Nvidia exec love-bombs Arm's licensing model, almost protests too much
- Reference: 1614782709
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/03/nvidia_on_arm_licensing_model/
- Source link:
Speaking at the Raymond James Institutional Investors Brokers Call, the exec bean counter described Arm's licensing model as “one of the greatest” in tech, and tried to assuage fears that new owner Nvidia would disrupt it.
[2]
“Arm has been a 30-year tremendous success, the most energy-efficient CPU out there, a developer base that is quite enormous and serves a wide range of customers from mobile to PC to data centre to IoT. The interesting thing is NVIDIA also can bring to them the overall capabilities of acceleration and AI, which that paired with an overall energy efficient CPU is a great opportunity for the overall market," Kress said.
We do promise to keep it open, keep its licensing open...
[3]
Reminding one of a certain former US president, she added: “We love their licensing model. Their open licensing model is absolutely one of the greatest licensing models out there. Our ability to take some of our technology and license through their open model is absolutely one of the great things that we can do with the overall Arm acquisition.
"We are confident
the deal
will close, and we do promise to keep it open, keep its licensing open and make sure that our customers have the assurance of that existing business model that we will keep,” she added.Arm licenses the instruction set architecture (ISA) and processor cores used in the vast majority of smartphones and embedded systems. In addition, its wares have gradually built a toe-hold in the PC and server space, with Apple notably switching from Intel’s processors to its [4]own ARM-based Apple Silicon chips in 2020 . Cambridge-based Arm – which was [5]purchased by Softbank in 2016 – competes with Nvidia in the GPU space with its Mali line, which has long eclipsed Nvidia’s Tegra series in market share.
Nvidia’s [6]$40bn purchase of Arm , first confirmed in September, will need to win regulatory approval in the UK, China, and the US.
The deal has faced stiff opposition from rivals in the semiconductor and consumer tech spaces over fears Nvidia would be incentivised to kneecap its competition by dramatically altering the terms in which it licenses Arm's intellectual property.
In the UK, the [7]Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said it will closely scrutinise Nvidia’s planned takeover of the firm in order to determine whether it will have a market-distorting impact. The CMA solicited feedback from affected third parties in January, and is expected to release its findings later this year.
Anshel Sag, analyst at Moor Technologies, welcomed Kress's comments, regarding them as indicative of a more fundamental change in Nvidia’s outlook. “I think it’s a positive development because Nvidia has not traditionally been very good at the licensing side of things,” he said. “Nvidia is very good at developing new technologies, productising them and enabling them through its ecosystems – but not necessarily making them accessible to any and all interested parties.”
This lack of flexibility, Sag argued, has resulted in Nvidia losing ground in some areas compared to its rivals, with the example of games consoles and smartphones cited.
[8]
“This could be a side effect of Nvidia not having the PlayStation or Xbox console deals and AMD licensing its GPU architecture to Samsung. Yes, Nvidia does have the Switch, but I believe that Nvidia would like to expand the influence of its GPU architectures,” he added. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/nvida_arm_acquisition/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YD-AqOyLvckks9HCnSsyfgAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YD-AqOyLvckks9HCnSsyfgAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/07/apple_silicon_column/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/18/softbank_to_buy_arm_holdings_say_reports/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/nvida_arm_acquisition/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/06/cma_arm_nvidia_acquisition_comments/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YD-AqOyLvckks9HCnSsyfgAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Surely RISC-V forces the issue. You can't screw with ARM licensing too much, because if you do your customers will jump.
The pain of changing architecture isn't nearly as it used to be in any case at this stage, so I do still expect some RISC-V adoption, but production capabilities for ARM and established chip designs are such that it isn't going away.
That used to be ARM's inertia win - the only people capable of fabbing serious ARM-competing CPUs were big enough that they paid ARM bugger-all % royalties.
Now a bunch of places will design and fab you a cutting edge CPU it doesn't make as much difference to say Amazon or Facebook if their custom processor is ARM or RISC-V RISC
> Now a bunch of places will design and fab you a cutting edge CPU it doesn't make as much difference to say Amazon or Facebook if their custom processor is ARM or RISC-V RISC
Is RISC-V really good enough to be considered "cutting edge" though?
The last (and admittedly "single-point" comparison test I saw had RISC-V delivering around 25% of the performance of the equivalent ARM or x86 chip:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/new-risc-v-cpu-claims-recordbreaking-performance-per-watt/
Admittedly, it managed to do this while using a fraction of the power, and there's a lot of scenarios where that's a fair trade-off. Even (or perhaps especially) when it comes to cloud computing, since that lower power draw also reduces aircon costs, etc.
On the other hand, Apple has just shown how much they can squeeze out of ARM's architecture, and while I doubt Apple are feeding any of their in-house improvements back to the community, I'd expect that other ARM licencees will be demanding access to similar improvements, to help keep them in shouting distance of Apple.
(which may be something of a losing battle, since Apple has equal access to any externally-generated improvements to ARM's architecture - and they have the advantage of full vertical integration for both the hardware and the OS. But it won't stop people from trying!)
So, yeah. I dunno. Performance per watt is important, but so too is overall performance.
There's clearly a place in the market for RISC-V, and it's likely to keep improving and innovating. But whether or not it's going to be a significant enough competitor so as to force Nvidia to play nice? That's not something I see happening within the next few years, if not a decade!
I think it would be worth while for a few ARM customers to get together and form an open RISC-V consortium which ensures RISC-V designs are not too far behind ARM. Sharing 20 or 30 employees, no need for that weird wait between designing and testing the thing, no need for sales or marketing wastrels, should keep NVidia on their toes During the 80's there were plenty of cases of companies spouting about vapourware to prevent others developing it, this is the safe fallback position and if someone actually wants to produce it...
Cough. Pi Foundation investments. Cough.
Rather like a politician
You know they are lying when their lips move.
Nvidia and secrecy
I have worked (by which I mean had a lot of painful experiences) with Nvidia parts (GPUs) for avionics displays (mission systems which can drive up to 6 video heads).
They are intensely secretive (bespoke drivers by their preferred partners only and no source code delivered); that secrecy is institutionalised and is (well, it was) common in the GPU industry.
I can't see that changing any time soon, if ever. Not a good match for an open licencing model.
Then there is the fact that ARM licences designs to all and sundry, many of whom are in competition with Nvidia.
I sense some damage control and PR going on here; other UK companies have been bought out (I know ARM is currently owned by Softbank but it is still headquartered here) where the buyers made solemn promises that parts would not be sold off, and then proceeded to do just that within months.
Look up Cobham for an example.
I don't think I would trust this person further than I can throw a bus.
With a promise and a dollar...
I can buy a cup of coffee. Maybe. Inflation and all that, you know.
> we do promise to keep it open, keep its licensing open and make sure that our customers have the assurance of that existing business model that we will keep,” she added.
Unless this promise is backed up by some legal guarantees - and even then, only if said guarantees are enforced, it's worth less than the time taken to write this comment.