 15, 2020, 02:01:05 pmWell, they shouldn't, as Apple intends to do what they did when they migrated from PPC to x86 -- a "rosetta" layer will translate x86 to ARM for existing binaries, and software vendors should enable "fat binary" builds which will produce both x86 and ARM code in the same application bundle so the users of both types of processors won't see any difference. And in about five years, they'll deprecate the Rosetta layer and the only people who will complain are those who are still running 10-year-old software.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 06:13:44 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on September 15, 2020, 02:11:09 pmBut why would they stop production of their own ARM processors? Didn't they just win some major contracts?If they did, that would be reassuring, but I suspect their reason to buy ARM is to control the standard in their favor. They did not need to buy ARM so that they can design their own high performance ARM processors, but owning ARM would be useful to discourage competing processors.QuoteApple at least has to compete with Android, and now Intel and AMD as well. If NVIDIA controls ARM, then they ultimately have to compete with MIPS and RISC-V which have tiny shares of the market and none of the phone and personal computer market.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 06:39:09 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on September 15, 2020, 06:13:44 pmTo not scare of ARM SOC customers, selling the components as macros for third parties to combine into an IC should be less threatening.QuoteAFAICS they want NVIDIA cores in every ARM SOC. For that to be useful they need to keep ARM SOCs with NVIDIA cores competitive in key markets ... which is really nice, because non Apple ARM cores are increasingly non competitive.QuoteAndroid is a phone for poor people, hobbyists and contrarians (I'm the latter, it's irrational). In the most important segments of the mobile phone market Apple increasingly has no competition. If they just had their privacy advantage it would be one thing, but combined with their hardware dominance it's getting dire. Android is dead man walking at the moment.

author: 0db
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 07:36:42 pm
content: I think it may be "good" for products like the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX.At least for their Carmel ARM v8.2 64-bit a 6 cores, L2 6MB + L3 4MB.But I am not sure if it's good for the Industry. Perhaps no.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 08:49:35 pm
content: Interesting letter from one of the founders of ARM (sorry if this was already posted)https://savearm.co.uk/

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 09:27:54 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on September 15, 2020, 06:39:09 pmMy past experiences with NVIDIA at a technical level convinced me to avoid them at all costs. Their thermal design shenanigans which resulted in lawsuits only confirmed my decision to avoid them.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 09:46:55 pm
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on September 15, 2020, 06:00:12 pmYou say that like it's some kind of weird perversion.I'm still using the accounting program I bought for $50 in 1991. I've never upgraded it in any way. Why would you? Accounting hasn't changed -- only the GST rate has changed, and that's a setting.It's a 68000 Mac app.These days I can run it on Mac, Windows, or Linux (or a phone if I wanted to) probably more than 100x faster than when I bought it.

author: nudge
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 10:16:26 pm
content: Initially, it’s a way in for Nvidia to push their GPU and video cores in place of Mali. It’s probably their way of fighting back against the announcement that Samsung will be integrating AMD Radeon GPUs into their next Exynos chips, back in July. For the long term who knows where they’ll head.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 04:10:05 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 15, 2020, 09:46:55 pmWell, I say that because maintaining a computer of that vintage seems like, well, a weird perversionI don't even remember what I had for a computer back in 1991.QuoteYou have a VM that runs whichever System ran on the Mac back then? Impressive. And nutty.Next I'll hear that someone has a VM running Apple ][ DOS so they can look at Visicalc spreadsheets.

author: 0db
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 08:49:46 am
content: basilisk IIis an Open Source 68k Macintosh emulator.QuoteI think there is something similar for PPC MacOS.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 02:54:52 pm
content: I think you are focusing on the wrong aspects.You need to think more about what would make the most financial sense overall for Nvidia in the short to medium-term timescales, when acquiring ARM.(The patterns I start to see when I do that are nothing new, and definitely not something I would like to see, considering Nvidia's current business practices, leadership, and similar situations in other companies having similar strategies in the past. Then again, I'm not a business analyst nor a clairvoyant, so I'll leave this at that.)

