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Comment by lewisjoe | Hacker News Reader

Quick summary on why it matters that Nvidia abandons ARM takeover:

1. ARM doesn't own any factories. Its entire workforce publishes blueprints for making chips (like a software company where the entire asset is intellectual)

2. Buying this type of intellectual asset, means owning and controlling a technology.

3. This also means, all the other customers who depend on this tech (Apple, Samsung, Amazon, pretty much all big tech companies) are now at a disadvantage with NVIDIA as a competitor.

4. China heavily depends on ARM (Huawei, the company's biggest tech manufacturer rely on ARM)

5. This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China

6. Since ARM is basically like a software company, it's better to not be owned by a hardware maker. That way, it can prioritize demand from several hardware makers instead of being directed to cater to one market)

So, all-in-all this is a good thing :)

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There are significant inaccuracies in this take

(2) "controlling tech" All big players: Apple, Nvidia, Samsung, Amazon, Qualcomm, Intel, .. have so called Architectural license with heavily crafted clauses in them that make them free from Arm control except for some minor details. They use just the instruction set and make their own microarchitecture.

(3) Arm China was robbed from Arm. The CEO stopped taking orders and just kept IP and is running company like their own. Chinese courts did nothing. China does what it wants inside China.

(5) No difference. There are too many cross-atlantic IP and design tool connections. Arm must comply completely to US government sanctions.

(6) Just like Nvidia. Both fabless hw IP companies. Difference is that Nvidia sells chips, Arm sells IP. Nvidia wanted Arm because they want to sell Nvidia IP to others. Nvidia has Arm architecture license, they don't need Arm IP to use Arm.

> (3) Firstly, Arm China was robbed from Arm. The CEO stopped taking orders and just kept IP and is running company like their own. Chinese courts did nothing. China does what it wants inside China.

Did ARM cut off any new IP access from ARM China? Seems like a logical next step. And how is ARM China going to continue innovating? On their own?

Yes.

Arm China is now AnMou Technology. They have "two wheels" strategy. ARM CPU architecture development for local customers and new Core Power architecture.

According to [1], the IP theft narrative is not actually true.

> There is an ongoing dispute between ARM and ARM China.

> But the accusations that ARM China had stolen ARM IP and was relaunching it under its own banner? Those don’t appear to be true.

[1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-acc...

> how is ARM China going to continue innovating? On their own?

Yes. Thery may do badly, but this isn't going to be much of a problem for China for ages. They are unlikely to do that badly though - among 2 billion people there will be plenty of good people.

Their much bigger problem though is their lack of access to cutting edge semi-conductor manufacturing technology. I imagine they are on this though, probably through industrial espionage (invading Taiwan would help, but they will face similar issues for acccess to tech long term unless they also get access to ASML work I think).

SMIC is already at 14nm, and ASML is allowed to continue to sell equipment for this process. The more advanced process nodes have several drawbacks; the domestic market could likely adjust to 14nm long-term.

The MIPS processor was copied for production in China (illicitly, until fully licensed), as was the DEC Alpha. There is significant processor design knowledge, and ample ability to copy any new designs produced by ARM-UK, even if they have to be scaled up to 14nm for domestic production.

Oddly enough, I learned recently that Russia prefers SPARC (known as Elbrus).

Elbrus are not SPARC. They are developed by Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies(MCST) though, that's where your confusion comes from(and there were few SPARC machines under Elbrus brand, but that was a long time ago). They were basically design team for hire in the 90s and were named such to attract customers. Then Intel wanted to acquire them in mid-2000s, but ended up just hiring almost everyone and leaving company as an empty shell. Now they are doing their own ISA and it's very different from SPARC. For starters, they are the only ones who are doing VLIW in CPUs nowadays(outside of CPUs I can think of only one other company, Groq).

Thanks, I just saw their association with SPARC from 1993 to 2010, so I assumed it was their main architecture.

On the subject of VLIW, Sophie Wilson was talking up Firepath as late as 2020.

"In 1992 a spin-off company Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST) was created and continued development, using the "Elbrus" moniker as a brand for all computer systems developed by the company."

"Elbrus-90micro (1998–2010) is a computer line based on SPARC instruction set architecture (ISA) microprocessors."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_(computer)

Elbrus is a custom VLIW, not a Sparc.

> And how is ARM China going to continue innovating? On their own?

Why not?

