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Comment by starfallg | Hacker News Reader

The antitrust implications of an ARM sale to any one of the tech giant is massive and may drag on for a while. It would be probably be quicker if Softbank floats ARM through an IPO.

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Yep. They call it out.

"ARM is so widespread that buying it will be a regulatory nightmare, and even the most lenient rubber-stamp regulators around the world must shudder at the idea of an existing ARM licensee buying ARM. "

Practically all of Apple's product line will be powered by ARM in the near future. Buying ARM would put them at a huge advantage while heavily influencing the chip IP of competitors. I can't imagine regulators in the US and EU not raising an eyebrow at this.

There has been no meaningful antitrust action in over a decade. I wouldn't bank on it.

The parent is referring to the blocking of an acquisition. There have been many examples of that type of action on the basis of competition concerns. The Justice Dept and FTC routinely try to block acquisitions where there are competition concerns. They don't always win, as in the case of AT&T / Time Warner (or in the case of AT&T / T-Mobile, they did successfully prevent that). Some other examples: Anthem & Cigna, Sabre & Farelogix, Edgewell & Harry's, Office Depot & Staples, Sysco & US Foods.

A little over a decade ago, a lot of stuff went wrong because a bunch of economically dominant corporations figured they were too big for governments to allow them to fail.

And it looks like big tech is developing much the same rich-and-out-of-touch reputation that bankers and stock traders used to have.

I don’t know who, but I am assuming one of the FAANGs will be forcibly broken up in the next decade.

How'd that work out for the bankers and stock traders?

It worked out pretty great for them, everyone else though... not so much. The bankers got to enjoy inflated profits and bonuses for years knowing that the government would step in when things eventually blew up.

Privatizing the gains and socializing the losses is a playbook the tech giants are all too happy to keep pushing as long as the government allows them to.

Nvidia acquiring ARM wouldn't pose much of a problem because they can just point to AMD, which already offers CPU and GPU, so it would put the two companies on a more even footing in that regard.

intel also sells cpu and gpu, technically.

Soon not so technically anymore, if Intel's Xe project works out. Midrange GPU prices have been rising and rising in the last ten years, so competition is welcome. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-xe-graphics-all-we-k...

That only really holds water at a cursory glance though... Nvidia owns ALL of video and then some, AMD only owns a (growing) tiny fraction of CPU and happens to have a couple cards. It's not just about markets but market share.

AMD holds roughly 30 percent share of the CPU* and graphics card/GPU markets, that's far from insignificant and certainly not a "tiny fraction" or a "couple cards."

* https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/09/24/am... https://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-and-nvidia-geforce-discrete-...

I think they also totally own the console space, don't they? The next-gen consoles from both Sony and Microsoft are based on custom AMD cpu/gpu combos.

Nintendo switch uses NVIDIA, but yes AMD is the provider for Microsoft and Sony.

yes, I'd forgot about that. Current gen and next gen are both AMD silicon.

The lowest bidder owns the console space. It's not a good business, it's a bit of cash flow.

Disclaimer that I really know nothing about these kinds of deals.

I understand that has historically been the case, but AMD is in a pretty good negotiating position right now, being effectively the only company that can provide what they bring to the table.

* a SoC with integrated CPU and GPU

* with high performance and decent power consumption

* and great synergy with the desktop x86 platform, in terms of developer knowledge, available tooling, and ISA compatibility with older games

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD is making a decent respectable margin this time around. And if not, what they most certainly did get, was a bunch of free R&D money for developing ray-tracing technology for the consoles, which they can now leverage through their entire portfolio.

The real benefit of owning the console space isn't money, it's forcing all the console developers to develop specifically for your hardware. If you want to eke out all the performance on Xbone or PS4, you must take full advantage of AMD's CPU/GPU architecture.

The complaint was that AMD was insignificant, not that it's low margin which is a perfectly acceptable business strategy.

As dralley mentioned. AMD is actually one of the few businesses with both strong CPU and GPU expertise. Building a console with any other company would require buying the CPU and GPU from two different companies. Intel would refuse and ARM CPUs including the ones Nvidia designed are not powerful enough, so really AMD CPU+Nvidia GPU is the only alternative to AMD CPU+AMD GPU but there is absolutely no reason for AMD to collaborate with Nvidia. The truth is that AMD is the only one that can serve this market.

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