But I do think it's important that we recognize that we're going from a position of tremendous competitiveness to a much less competitive situation. And that will be a situation where ARM will be tightly controlled and much less inducive to the innovation we've seen in the last years.
Hi! Counterexample here.
Especially because of the x86 oligopoly I would think that Arm is so much more important as an ecosystem.
https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3099/centaur-unveils-its-new-...
IIRC you watch the "Rise of the Centaur" documentary they talk about the Intel lawsuit, and the corresponding counter suit that they won. Which makes the whole thing sound like MAD.
More interesting there is https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/zhaoxin/kaixian
In some ways, it actually frees them up a bit; as they don't have to reciprocate any efforts with Intel. Which they tried to leverage with their Padlock technology. Unfortunately, their marketshare limits any real practical usage of those benefits.
But, given the high market share of Arm in several markets allowing one firm the ability to use that market share to gain competitive advantage in related markets seems to me to be deeply problematic.
- They don't license because they can make a lot more money manufacturing the chips themselves.
- AMD also has the right to x86 because Intel originally allowed them to build x86 compatible chips (some customers insisted on a 'second source' for cpus) and following legal action and settlements between the two companies over the years there is now a comprehensive cross licensing agreement in place. [1]
- Note that AMD actually designed the 64 bit version x86 that is used in most laptops / desktops and servers these days.
[1] https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-clar...
IBM required it. It was their business MO to protect themselves from losing access to a technology or having the market be dictated by one company. Intel acquiesced so that they would be the architecture of the IBM PC-series.
Not that they would complain if AMD lost their license or ceased existing, they just don't seem to actively be trying to cancel the license at this point.
Only in countries with poor regulators like the states does it work like this.
It works like that in Japan: say hello to the many giant conglomerates that rule their economy top to bottom.
It works like that in South Korea: say hello to Samsung, roughly 12% of South Korea's GDP in a given year (Walmart by contrast is equal to 2.5% of US GDP, and that's crazy big).
It works like that in Germany: say hello to a parade of big old industrial giants that have dominated their economy for most of the past century and will continue to.
It works like that in China, openly so: they intentionally go out of their way to promote giant national champions at the expense of everyone else.
It works like that in France: their largest corporations and richest individuals are even larger in relation to their economy and national wealth than they are in the US (say hello to Arnault, Bettencourt, Pinault and the Wertheimers).
It works like that in Russia: say hello to the countless, directly state protected oligarchs. Threaten their interests, you die. Their approach is super simple.
It works like that in Italy and Spain, which are both dominated by old, large corporations and family interests. Which heavily explains their forever economic stagnation.
It even works like that in Switzerland: ever see how large their financial companies are in relation to the economy? Who do you think actually runs Switzerland? Their banks are comically outsized versus the size of the economy.
It completely works like that in Brazil and India.
It works like that across all of the Middle East, to a much greater degree than most anywhere else.
It works like that in second tier economies, including: Poland, Mexico, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, Thailand.
It works like that in poor countries, including: Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Ukraine, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ilva-m-a-arcelormitta-eu/...
Might and reality is not right.
We need competition. We adore competition. And even the countries you quote many do have competition. You just do not innovate and of course one can try to stop and rest. But the works does not.
Be water not mountain my friend.
How exactly is this only like in the states?
In reality Arm commoditised in many markets CPUs by making reasonable designs available to all at reasonable cost, keeping control over the ISA and allowing firms to innovate in their implementations. You can have the same code running on a Raspberry PI, an iPhone and a 64 core Graviton2 server.
The Nvidia takeover threatens all this by giving control to a firm who could well 'unlevel' the playing field and even refuse to offer the latest IP to competitors.
RISC-V may provide a way out for firms unhappy with Nvidia but it could be a bumpy path. And its certainly not the case that Nvidia are paying $40bn to consolidate Mali with their own graphics IP.
NO! That is how the world does NOT work! We seen it trillion times, I am disappointed the least seeing this negligent 'argument' for blocking dominance! Shame!