When I was young, the common wisdom was that Japan couldn't innovate, and once I saw an old bit of early 20th century analysis that said Germany couldn't either.

Both of those were wrong, why is China so different that it would be otherwise?

Unhelpfully-successful innovators in China have a way of ending up in jails or unofficial house arrest

I'm curious about the origin of the fallacy that intelligence/innovation can only be found in anti-authoritarians/rebels (this is often deployed as "Our Freedom(TM) is why the US will always be number 1!"). Pro-government people can innovate just fine (e.g. GCHQ, NSA & defense industry)

Well we now have a natural experiment, let's see if more innovation comes out of the US or China in the coming years. I'm confident it won't be China, but certainly no guarantees.

Yes.

Technically Soft Bank still owns 49% of arm-china subsidiary, and they could theoretically take control back... but the belligerent CEO of arm-china has supposedly setup private security forces barring access to the facilities, and there is something about a legal seal. So far Soft Bank has opted not to escalate the situation any further. There is of course a lot more to the story.

> there is something about a legal seal

for those not aware: seals are a big cultural thing in asian cultures (at least Japan and China for sure). I saw some surplus processors shipped from china with a stamp on them, I asked a Chinese friend about it thinking it was some kind of disposition mark (trying to make sure it didn't say "DEFECTIVE" or something ;) and she told me it was the seller's name, and that was his personal stamp, basically like his signature.

That got me looking into it and a signature is a pretty good analogy. In Japan at least it appears you need a seal to do any sort of serious transaction (buying a house, etc). The seals are officially registered and indeed basically like a signature, if you stamp a document that means it's "signed".

For a business, control of the seal is pretty much control of the business, I'm guessing. It's certainly going to be difficult to do any governing of the company without it, even if you otherwise have legal ownership of the company it's going to be difficult to exercise it without the seal.

Bit of an interesting cultural touchstone, seems minor to westerners but it's apparently a big deal to them.

It’s like when the Portuguese seized Macau. Even if it was wrong there was no higher authority who was going to step in and put things right.

(2) is untrue. Most players use ARM core designs, not just the instruction set.

Qualcomm used to make their own (back in 2014 or so) but hasn't since. Samsung tried after and quit in 2019. The cloud cores are all standard ARM designs (neoverse).

They have bought architecture licenses that allow them full control. They can still buy and use ARM core IP if they want.

Sure, but allow and use are different things.

Not "full controll". They need to meet a ton of requirements towards ARM.

And many of these "completely resigned" CPUs are nothing more than small (but important) adjustments of the pipeline and memory subsystem.

More importantly, both Apple and Fujitsu use custom designs.

Fujitsu has the fastest-ranked supercomputer with their custom ARM, and Apple felt confident enough in their M1 ARM to evict Intel.

I'm not claiming that all ARM licensees use ARM cores. Rather, if ARM stopped offering competitive core designs (or limited them to just Nvidia), it would have a big impact on the ecosystem.

A few players doing otherwise doesn't change that, regardless of how well they execute.

> Chinese courts did nothing. China does what it wants inside China.

Lots of people calling this out as 'a bad thing', but at the end of the day the Chinese government/courts handled in what it thought was in the best interest of Chinese citizens.

For other countries that might look like respecting IP clauses but for China it doesn't seem to be. I think it makes perfect sense and is perfectly moral for a country to do so.

and for 6) I think one of the fears there is that nVidia would use ARMs near de-facto monopoly to force their tech onto the market and push out competitors, like qualcom on the mobile GPU market.

Whether it be trough integrating nVidia tech more deeply into the architectural offerings essentialy forcing competitors to license both techs, or by using the ARM IP to in the future outcompete direct competitors by charging more for the IP that they can now use without any cost. Even if they're not planning any of that, I think the fear that they might in the future is what's giving many people (and regulators) pause.

ARM itself is never in direct competition with its customers _because_ it only sells IP, nVidia sells chips and is in direct competition with others who depend upon ARM for their chips.

>but at the end of the day the Chinese government/courts handled in what it thought was in the best interest of Chinese citizens

In the short-term, you're absolutely right. In the long-term, no one will continue to invest in Chinese businesses if China gets a reputation for banditry like this. Is it in the best interests of Chinese citizens to ruin their reputation for the next generation?