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 04:23:46 pm
content: We already discussed that in a previous thread... but yeah, now it's happening.I don't know what will happen in the next few years. IMHO, it's not unlikely nVidia won't keep ARM for that long anyway, but of course this is just my current thought. Things may evolve.Given the current market for ARM cores, which is quite large, I don't think it'd be in nVidia's interest to do anything that would drive customers off, especially licensing-wise. They could NEVER compete with the hundreds of companies designing and selling ARM-based processors, so keeping ARM "all for themselves" wouldn't make any sense whatsoever - no way the potential sales (with the associated market disruption) of nVidia processors would make up for the loss of most licenses for ARM cores around the world. Thinking otherwise would be pretty deluded IMO.So this acquisition is likely not to have any major effect in the short term, all the more that there are not that many alternatives anyway. Don't answer "RISC-V". Beyond that, I don't know.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 05:03:26 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 16, 2020, 04:23:46 pmI see you are not at all familiar with Nvidia's current and past business strategies, then.You might wish to check on how and what graphics cards manufacturers using Nvidia's IP/cores/chips feel about Nvidia, and what kind of relationship Nvidia has with such customers.

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 09:04:53 pm
content: I think Nvidia views ARM as a potential channel for their own IP, to get their graphics hardware into everything from phones, tablets and TVs to car dash systems. With ARM they might also see a long-term opportunity to compete with Broadcom, Marvell, Qualcomm for markets where their existing footprint is close to zero. There also has to be a significant market for small ARM based SoCs with integrated graphics peripherals and touch control that they can license to chip vendors like TI, NXP, ST, etc. That might be more of an opportunity for ARM than Nvidia though.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 09:29:16 pm
content: I fear Nvidia sees controlling ARM as controlling a large swath of their potential competitors, especially if they were to fracture the various ARM cores/IP into separate walled gardens with very limited public documentation.If the acquisition does happen, I expect the first end-developer-visible change would be to MCU peripherals and their documentation. Register level access would be sparsely documented (individual registers and bits named, but operational requirements or order of operations not stated), and documentation would be centered around Nvidia/ARM-provided Hardware Abstraction Library (which would eventually be littered with specific hardware quirks and duplicated code, as only the code implements the operational requirements that are not documented anywhere that end-developers can access).This is what Nvidia has always done, and I believe they cannot even imagine doing otherwise. Disagree? Look at what they do, not what they say. CUDA is a good example, I believe.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 09:46:01 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on September 16, 2020, 09:29:16 pmWhat peripherals does ARM currently design and licence to the MCU market? For the A-series chips they make the Mali GPU cores. but those are too big and complex for most MCUs.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 11:37:11 pm
content: Quote from: 0db on September 16, 2020, 08:49:46 amI use SheepShaver, which emulates a PowerPC Mac. The PowerPC version of MacOS includes a software emulation of M68k. So my accounting program is undergoing two levels of emulation. It's still far faster than on a real 68k Mac.I'm running Mac OS 9.1, but actually I could do this with anything up to OSX 10.4.11 "Tiger" from 2007, which contains the "Classic" emulator with Mac OS 9.1, which in turn includes 68k emulation.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 09:05:25 am
content: QuoteWell, exactly. And I don't think they will be. And that's a problem.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 04:24:12 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 16, 2020, 09:46:01 pmI'm not sure; I'm extrapolating from Nvidia, not ARM (and using Microchip aquisition of Atmel as a base pattern). Perhaps instead of peripherals, I should have said "complex internal subsystem details"? In any case,documentationof the deep details; possibly a tiered system of documentation. Definitely somehow limited access to full documentation, anyway.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2020, 09:04:33 am
content: Quote from: boz on September 15, 2020, 04:17:38 amI think the goalpost has been moved. For $1, there are already MCU's with Bluetooth, and built in DC-DC controllers and crypto. If all that RISC-V does is STM32F103 clones, I dont see it getting any traction. The way I see it, the core of the microcontroller is one block in the block diagram. And it is not even the most important one.Quote from: westfw on September 17, 2020, 09:05:25 amI think it was a consideration. I think they might already have a buyer for the MCU segment. I dont think they would keep the R and the M, only the A.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2020, 09:30:16 am
content: Quote from: coppice on September 16, 2020, 09:46:01 pmhttps://www.eetimes.com/arm-artisan-complete-acquisition/I suspect you can get quite far with only ARM and Synopsys licenses.Are there any architects on this forum?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2020, 11:37:56 am
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on September 18, 2020, 09:30:16 amSynopsys can certainly licence you some useful peripherals. ARM has a tendency to call things peripherals that an independent observer would consider a part of the core, like memory protection modules. In the good old ARM7TDMI days even the interrupt controller was considered a peripheral by ARM, and wasn't a part of the licenced core. That's why interrupts work differently on various ARM7TDMI based devices, or in some cases don't really work at all - e.g. the NXP LPC series. Other than the core system timer, can ARM licence you a selection of timers? A serial port? An ADC? I don't see MCU families being built on ARM supplied peripherals.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2020, 04:27:19 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 18, 2020, 11:37:56 amI don't either, otherwise you'd see more commonality among vendor peripherals, which I don't see. Does ARM even offer peripheral IP, other than graphics? I've never seen any reference to it (and I work for a silicon vendor that makes MCUs based on ARM cores).The only third-party peripheral IP that I've encountered in an ARM MCU is the Bosch M_CAN.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2020, 07:26:50 pm
content: Hey, me fail English! Instead of "peripherals", please read "deep internal details". (I was thinking of stuff like internal subsystems: DMA, internal bus multiplexing, cache consistency controls, etc. –– just look at ST documentation "holes".)Stuff that you do not notice when doing simple blinkies or reading the documentation, and only encounter when doing an actual complex product, trying to utilize the full potential of the MCU.

