SoftBank now also confirms it is exploring to sell ARM

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Aug 12, 2020.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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  2. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    It's very weird that they would do this honestly. They have the largest CPU architecture in the world under their control, it should be a sort of a strategic asset, if nothing else.
     
  3. Embra

    Embra Ancient Guru

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    The plot thickens.
     
  4. JAMVA

    JAMVA Master Guru

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    Maybe the CEO just wants to give himself a bonus...
     

  5. Kaarme

    Kaarme Ancient Guru

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    In my opinion, only if the buyer is already integrally involved in relevant (related) business. Nvidia is 100%, but also any smartphone manufacturer would be, for example. Some general (technology) investment fund wouldn't be, unless it was majorly owned by a company that is.

    At least ARM is too much for the American patent trolls. One of those would be even worse than Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Huawei, or something like that buying it.
     
  6. JamesSneed

    JamesSneed Ancient Guru

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    Intel wouldn't be allowed to buy ARM from an antitrust perspective but I have a feeling they may offer on ARM to run the price up. This is going to be interesting.
     
  7. slyphnier

    slyphnier Guest

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    if they corporate/company in great or good condition then absolutely they wont do it
    except softbank been getting big loss, which is make them in bad situations

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/SoftBank-faces-a-130bn-question-Is-the-worst-over
    https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1106/
    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...ftbank-targeting-10-billion-public-investing/
     
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  8. craycray

    craycray Member Guru

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    Their big problem right now is their Chinese division which has gone rogue, and is operating autonomously and disobeying all corporate orders. Google it.
     
  9. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    That's probably why SoftBank is getting rid of it. I thought it was weird of them to have bought it in the first place.
    Not sure about Huawei (they're not American anyway) but aren't the other 3 known for patent trolling? They're just a lot "quieter" about it. To my understanding, one of the reasons Nvidia bought out so many companies in the 90s and 00s was so they could attain patents. Wherever there isn't a patent, there's some proprietary technology instead. I'm less familiar with what ATI/AMD did. Intel has probably made deals with both companies to use their patents, because otherwise I don't see how they could build a competitive GPU.
     
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  10. craycray

    craycray Member Guru

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    Yep. There is always politics involved. So, they fired the Chinese CEO, but he refuses to leave!!!

    A particular meme comes to mind.
     

  11. JamesSneed

    JamesSneed Ancient Guru

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    I think you have a different opinion on what a patent trolls is than I do. I view the trolls as the companies that buy patents with no intent of actually making anything with the patent but instead intend to make the money back through litigation. What Nvidia did back in the 90's was just being super competitive jerks because they did at least make stuff with said patents.
     
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  12. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    I agree with that definition, though, I would also add that patent trolling includes making patents for really pedantic things to remain anti-competitive. Kinda like how Apple had that patent about their phone basically being a shiny rectangle with curved edges, which is basically like all phones. I get the impression the same sort of thing happens in the GPU market.
    Take ASTC for example - that was a patent created by S3 Graphics and it offered a healthy performance improvement back in the day, but because of the patent, nobody else really got to use it. The technology pretty much died with them, and only until about a year ago did the patent expire, where it could be implemented in other drivers. Not that it matters anymore, since there are now better texture compression methods.
     
  13. Kaarme

    Kaarme Ancient Guru

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    Yeah. Sometimes "patent troll" is used as a petty insult even against legit cases of defending a patent. Like an Apple fan could accuse Qualcomm of being a patent troll if some networking solution in an Apple product clashed with a Qualcomm patent and Qualcomm took it to the court. Normally, however, what you described is called a patent troll. For some mysterious reason the American justice system seems to love or at least tolerate them very well, which causes big problems from time to time. I guess the system is just feeding itself since the cases are often talking about millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and the lawyers love to get a slice of that fat cake. Lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and such are all graduates from the law schools, so obviously they have nothing against their whole big family prospering.
     
  14. JamesSneed

    JamesSneed Ancient Guru

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    I don't doubt that is why it continues today. At some point we really need to have some meaningfull patent reform here in the US.
     
  15. alanm

    alanm Ancient Guru

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    Softbank is not in good shape. They lost billions this year and are in no position to think of long term strategic investments. They need cash first and foremost to cover their positions during this tough time.
     

  16. RED.Misfit

    RED.Misfit Member Guru

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    Softbank is just here to make money. They buy things, wait for it to grow and be more valuable and then sell it.
    They would have sold arm (partially or entirely) in 2023 anyway. They're selling right now because they need cash after making some wrong calls.

    They invested in nVidia in 2017 and sold everything during trade war incertainty i think. They barely gain anything from it, and they completly lost the momentum nVidia acquired right after that (moving from 130$ to 450$+)
    They invested in WeWorks which completly failed, they lost big on that one.

    And it's called "The Vision Fund", what a vision ! ;)
     
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  17. moo100times

    moo100times Master Guru

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    TSMC should buy ARM and lead the world.
     
  18. Unfortunate as up until now Softbank had at least maintained a level of track record in lieu of prior ownership with ARM licenses. Skeptical of what will happen going forward to say the least.
     
  19. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    No thanks. It's already way too dangerous that there is only a single advanced fab, not even counting it's in Taiwan.
     
  20. H83

    H83 Ancient Guru

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    This^^ Softbank betted billions on some companies, like one who sets up offices for other companies or some other stupid crap, and they all flopped hard, leading to massive losses. Now they need to sell their most valuable assets to cover those losses and ARM is their best company.
     

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