SoftBank Completes $31 Billion Acquisition of ARM (theverge.com) 65
Roughly two months later, SoftBank announced today that it has completed its $31 billion acquisition of British chip designer ARM Holdings. The Verge reports: "SoftBank's purchase of ARM is the latest in a line of acquisitions in recent years for the Japanese company, including the $20 billion Sprint acquisition, and a $15 billion investment in Vodafone's Japanese division. ARM is well known for designing chips and licensing them to companies like Apple and Samsung, and ARM-designed chips dominate mobile computing in phones and tablets. 15 billion ARM-designed chips shipped last year alone, and around half of those were in mobile devices. SoftBank is expected to use the ARM deal to bolster its Internet of Things plans."
Wealth concentration (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Wealth concentration (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the 1% pay far more taxes than corporations do, I'm not sure what your rant is getting at. And given they earn 19% of the country's AGI while playing 37% of the country's income taxes, I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind saying that it's unfair, nor do I quite understand why some people write books akin to mein kampf about how much they're perceived to be ruining humanity.
Re: Wealth concentration (Score:4, Insightful)
He's saying that the wealth disparity is harmful, and giving too much power to too little people is not ideal. If you don't understand that, you might want to read up on the economic issues of the early US. Better yet, you might want to study history at any time, and any place.
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He's saying that the wealth disparity is harmful, and giving too much power to too little people is not ideal. If you don't understand that, you might want to read up on the economic issues of the early US. Better yet, you might want to study history at any time, and any place.
Well let's look at history then. The corporations in the era you speak of had the power to wage war, jail and execute people who didn't pay their debts, and the most wealthy corporation to ever exist was worth 8 trillion dollars in today's money at its peak in 1637, which basically rivals today's US government. We haven't seen any corporations anywhere even closely being that powerful or wealthy in over two centuries.
The world's most powerful and wealthy people today pale in comparison to that as well. The
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And in spite of all of that, we're somehow in the worst of times?
Nobody in this thread said this, which makes your post mostly about a strawman.
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Considering we're quite likely to wipe out 99% of life on this planet including ourselves then yes, + the 1% are very bad custodians.
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A lot of things can be said to be "quite likely" yet only exist in people's imaginations.
I'm sure you have a lot of reasons for saying what you say, but much of what circulates in culture is just stories with little basis in evidence. And that's why politicians are masters of spin, because if people really did have a good grasp of what's really real, there would be no spin, they would all have to just talk about evidence. But people operate with beliefs and stories and ideas and we have very powerful imagin
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Quite likely based upon history and science we're accidifying the ocean and dangerously heating the planet, the heating will feedback loop, methane containing permafrosts are melting, ocean calthrates might be released. The result of all this could easily be our extinction.
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Two centuries? A bloody fruit company had overthrown a government of a country only a century ago, and in 1954 another fruit company overthrew a government of yet another country, paying the US government for the training of their mercenaries.
Even the Iraq war was very much caused by corporation interests, but only Poland has been honest about this.
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And in 2016 a fruit company is the biggest in the world. (Which coincidentally co-founded ARM back in 1990.)
Re: Wealth concentration (Score:2)
A fruit company didn't overthrow anything, rather they bought out already corrupt politicians in those regions, forming so called banana republics. This is a much different thing than a corporation having its own military and executing its own invasion.
I'd mention that such a thing hasn't happened in a long time, but I won't bother because I'll get a ton of AC conspiracy theories from people who read too many cyberpunk novels, using terms like "megacorps" intermittently.
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You are very much misinformed. Both fruit companies hired actual mercenaries to overthrow the respective governments. That has nothing to do with buying politicians. And today companies still hire mercenaries, this has nothing to do with cyberpunk.
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Watching fox news would require a cable subscription, which I don't have. Though to be honest, people who attribute fox news as a source of every opinion that they don't like are even bigger fools than those who they attack.
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And yet come November you'll be voting for the ultimate 1%er.
How funny!
how much will they invest going forward ? (Score:2)
The interesting bit will be if they have a long term investment strategy.
Chip Design and sales are multi year and do they have the ability....
little sad that ARM are removed from the FTSE
John Jones
Re:Number of ARM chips year (Score:5, Insightful)
15 billion sounds a little high, but not by much. 15 million would absolutely be too low considering the worldwide market, and the wide range of arm processors out there (not all go into phones or tablets.) You probably own dozens of arm processors that you didn't even realize because they are embedded in everything.