author: skullan
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 04:42:59 am
content: You don't drop $40 billion on a company without a plan for:- Integration into your current product line.- Exerting control to leverage aspects of other areas of your company.- Introducing additional licensing to make your product line look more attractive than a competitors.If I made a mobile GPU, I would be worried. As a consumer, I have some concerns that good or bad, there may be some upheaval in cheap arm devices.ARM designs were starting to make inroads to becoming a viable competitor to Intel/AMD in the low-power, fast market that did business style tasks well.https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/26/exiting-x86-apple-microsoft-embracing-arm-based-pc/So, it will be more than just one industry (mobile) that may be affected. Right now, I'm neutral.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 10:25:04 am
content: Quote from: skullan on September 19, 2020, 04:42:59 amActually large takeovers happen all the time with very very weak planning. There tends to be a sense that the regulatory approvals will take so long, they will be able to work out a plan while that is in progress. Sometimes that planning work shows the whole thing is a bad idea. However, it takes brave people to be prepared to lose face by taking the rational step of backing out of the deal at this point. Most business people are only brave with someone else's money.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 01:26:16 pm
content: Quote from: skullan on September 19, 2020, 04:42:59 amApple is in a class of its own performance wise and is much more a problem for the ARM market than a contributor to its success.Microsoft's ARM efforts will fail like before. No one is looking for worse than x86 performance for a Surface tablet. Unlike in servers ARM can't beat x86 by being more power efficient at lower per core peak performance. ARM would need to be both more power efficient at low clocks and as performant at high clocks to stand a chance against x86 for the Surface and for laptops ... Apple can do that, everyone else can't.That's why ARM needs NVIDIA, the reference implementations need to close the gap with Apple. Softbank invested a lot to improve that, but they are running out of steam. Another investment bank taking over ARM would be a recipe for disaster, it's very unlikely they would be as forward looking as Softbank again ... ARM desperately needs a company somewhat like NVIDIA to buy them.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 02:03:12 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on September 19, 2020, 01:26:16 pmApple is completely irrelevant to the ARM market. No Apple product is built to run a system from a third party, so they have no reason to stick to any particular instruction set. Right now they use their own architecture to implement the ARM instruction set, but they could change that instruction set at any time. They have a long history of smoothly migrating instruction sets, so they would have no fear of doing this.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 02:08:21 pm
content: Apple competes with Android, so the hell they are.The bigger part of the mobile phone market Apple takes, the worse it will be for ARM ... and between their performance advantage, their privacy advantage and their leveraging of their monopoly in online and credit card payments it's likely going to get a lot worse.Hell if Apple decides to get back in servers then Marvel and the Neoverse licensees can pretty much just give up. With the exception of Amazon, who at least have a substantial lead software environment wise.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 02:12:53 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on September 19, 2020, 02:08:21 pmI should have been clearer. Apple has now basically gone its own way with its hardware and its software, so it it irrelevant to what happens to the development of ARM devices. I assume they no longer pay ARM very much, or they would have changed instruction sets by now. Clearly the success or failure of Apple products affects how big the ARM market can be.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 02:20:06 pm
content: Well that's where my perspective comes in ... everyone sees this massive penetration of ARM in a lot of markets and saying great, they must have value going forward. I see most of the value coming from the mobile market and Apple getting ready to eat everyone's lunch.To me ARM is currently dead man walking ... and NVIDIA is their life line.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 03:17:11 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 19, 2020, 02:03:12 pmI have previously several times on various forums (including before the Apple Silicon announcement) published a theory that Apple is only temporarily using the ARM64 instruction set.I think (with zero evidence) that when Apple dropped support for ARM32 from their A11 SoC for the iPhone 8 generation, they may have secretly added a 2nd 64 bit ISA at the same time -- and in all subsequent SoCs. I don't know whether it might be RISC-V or something of their own design.When the time is right -- sometime after Apple Silicon Macs come out and get established -- Tim Cook will get up on stage and announce that Apple is switching to an ISA it controls, effective immediately, and OS updates are being pushed out TODAY and it will work on anything from the iPhone 8 or newer. Old ARM ISA applications will continue to work on existing models, but applications will have to be recompiled for future models. For anyone who has uploaded their apps to the AppStore in Bitcode, Apple has already recompiled your app for you.Bitcode (LLVM intermediate code) has been the default for new iOS app projects since 2015, is the *only* way to upload WatchOS and tvOS apps, and has been an option for Mac apps for a long time too.I'm probably completely wrong, but Apple *could* have done this. They certainly have the long term planning and execution ability and it fits their MO.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 03:31:23 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 19, 2020, 03:17:11 pmThis will be purely a commercial decision. If Apple's architecture licence for ARMs avoids per device fees to ARM, they will only be paying ARM for patents. Knowing Apple, they will have been architecting each new device to move away from any technique someone else has a patent on. If this leaves them free and clear of fees, they may have nothing to gain by changing instruction set.

