Arm acquisition

[bastafari]

Any thought on what impact if any the acquisition of arm by Nvidia will have on the community?

[lot378]

ARM could end up being a disaster for many clients due to becoming owned by a US company under current or future (current very concerned about) US governmental administration. The deal is still subject to regulatory matters for the next 18 months. An important thing that the UK government must do is ensure the open license agreement and client relationships with ARM are never subjected to and discriminated against by US security review. For Pine64, it could mean they couldn't sell product.

However, the UK is very vulnerable right now with it's exit from the Europe Union and seeking trade deals around the world.

And the UK government is the weakest it has ever been.

Another effect it might have is to push RISC-V with it's diverse ISA so we have that in addition to Intel, AMD and ARM.

[jiyong]

The US already controls the CPU world, as Huawei will be out of options to manufacture them.
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/31360...production
Still not a good thing that the US gets even more control.
The US is even interfering with the Dutch company ASML to block export of the newest litho machines to manufacture the new chips.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-...SKBN1Z50HN

Reminds me of the days where the PS2 was considered too powerful for some "dangerous" countries.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-late...nk-the-ps2

I also wonder what this will mean for the licensing of ARM technology.
What if Nvidia will make it mandatory to license the GPU as well?

I'm going to keep an eye on Pico Rio with the open source RISC-V CPU.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-pi...-processor

[_hg_]

From my perspective, this is terrible news. If this goes through, I expect the next major version of ARM to have AMT-style back doors and associated vulnerabilities. Nvidia has not been friendly to Linux lately either; if Google fully moves to Fuchsia in the future then Linux support may become sparse. Sourcing also becomes a potential sore point as others have pointed out.

At least there are some slowly maturing alternatives in the form of RISC-V, or even an expensive FPGA.

[CharlieGordon]

IBM seems to see this as an opportunity to bring their POWER architecture back into the light: https://openpowerfoundation.org/openpowe...mmit-2020/

That's certainly not in a state that pine64 could build a new system on right now. On the other hand it will probably take several years until Nvidia can ruin things for ARM users.

[ab1jx]

I'm not crazy about it or know anything about the business aspects, but Nvidia being a video company maybe they'll have a more open policy toward Mali and X11 drivers.

[z4v4l]

the only "impact" so far is RISCV scammers got activated. (just count how many commenters ended their "highly concerned" posts with "hopes" about RISCV).

This aquisition will have no impact. at all. neither on SBC segment nor on Pine64.

[jiyong]

the only "impact" so far is RISCV scammers got activated. (just count how many commenters ended their "highly concerned" posts with "hopes" about RISCV).

This aquisition will have no impact. at all. neither on SBC segment nor on Pine64.

Stop the name calling. Why are we scammers?

Nvidia has a terrible track record when it comes to Open Source.
The writing is on the wall. I really hope we don't have to say "We told you so" in a couple of years.

Concerning RISC-V, what's the problem with an Open Source alternative?

[_hg_]

I just don't want yet another major chipmaker/designer to be owned by the US. After the spying revelations over the last decade, I no longer trust non-open processor designs that come from US companies. The one thing that may reduce this risk with ARM is the structure of ARM licensing (which results in more eyes from different companies looking more closely at designs), however this could always be worked around by limiting licensees to friendly companies and requiring strict internal controls for licensees. I hope that this does not happen--and it may not, the world is different than it was in 2010--but I think it is a valid long-term concern for anyone who cares about hardware freedom.

ARM has been a great alternative to the x86 monoculture and I hope it continues to walk the golden path. But I am still concerned if this goes through.

BTW, RISC-V is not a "scam", it's just immature and overpriced. Will it improve? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.

Edit: To clarify, nobody should panic about this. There are still many reasons why ARM might be fine even if the sale goes through. I'm just expressing concern and dismay at another company coming under control of the US, and suggesting to watch closely in the coming years if this sale is completed.

[z4v4l]

the only "impact" so far is RISCV scammers got activated. (just count how many commenters ended their "highly concerned" posts with "hopes" about RISCV).

This aquisition will have no impact. at all. neither on SBC segment nor on Pine64.

Stop the name calling. Why are we scammers?

Nvidia has a terrible track record when it comes to Open Source.
The writing is on the wall. I really hope we don't have to say "We told you so" in a couple of years.

stop stopping. nVidia is a successful computer corporation, and as such, it couldn't care less about your religious views on "Open Source". they are not relevant for them. if you were nVidia, you'd get that. like it or not, but it's them, who will be designing/producing your next phone CPU cores, from which you will be bashing it. and google and microsoft and whoever yet has "terrible track record of opensource".

Concerning RISC-V, what's the problem with an Open Source alternative?

It's vaporware. annoyingly and unsolicitedly pushed in every topic. oh, it's like Jehovah's Witnesses.
Would be a totally different story, if it really existed somewhere else, other than stupid near-almost-technology gnu/propaganda blogs. but so far, it doesn't. MIPS does exist, whose ripoff your RISCV is. it's open. and even schmopen. somehow, I don't see enthusiasm about it. why? gnu/influencers didn't tell you about it? it's just all so vanity talks. laughably irrelevant and absolutely out of reality. okay, you wanna chat about "big things", hapenning in the industry, that's normal, but why should it necessarily end up with moaning, generating tons of snivel about "endangering the Sacred Cow of Open Source"? come on, it's beyong cr4p!

BTW, RISC-V is not a "scam", it's just immature and overpriced. Will it improve? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.

when something "immature and overpriced" (and non-existent, worth to add) is being so aggressively advertized, it's a scam.