Re:Number of ARM chips year (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you have the 3rd party designs that are ISA compatble rather than directly licenses of ARM designs, Apple and Qualcomm certainly ship a fair few of those.
15 billion may be a bit high; but 15 million probably doesn't even cover a year of new cellphones.
That said, it's exactly this ubiquity and versatility that makes me wonder what SoftBank is thinking in actually buying ARM. ARM does licensing, so if you want a CPU for your application with more customization than just buying a reel of somebody's ready-to-go silicon, they'll sell you a license on pretty favorable terms. Definitely cheaper than paying ~45% over market price to buy out the whole company. If you want the right to do your own thing with their ISA, or want them to design something to fit your particular niche, that'll cost more than a cookie-cutter license; but still substantially less than buying them out.
Plus, since their business is licensing, buying them out is more or less assured to make all their existing customers nervous: what is the new management going to do? Are they going to plunder ARM's design talent for their own pet projects? Start monkeying with license fees, release schedules, etc. to gain competitive advantage for their own products in other markets?
I freely admit that I'm no genius of the silicon supply chain; but my impression was always that ARM's success was a kind of 'for profit development consortium': They aren't running a charity; but they offer solid engineering and reasonable prices to basically everyone who comes knocking, which has made ARM a de-facto standard for a wide range of situations where a company needs a CPU to embed in their product and doesn't want to DIY a proprietary freakshow; or invest the resources necessary to deliver a competitive, updated, SPARC core or the like. Since ARM sells to everyone, they amortize engineering costs across a zillion units; and their licensees can mostly rest easy knowing that ARM, who doesn't have any real direct involvement in selling SoCs or phones, or products in other markets, isn't going to start turning the screws on their licencees in an attempt to boost their own product lines.
This laid-back attitude probably contributed to having a stock price low enough to be an acquisition target; but it also helps them make all the sales they do. If people wanted to deal with an arrogant, dangerous; but very skillful single-source, they could buy Intel silicon. If they wanted to go it alone, SPARC is free for the implementing and MIPS is practically begging people to use their ISA. So far, ARM's combination of greater engineering support than the do-it-yourself options, and greater friendliness and better prices than the Intel options have proven very popular. Now that SoftBank needs to recoup a substantial investment and do whatever they had in mind when the purchased ARM, though, is that state of affairs going to persist?
SoftBank, Arm, & Brexit (Score:2, Interesting)
If Britain loses open access to the EU, how long do you think SoftBank will stay in the UK? SoftBank had made noises about doubling the ARM workforce in the UK in the years after purchase. But with the uncertainty of Brexit, they might want to open a second branch on the Continent where they can maintain EU access.
Re: SoftBank, Arm, & Brexit (Score:2)
Brexit is not happening.
The only thing imploding is Theresa May.
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I think May will loose i the end and that Brexit won't happen, but I wouldn't call it that she implodes.
She has to work hard towards Brexit because she was for staying within EU, so she must now not show any sign of 'wanting to stay in the EU'.
The longer it takes for UK to effectuate Brexit, the clearer it will be for anyone that it is in fact not practically possible, especially for the UK.
When that understanding has been reached my a large majority, then May or a subsequent UK premier may work towards st
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If Britain loses open access to the EU, how long do you think SoftBank will stay in the UK? SoftBank had made noises about doubling the ARM workforce in the UK in the years after purchase. But with the uncertainty of Brexit, they might want to open a second branch on the Continent where they can maintain EU access.
Most of ARM's business is done with the far east and States, Samsung, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. ARM was one of the few companies shares that was not hit by the result of the referendum. Now if you want to talk employee access, then that might be more of an issue if a full EU split happens, but trade itself for them is probably not going to be particularly affected.
Re: SoftBank, Arm, & Brexit (Score:2)
Brexit doesn't exist. So they voted to exit the EU. What does that even mean? They can still do all the things that being in the EU means. I mean they can still allow the same or even more immigrants, they can still have zero tariffs on EU goods. Brexit is meaningless.
I mean, here is an analogy ..you can get married, move in with your spouse .. Get her to make you sandwiches or whatever. Then, a year later you can get divorced. But just because you are divorced doesn't mean you can't live with her and nothi
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Of course there is the potential that nothing will change - we could exit the EU but retain access to the common market, which means we would still be on the hook for membership fees, unlimited EU migration etc....