author: TK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 03:33:09 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on September 15, 2020, 04:28:00 pmAnd 61 units in stock... a tiny tiny fraction of what is available with ARM Cortex. My impression is that RISC-V in MCUs is not gaining any momentum

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 03:42:21 pm
content: Quote from: TK on September 19, 2020, 03:33:09 pmIt will usually take 3 to 4 years from a decision to make a new MCU family to its first members appearing in the market. If the early test chips, like the SiFive FE310, are now three years old, we are either close to seeing a major vendor launch a RISC/V MCU family, or RISC/V has failed to get traction.

author: PCB.Wiz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:05:41 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 19, 2020, 03:42:21 pmYes, some think RISC-V is a magic bullet, but the reality is the process matters more than the core.Some vendors have a toe in the water on RISC-V, but that is experimenting.On small MCUs, the peripherals matter more, and compilers insulate the core, so the binary opcodes are ignored by the designers.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:33:01 pm
content: Quote from: PCB.Wiz on September 19, 2020, 11:05:41 pmI don't think anyone sees RISC/V as a magic bullet. It doesn't offer spectacular speed, or superior low power performance. Its purely a route to save the per device fees that go to ARM right now.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:44:58 pm
content: Quote from: TK on September 19, 2020, 03:33:09 pmNo one has bothered to make a serious attempt at the relatively low volume discrete microcontroller chip market yet, though NXP and Gigadevice have dipped their toes in the water (see details in the parent message).There are already hundreds of millions of RISC-V cores shipping inside other larger chips. For example in every GPU Nvidia sells and in Western Digital hard drives and Sandisk flash cards. This year's Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab have two SiFive RISC-V cores, one controlling the camera and one controlling the 5G. The world's largest OEM manufacturer of microwave ovens (Galanz ... 50% world market share) is using SiFive RISC-V cores there and also in their fridges and air conditioning units and so forth.

author: PCB.Wiz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:46:53 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 19, 2020, 11:33:01 pmbut that is a mirage, as the ARM MCUs are currently way cheaper than any RISC-V, so the 'fees claims' fail to make it to to end user.Critical mass and economies of scale matter more than licensing fees.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:47:17 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 19, 2020, 11:44:58 pmWhat went wrong at Galanz? The last time I looked they were making about 80% of all microwave ovens.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:51:04 pm
content: Quote from: PCB.Wiz on September 19, 2020, 11:46:53 pmThere are currently no serious RISC/V MCUs to compare with ARM. There do, however, appear to be quite a few RISC/V cores embedded in high volume custom ICs, where the previous ARM based chips will have accumulated significant revenue for ARM.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:53:11 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 19, 2020, 11:33:01 pmAnd to allow customization of the ISA, which ARM historically has never permitted -- they are relenting a little now under pressure from RISC-V, with just one CPU core (Cortex M33) allowing customization starting .. right about now.There are several press releases from SiFive and their customers stating that SiFive's cores use one third of the silicon area and one third of the power of competing cores, at the same performance level. That's relating to the smallest Cortex M0 or M3 class cores, of course. Once you get to things such as FPUs, an FPU is a FPU... But that's also the highest volume market.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2020, 11:59:55 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 19, 2020, 11:53:11 pmThey have allowed it, but you had to pay a fortune for an architecture licence to be allowed to change it. Only a few companies ever bought those. I imagine there are some modified ARMs out there in custom chips we just don't know about.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2020, 12:00:22 am
content: Quote from: coppice on September 19, 2020, 11:47:17 pmI have no idea whether their share is increasing or decreasing. I just know it's big and wikipedia says "one in two" so I went with that. It's huge anyway.There were a lot of stories on this deal around September/October last year.https://www.fonow.com/view/239442.html

