Arm to launch its own chip in move that could upend semiconductor industry | Hacker News Reader

Arm to launch its own chip in move that could upend semiconductor industry

ft.com

44 pointsfork-bomber20 comments

Just when Ampere are exploring a sell. So realistically no one is actually competing in the ARM server CPU market other than HyperScaler making their own chip. Nvidia for whatever reason doesn't seem to want to enter the General Server CPU market either. So this is pretty much ARM doing it themselves.

Don't they have the Grace CPU: https://developer.nvidia.com/grace-cpu

And a consumer CPU planned: https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/gaming-pcs/nvidias-arm...

Grace is High Performance CPU. By Server CPU I was referring to AWS EC2 or other web hosting, general high core count web hosting.

Ampere might eventually be fully acquired by Oracle.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/oracle_ampere_stake_c...

Nvidia tried to buy ARM but was blocked.

https://archive.is/XVjpn

With the likes of Qualcomm already having issues with ARM, I suspect that the transition to RISC-V is only going to accelerate. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon decides to build their own CPUs using RISC-V. Apple are another possibility.

Genuine question: Do you think Apple will want to move their supply chain on feom the very successful M series Arm based processors, particularly when they have very performant x86 interpretation layers, killer benchmarks, and all the other selling points. I imagine at this point they will be locked in for at least one more cycle, M5, given the lead times on chip production, etc.

RISC-V could be a thing, but its another massive OS move, driver move, new transcription layer(s), and potential instability, for some unproven gains at this point. Arm ramping up pricing could force the issue, I guess

Isn’t Apple immune from ARM price increases?

Apple do pay a license fee but it isn't much.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/29/apple-arm-licensing-revenue/

Apple put ARM processors in a ton of things besides phones and computers. My Apple mouse and keyboard both have ARM processors in. They may well consider an alternative if it allows them to avoid the licensing fees on those devices.

There's no way on earth Apple will move from the M series to RISC-V.

Internet: Please take note for future Lolz.

Didn't Apple get a very sweet multi-decade deal back before the M1?

I think Apple would be silly to drop ARM in the near term, but might want to have an alternative in RISC V as a backup plan.

Alternatively, if others jump ship it may devalue ARM enough that Apple decides to pick it up.

>With the likes of Qualcomm already having issues with ARM

Actually the Court ruling makes it even more favourable to work with ARM because it has not been tested in court of their ISA license agreement.

Until ARM decide to make ARMv10.

I very much doubt that, and folks keep forgetting RISC-V license is like MIT, in such scenario Amazon would keep everything for themselves anyway, Achilles victory.

> The move...could also upend the balance of power...putting Arm into competition with some of its biggest customers.

This is what I don't understand. Why is this even being considered by Arm exec team?

Arm isn't competing with its biggest customers here. This doesn't affect their relationship with e.g. AWS or Azure (Cobalt) as those folks are not selling CPU chips on the open market. Nvidia probably couldn't care less as commodity Arm IP isn't anything they make their margins on. It affects anyone selling Neoverse server chips which is ... Ampere, but Ampere is bankrolled by Oracle and Oracle could take them in-house.

Any non pay wall link?

https://archive.md/5xhqP

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