It's likely that China will use illegal or underhanded techniques to get ahead today then clean up their act and claim rehabilitation later. You can see the mental groundwork being laid in the whataboutism rebuttals comparing the US today vs past history.

> Lots of people calling this out as 'a bad thing', but at the end of the day the Chinese government/courts handled in what it thought was in the best interest of Chinese citizens.

If somebody came into my house, ate my food, set themselves up in a bedroom and enjoyed the comforts of my household, then when I told them to leave declared everywhere they had lodged and dined in my house an independent territory, that would be an immoral act. Blatant theft in the eyes of anyone.

Allen Wu was removed from his post. Not only did he decline, he took off a chunk of the company with him. That is a move of douchery in business I've never seen anywhere in the Western world in my time alive.

If the company I work for fires me, I will leave the premises. I may not like the decision but I respect it. And in Denmark we have courts of law that ensure one vacates the premises by the date of termination.

The CCP is playing fast and loose with whatever it likes. That's bad behavior, whether you're a business or a human being.

> in the best interest of Chinese citizens.

Of course you can do that but that is not how you do trade. Trade requires trust and a move like this undermines trust. And I find it difficult to argue that it's in the best interest of citizen to undermine foreign investors' trust in the marketplace. In the end it means that less money will flow in.

“They use just the instruction set and make their own microarchitecture.”

Is that really the case? My understanding is that while, yes, they make their own microarchitectures, they rely heavily on IP from ARM to make that happen

Do they write their own instruction decoders, FPUs, etc? I thought they started with the reference designs for a core and then tweaked them to their liking, some companies tweaking more than others

A peek inside Qualcomm’s upcoming chips, for example: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17091/qualcomm-announces-snap...

All of the main cores are ARM reference designs. Qualcomm does add proprietary IP, but it is more oriented around their strengths, like integrating their 5G modem into the die, which is something that none of the other big chip manufacturers can do at the moment (to my knowledge)

As uluyol corrected me, most of these seem to se ARM cores today. Few years back Samsung and Qualcomm had their own architectures. But the fact remains, if they have architecture license, ARM can't control them too much.

Apple designs everything by themselves.

All of those companies except Amazon have shipped ARM CPU cores fully designed in-house, yes. But all except Apple and NVIDIA have since completely dropped their custom core design, and NVIDIA goes back and forth.

Qualcomm did buy Nuvia though, so they might yet come back with something new.

If they have an architecture license, they can make their own implementations of the ISA.

Certainly, they may choose to derive their implementations from ARM's designs (or use them wholesale), but the license allows them to make their own.

That said, in the mobile space, AIUI only Apple and ARM are nowadays developing their own implementations. In the HPC space, there are others (Fujitsu, Marvell, etc).

(ARM also sells more limited licenses which only allow their cores to be used.)

(3) Arm is refuting that there was IP theft, see https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-acc...

(2) *I thought Apple had complete control over their Arm(TM) based chips as in they can do anythign they want and pay no licensing fee as long as they keep the Arm branding?

Point 3: New New internet!

> 5. This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China

China has already hijacked the ARM branch in China[1] and taken over ARM's IP.

[1] https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-cent...

Seems that it's not as simple as mentioned here: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326617-arm-refutes-acc...

The article is a very very strange read. ( At least the tone of it, may be under legal threat )

Yes, ARM China didn't steal any ARM UK's IP. But ARM China is also no longer under the control of ARM UK, practically speaking. And the New IP offered by ARM China are also independent of ARM UK. I am wondering if the deal with ARM China and ARM UK are the same as AMD's JV, where China currently has AMD Zen's IP. Given the people involved I would not be surprised.

ARM UK are also well aware of the RISC-V threat, which China is currently pouring all the resources into it. I would not be surprised if you see a free high performance RISC-V IP offered by China just to destroy the ARM market along with some other x86 market. The threat is real. But then again HN will rejoice because it is free and RISC-V.

China? already done

https://riscv.org/news/2021/10/alibaba-announces-open-source...

New Zealand too .....

https://github.com/MoonbaseOtago/vroom

On the topic of China and IP, I watched an interesting debate on China between two politicians recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEchkn3unl8. Funnily Vince Cable, arguing in favour of China as a friend to the West, defended their IP offences saying this is what lots of Western nations did to each other (and, arguably, though he doesn't make a big deal of it, China) on the way to becoming fully developed.

Has he heard of a zero sum game?