You know what would happen if that were the case? The government would lose the next general election. Badly. The sentiment of those who voted for Leave is pretty clear - they don't want unlimited migration (which is a requirement of membership now) etc. Usurp that sentiment and the electorate
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Who voted for that? The original treaty involved free movement of workers - not the same thing at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I've read to much Larry Niven (Score:1)
IoT (Score:1)
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I've still got a 386SLC laptop around somewhere which is destined to be an NTP wallclock.
But meh. Until the "IoT" stops having compatibility issues, it's no good. It needs to be at least as reliable as MIDI and DMX between brands, instead of the cacophony of not-standards that manufacturers present today.
Do I want a house full of connected lightbulbs? Yes -- yes, I do! Not so much so that they can light up only the rooms that I am in (dumb LEDs are already crazy-efficient-enough that turning off lights
This is worrisome (Score:3)
How they gonna get it back? (Score:3)
How they gonna get back 31 billion? Since 1 in 7 people will buy a smart phone or gadget every 2 years. That means they gotta get $30 from every smartphone owner just to cover their cost? That's F'd up to say the least. If they increase the cost of an ARM license even slightly it means the smartphone will cost dramatically higher because of the increase in risk capital needed. Basically this deal is terrible for the consumer and probably SoftBank too.
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How they gonna get back 31 billion? Since 1 in 7 people will buy a smart phone or gadget every 2 years. That means they gotta get $30 from every smartphone owner just to cover their cost? That's F'd up to say the least. If they increase the cost of an ARM license even slightly it means the smartphone will cost dramatically higher because of the increase in risk capital needed. Basically this deal is terrible for the consumer and probably SoftBank too.
Its almost certain to say that any device that isnt a PC that needs a processor has an ARM based processor in it. O/C this means the first order of business will be for softbank to jack up prices. ARM for all it's success only pulled in a few hundred million a year from recollection.
Even some x86 CPUs contain ARM (Score:3)
AMD's new x86 Zen CPUs contain an ARM based coprocessor.
Zen added the support for AMD's Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). Secure Memory Encryption is real time memory encryption done per page table entry. This is done utilizing the onboard "Security" Processor (ARM Cortex-A5) at boot time to encrypt each page, allowing any DDR-4 memory (including nonvolatile varieties) to be encrypted. AMD SME also makes the contents of the memory more resistant to memory snooping and cold boot attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Then there are the new ARM-based Opterons.
http://www.amd.com/en-us/produ... [amd.com]
Re: How they gonna get it back? (Score:1)
Do they actually need to make in profits the amount paid to buy it? Why ? That's a lot of disk to sell in the dell emc buy out
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How they gonna get back 31 billion? Since 1 in 7 people will buy a smart phone or gadget every 2 years.
ARM processors are used in many devices and not just smart phones. ARM processors range from smartphones to ultra-low power embedded electronics like routers, cars, medical devices, etc.
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ARM is destroying intel in every front on mobile and the predictions for mid to long term are even better for ARM.
this might be Intel doing what microsoft did on the 90s with their competitors
When will Apple buy Softbank? (Score:1)
It seems to me that this acquisition is harmful to everyone. ARM should not be owned by anyone any more than Intel or AMD. To do otherwise would present a monopoly on chip technology that could be hamstrung by "the corporate meddlers"
Sure Alpha, MIPS, RISC/PPC/Power, SPARC and such other designs may still exist, and are still alternatives should Softback decide to screw everyone who has licensed ARM tech in the future, but these chips aren't popular because they are expensive and single-source. x86 is not s
Depressing for the UK tech industry (Score:3)
ARM was a shining light of the the UK tech industry - its clever strategy of licensing its designs without manufacturing them made it a stellar company. Now it's been sold off to a Japanese company-swallowing mega-corporation, so is there a UK-owned equivalent to ARM left in the tech industry? It's a sad say, even if Softbank overpaid somewhat.
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is there a UK-owned equivalent to ARM left in the tech industry?
Imagination Technologies, developer of PowerVR GPUs and owner of MIPS
Softbank = Microsoft (Score:2)
If you do a search with "Softbank Microsoft" you will quickly realize that Softbank is in a very close relation with Microsoft.
I hope to be false, but I am afraid that the ability to install a free Linux on any ARM devices will be a thing of the past in less than 10 years.