Comment by 10ren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 10ren | Hacker News Reader

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I wish google finance had a setting to 0 the y-axis, so you can appreciate the percentage increase by eye. (or is there a setting for that somewhere?)

But you're right: 17% up in 2.5 hours means there must be some news about... (why don't you put 17% in the headline? The current title is too vague to grab the attention it deserves - and someone here probably knows EDIT much better).

EDIT whoa. It spiked to 31% up, now settling around 25%

Seems to be rumour of apple buy: http://www.lse.co.uk/FinanceNews.asp?ArticleCode=hu9stjtv6kn...

Another report http://www.marketwatch.com/story/arm-holdings-imagination-te... which notes a similar surge in Imagination Technologies http://www.google.com/finance?q=LON:IMG whose tech is also used in "tablet computers" hmmmm... might not be apple?

EDIT sigh. now only 10% up. oh well, that was exciting for a while. Might still happen of course.

> a spokeswoman for ARM said it had not received an approach and a takeover from Apple would not make sense. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE63M18320100610

> so you can appreciate the percentage increase by eye.

Not quite what you asked for, but Settings -> Vertical Scale -> Logarithmic -- one pixel is the same percentage change no matter the absolute price.

Hey, nice point. You still need something to compare it to though, to know the actual percentage. But it would show anomalous changes,

Imagination Technologies makes the PowerVR graphic accelerator used in some of the ARM-based SoCs like OMAP (and allegedly the Apple A4).

The Apple bid might be real? A simple rumour typically doesn't merit a 25% rise.

Very highly unlikely. Apple only has to pay $0.33 licensing fees for every A4 processor it sells. This cost is so close to zero the saying "why buy the cow when the milk is free?" should apply here.

Not only that, the antitrust concerns would tie Apple up in court for years. This would be like Microsoft buying Intel in the middle of the DOJ investigation. Not gonna happen.

How is this different than Apple buying PA Semi?

Also, Apple's not a monopoly.

PA Semi doesn't make chips used by all of the top smartphone vendors.

Apple isn't a monopoly, but there are still antitrust concerns when you buy a company that all of your competitors must license from.

PA Semi gave them specific IP and engineers for low-power chip design. ARM already licenses its IP and designs for a very low price. At best, I could see Apple buying a minority percentage like they used to own just to keep someone else from messing with them.

> The Apple bid might be real?

Feels weird. What sense would it make precisely? ARM only does basic code design, they already have a fabless constructor or two, what would Apple gain by buying ARM, shutting it down and making designs only for Apple themselves?

Control of the chip company that produces the silicon (design) for just about all mobile devices?

And symbolically ARM would be folded into one of the 3 companies that created it originally.

Arm does not produce silicon, they produce designs.

And again, what would Apple gain from that control, the right to withhold new ARM generations from e.g. HTC? Unless the Apple execs have gotten very stupid recently, they probably understand that not only would the EU and the US regulatory agency would pay them a visit if they even initiated the move of buying ARM, doing that kind of withholding would land them in scorching hot water.

It's one thing to have strange practices when you're the second or third player on the smartphone market (and basically non-existent in the wider mobile phone market in terms of number of units), it's another one to have anti-competitive practices when you have a monopoly on mobile chips.

And ARM most definitely has that, there are few if any other architecture for mobile/embedded systems at all, and ARM has pretty much all of the market for mid to top-end embedded stuff.

ARM dominates, yes. BTW: the other company mentioned is also a fabless core designer: Imagination Technologies. They are a bit lower-end than ARM, but disruption tends to come from below...

They have some cool ideas for customized many-core, with a mix of CPU and DSP. My hunch has been that that's where Moore's Law will go: specialized silicon (like specialized organs in your body; or specialized firms in the economy.)

A more innocent explanation could be that Apple really believes in the ARM platform's continued success and thinks it's a good investment. Good way to hedge their bets. You can buy an iPhone and give them a big profit margin or you can buy an Android phone and give them the 30-50 cents ARM license fee.

Maybe they have some nice IP and few patents that Apple would like to use against the A4 or future chip designs.

I'm sure they have nice IP, but the point is that IP is embedded in the designs they produce which anybody can license, and which Apple already licenses, at least in part (the A4 is based on the Cortex A8, which is an ARM-designed core)

A4 is ARM based

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