>Since ARM is basically like a software company

It's is not. Being a fabless designer of hardware IP doesn't make them "basically a SW company".

It's still very much a HW IP company any way you slice it.

People understand software better than they under HDL designs. To most people, they're pretty comparable

Well, we can always clarify things for people who don't understand HW as good as SW, but for correctness we have to call a spade a spade and not help spread misinformation just because it sounds easier to understand than the facts, for the less informed users.

Software and hardware IP companies are indeed not the same, so we should be more precise about the ways in which they are similar.

* Their work is in both cases a mix of design and engineering.

* Both produce goods that are reproducible at zero cost, and are protected (only) by intellectual property laws.

So while ARM definitely does not produce software, their work is somewhat comparable.

> Their work is in both cases a mix of design and engineering.

> Both produce goods that are reproducible at zero cost, and are protected (only) by intellectual property laws.

You forgot fabrication. Unlike SW IP where as long as it compiles it's ready to ship but stays virtual, ARM's IP must be manufacturable into physical things you can touch by the major fabs therefore must be grounded in the processes and cell libraries that those fabs can manufacture.

Unlike a SW company, they can't just freely innovate whatever shiny new IP they want without concern for the silicon manufacturing processes, therefore it's closer to HW than SW, as all their IP is eventually manufactured into real things you can touch and therefore must follow the manufacturing constrains.

If you follow their news announcements, they constantly talk about their partnership with Samsung and TSMC to adapt their IP to each of their upcoming process nodes, so their their customer like Apple or Qualcomm can just buy the IP and plop it into their design knowing it's already been validated for Samsung/TSMC and can reliably be sent to the fab. So ARM is still very much a HW IP company.

> Both produce goods that are reproducible at zero cost

I mean the blueprint is zero cost but building your own fab costs tens of billions of dollars these days.

That's true, but ARM only sells the blueprints.

I would guess there are a lot more ARM licensees than there are fabricators. Most licensees probably pay somebody else to manufacture their designs.

It's an analogy.

I am an NVIDIA employee in an unrelated part of the business and not inclined to comment in depth on these matters and this is not an NVIDIA opinion or official but

i thought it worth mentioning

I don’t see the distinction? NVIDIA is fabless too??

(Heck, so is AMD I think)

Nvidia doesn't licence its designs to other companies for incorporation into their own chip designs, ARM does. That is the main distinction I think, and why people want it to be a neutral third party.

IIUC, part of the deal was that NVIDIA would license its designs via ARM.

They say that now... It could even very well be the case. However, there are plenty of ways to manipulate those licensing agreements to work more in Nvidia's favor than they do today.

They've been saying that from the beginning. There are billions of ARM devices, the ability to sell a GPU to each is worth money.

Ability to forcibly sell a gpu to each is worth even more money (ie. see lawsuit on how Quallcomm bundle their modem on every SoC for a premium)

AMD spun their manufacturing off as Global Foundries, so yes.

And yeah, I’m not sure this distinction the poster is making between arm as like a software company and NVIDIA like a hardware company makes much sense.

Arm makes IP (in the chip design sense). NVIDIA makes IP and combines it with IP from Arm and others, and produces some product designs based on the chip, which NVIDIA tests and writes software for. But ODMs make the products and fabs make the chips. I really don’t think calling some of this like software and some like hardware is very explanatory, at least partially because NVIDIA writes a lot of software, and because I think the person reading that description might come away with the impression that arm just produces the architecture, and not actual core designs (which NVIDIA, Denver aside, uses).

They also stopped using global foundries and now use TSMC. Global foundries, like pretty much everyone other than TSMC, fell behind in process shrinks. Their primary business is fabricating secondary chips.

Global Foundries is still used as the northbridge chiplet inside modern AMD processors; only the CPU core chiplets are from TSMC.

Global Foundries has sizable operations in Dresden, Germany. Interestingly, this was a major semiconductor supplier of the Eastern Block, prior the fall of the iron curtain. AMD placed their primary foundry in Dresden, likely for the infrastructure and technical knowledge.

Global Foundries has decided that more money can be made at 14nm and above, than what is required for smaller process nodes.

> This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China

Good thing ARM China already decided to go its own way [0].

0: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-...

Wow that's an interesting read. So anyone who holds a rubber stamp of a company can steal the whole company? That's some screwed up legal system.

