Re:Arm co-founder: Sale to Nvidia would be a disaster
by progval on Sunday August 16, 2020 @03:10AM
(#24175879)
> since they only licence but don’t actual fab the chips
From the article: "It's one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody. The one saving grace about Softbank was that it wasn't a chip company, and retained ARM's neutrality. If it becomes part of Nvidia, most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia, and will of course then look for an alternative to ARM."
Implying NVidia's competitors who use ARM would fear losing their license.
> Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the other ?
They have technical differences, but TBH I don't know them and I'm not sure they matter. However, conceptually they have two big differences IMO : RISC-V is open (don't need to buy a license to use it) but ARM is way more mature and supported (RISC-V based computers are still very rare).
From the article: "It's one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody. The one saving grace about Softbank was that it wasn't a chip company, and retained ARM's neutrality. If it becomes part of Nvidia, most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia, and will of course then look for an alternative to ARM."
Implying NVidia's competitors who use ARM would fear losing their license.
> Also what’s the difference between ARM and RISC-V. Why chose one over the other ?
They have technical differences, but TBH I don't know them and I'm not sure they matter. However, conceptually they have two big differences IMO : RISC-V is open (don't need to buy a license to use it) but ARM is way more mature and supported (RISC-V based computers are still very rare).