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2020, 12:32:05 am
content: Quote from: coppice on September 19, 2020, 11:59:55 pmNo, that's not correct. An ARM architecture license allows the company to design their own CPU cores, They are *not* allowed to modify the licensed ARM instruction set in any way -- nothing removed, nothing added. ARM executives are on record saying this. For example in this panel discussion (which I was at):Start watching at around 33:30 for that (but the whole thing is worth watching). If a company such as Apple wants some new instruction they propose it to a committee run by ARM, and if it is accepted then it is published in a later version of the spec for all to use.There are no secret custom instructions at Apple or elsewhere.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2020, 01:12:36 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 20, 2020, 12:32:05 amAbout 15 years ago I proposed making changes to the status register of the ARM7TDMI, a bit before the M series cores started appearing. Most people in our company immediately said we couldn't. Others said to me quietly that if you really read the architecture licence properly ARM could not stop us. Some key people inside the company really liked the idea of not using ARM, and I never pushed the point, so I don't know how it might have worked out.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2020, 01:46:35 am
content: Quote from: coppice on September 20, 2020, 01:12:36 amI know and love the ARM7TDMI -- that was the dominant chip in mobile phones from every manufacturer back when I was writing a Java native compiler for BREW phones back just before iPhone and Android hit.The status register might be a grey area if you're not adding or removing instructions.What kind of change did you propose? Adding an Intel-style Half carry bit or Parity bit something like that? Back then the 32 bit status register had 20 undefined/reserved bits. So yeah you could add something like Half carry or Parity without technically changing the instruction set because instructions that set them would still be the same instruction. You wouldn't be able to add new instructions to branch on those bits directly, but you could always copy the status register to a GPR and then mask it with TST or shift that bit to the MSB and BMI etc. Which would be a lot lower overhead than not having those status bits if you needed them.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2021, 09:02:06 am
content: Possibly not:https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/2/22814633/nvidia-arm-purchase-semiconductor-ftc-40-billion-lawsuit-block-deal

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2021, 05:37:58 pm
content: Now that gets interesting.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2021, 08:43:31 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on December 06, 2021, 05:37:58 pmIt's always seemed like a really hard acquisition to get past the regulators in multiple countries.Meanwhile there have been 15 months and counting of ARM customers having an incentive to investigate alternatives, just in case. More than that when you count nervousness about Softbank increasing license fees to get their $30 billion investment back.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2021, 04:12:15 am
content: The only companies which should be happy with the acquisition failing are the handful of ones using ARM for housekeeping while competing in areas NVIDIA makes products (cars and supercomputers) and the companies which think they can do faster custom cores in house without ARM help (Qualcomm with the NUVIA, reportedly Samsung is building a new team too, I imagine Amazon thinks they can just DIY it too).For small licensees this is a disaster, the regulators got this ass backwards.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2021, 05:50:06 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on December 06, 2021, 08:43:31 pmI assume it has been a great time for you.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2021, 05:52:34 am
content: Quote from: Marco on December 10, 2021, 04:12:15 amThat needs some explanation. If the deal went through ARM would soon be dead, and of no value to the small licensees. Sure nVidia have promised to keep an open licensing model, but the industry knows what promise like that are worth long term.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2021, 06:43:06 am
content: Quote from: coppice on December 10, 2021, 05:52:34 amFantasy, there is absolutely no profit in that for NVIDIA. Killing ARM will accomplish almost nothing in their major markets ... 40 billion down the drain for nothing.The biggest markets affected where they directly compete would be supercomputers ... the performance of housekeeping cores in Cerebras/Fugaku is irrelevant, switching ISA for new generation products would be inconvenient but that's all it would be.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2021, 07:41:59 am
content: QuoteI was/am afraid that NVIDIA has zero interest in the embedded ARM cores (ie Cortex-M), and that they'd go the same way as Intel's ARM core processors...