The judiciary in China isn’t independent, or consistent. I suspect the reason for the decision is just a handy reason to give.

My impression is that the CCP's idea of justice is whatever benefits the CCP.

This doesn't differ too much from other nations except in degree and in their ability or willingness to hide that fact.

I squinted, but I can’t see any way to draw a moral equivalence between the Chinese justice system and, say, the UK justice system. There’s a fundamental and massive difference in approach to the rule of law.

I'm from the U.S..

I initially was going to say that CCP really only cares about its own interests.

Then I thought about my own country's actions and policies for a moment before posting (Guantanamo, labor and privacy laws, the 'medical system', and 'education system').

My revised thought was that the main difference is in whether the country still even pretends to seek justice for its citizens.

I do think there are differences, especially in degree, but the general motivations and actions seem similar enough.

> My impression is that the CCP's idea of justice is whatever benefits the CCP.

Of course, there’s no separation of powers in China, the courts are not independent, they are part of the Communist Party of China. Nor is there a constitution that all court decisions must uphold. The only guidestar of the Chinese court system is to keep the CPC in power, and uphold laws passed by the CPC, nothing else.

> This doesn't differ too much from other nations except in degree and in their ability or willingness to hide that fact.

It differs from Constitutional republics where the court system is independent from political parties and mandated to ensure all laws passed by the legislative branch and actions taken by the executive branch do not violate the constitution, regardless which party is in power at the time.

Yes different political parties will try to pack the court when they can, but that pendulum swings back and forth over time. There’s a social contract with the citizenry that doesn’t exist in Communist countries - adhere to the constitution or be kicked out of power in future elections. You can see the evidence in how often power changes hands between parties.

> There’s a social contract with the citizenry that doesn’t exist in Communist countries - adhere to the constitution or be kicked out of power in future elections

I am thankful for that difference. That said, recent political events in the U.S. have shown how much of that 'contract' is just convention.

Nope. In China, if you have control of the company stamp, you have executive control over the company and can use it to enter legally binding contracts.

Essentially yes. It acts in lieu of a signature, and the company stamp is usually closely guarded by trusted executives.

It’s a problem when those executives go rogue and there are many cases of it causing problems for companies in China, both for foreign and domestic companies.

Arm is a British company, currently owned by Softbank, a Japanese company.

This means that in practice the US can already cut off supply to China.

See for example ASML: they are a Dutch company. So the US government only needed a friendly word with the Dutch government for the Dutch government to ban ASML from exporting certain advanced processes to China.

For the British government I'm sure there would be no need to call... A text would suffice ;)

(leaving aside all the drama with ARM China already because of those issues...)

The best way to get the UK government's attention is to write it on a birthday cake.

'friendly word'.

I think it's a little more than that.

If I recall correctly the parents used by ASML are owned by the US military so the US is part owner of the company -

> This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China

But IP is very hard to control the supply of, especially one like this where hundreds of companies have a copy of the IP. If the US won't license it on fair terms, China will just stop enforcing IP laws and allow anyone to copy it for free.

With all due respect to China, licensing on fair terms has never been a requirement for state-sponsored intellectual property theft.

With all due respect to the USA, never been a requirement for United States state-sponsored intellectual property theft either.

But goods infringing IP can presumably be prevented from import into western markets?

That’s fine until your entire planet runs on ARM IP made in china. China pulls the plug then we’re all in trouble.

What would happen is another mutually assured destruction stalemate.

Except that the response would be that any product with that IP will be banned from EU/USA. That is a huge hit to take.

Well suffering sanctions and being left without foundamental technology is already a huge hit

But it's pretty hard to know what devices even contain that IP... Does that Amazon Basics optical gaming mouse contain an ARM CPU? It would probably take weeks of decapping the chip and reverse engineering the CPU to be sure, and even then, figuring out if that CPU is licensed or not is non-trivial. Is customs really going to do that for every item that comes through the border?

5 at least is a non factor since the Chinese government doesn't play by the rules of intellectual property anyway.

Why don't the ARM users form a consortium to own ARM?

Qualcomm did suggest that: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...

Your points 1 and 6 seem to conflict.

NVIDIA isn’t a hardware manufacturer.

There should be quick summaries for all posts like this. +1

This summary is not very good. Not wrong, but misleading I guess? Seems sort of confused about how arm and fabless semiconductor companies interact?

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