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 04:43:33 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 10, 2021, 06:43:06 amThis has nothing to do with any actions nVidia might take. Everyone will just run away when a silicon vendor is in charge of ARM. The only reason ARM grew into its current position is because it was not tied to a silicon vendor. When DEC, TI, Intel and others were trying to get ARM into the industry's foreground they all understood this, and none of them wanted to take control.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 05:20:53 pm
content: When they tried ARM was failing to compete as anything but a microcontroller and if ARM doesn't find a way to make silicon macro development more profitable, that's the situation where they will end back in.Softbank's investment made it seem that providing relatively performant core macros was profitable, but it really wasn't. NVIDIA profits from having their GPUs in everything, let them and most everyone else can profit from high performant CPU cores. It's not ideal, but ARM IPO'ing and being forced to scale back R&D isn't ideal either.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 06:02:13 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 12, 2021, 05:20:53 pmOne of the key things that drove ARM's success was reasonable fees. Anyone seeing the ARM instruction set as a gravy train ends up very disappointed. Things like RISC-V have made this more true than ever.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 06:42:59 pm
content: Post Softbank the reason to use ARM macro cores was also their relatively good performance, that helped companies like Mediatek lot. The extra revenue stream NVIDIA gains from becoming the standard in graphics, ANN and compute across multiple platforms can sustain that level of investment more reliably than an IPO.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 08:26:54 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 10, 2021, 06:43:06 amNVidia would not be able to resist seeking rents by tying their own IP to ARM when licensing, and discontinuing licensing of ARM IP which their competitors are using. They were not buying ARM for the profits, but to cut off competitors whether it damaged customers or not.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 11:01:25 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 12, 2021, 08:26:54 pmGovernments can simply require them to extend existing licenses. Development would likely stop even if NVIDIA is forced to spin off Mali, but the flavour of GPUs in SoC's isn't all that important. Licensees which use Mali will switch and NVIDIA will profit mostly from the ecosystem effects of having a semi-standard for graphics, compute and ANN accelerators across multiple markets.

author: nfmax
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2022, 03:42:49 pm
content: And the sale is abandoned:https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/nvidia-takeover-arm-collapses-softbankAnyone up for subscribing to the IPO next year?

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2022, 05:14:16 pm
content: Quote from: nfmax on February 08, 2022, 03:42:49 pmNVDA is pretty much flat today, so obviously "The Market" expected this, as the stock had been trending down for a couple of months. (Though that's the general market direction too.)What I found odd was that the British government claimed "ARM is British! British jobs!" etc etc, but that apparently wasn't important when SoftBank bought it.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2022, 05:44:02 pm
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on February 08, 2022, 05:14:16 pmYeah, I did find that odd, especially since Nvidia is a U.S. company. I wonder how they would have reacted if a Chinese company tried to buy ARM?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2022, 06:04:35 pm
content: Quote from: nfmax on February 08, 2022, 03:42:49 pmMaybe to dump it almost immediately, but that's a hell of a gamble on sentiment. The fundamentals are awful.Long term just buy Apple instead for a stock to hold, this was better news for Apple than Arm.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 09, 2022, 03:16:59 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on February 08, 2022, 05:44:02 pmInstead of the Japanese company that already owns it.

author: mac.6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2022, 09:25:44 pm
content: It's probably a good thing for the industry that Nvidia gives up, but for ARM it will be a blood bath (or at least for ARM employees).The breakup clause money will go directly into softbank pockets, and ARM results are not good enough for a good IPO, so it will mean a lot of cost cutting measures...

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2022, 06:02:50 am
content: Quote from: PCB.Wiz on September 19, 2020, 11:46:53 pmIt matters a lot for people putting cores into other chips. As far as I understand the arm licensing fees are a percentage of the die cost. If you make a small microcontroller with an M4 core on a 45 nanometer process you pay very little. If you make a 1 Tb/s network switch on 7 nm and want to put the same M4 core on it to load configuration registers you pay a lot more. I definitely know people who are using arm cores in situations like this where they would prefer to go to risc v.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2022, 06:49:07 am
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on February 16, 2022, 06:02:50 amOne suspects such contract terms are going to be renegiotiated or modified in the next couple of years.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2022, 05:34:46 pm
content: Quote from: mac.6 on February 15, 2022, 09:25:44 pmBecause acquisitions are not usually immediately followed by restructuring and cost reduction measures? So either way...