NVIDIA confirms $40 billion deal to buy Arm

This sucks big time, because it's going to create a new HPC hardware monopoly. Also given Nvidia's company "culture" about openness, this hardware monopoly can potentially become even worse.

Money is the only argument that prevents me from building an all-new full AMD rig and scrap both Nvidia and Intel parts for good right now.

They still have to face competition from AMD and Intel so it's not exactly a monopoly. And other companies are still going to be able to license ARM IPs.

You'd think that Linux users, who have been on the receiving end of FUD, would be slightly more careful with what they say. Unfortunately not the first time this has been proven wrong.

So Noveau poor performance is not Nvidia fault? Facts != FUD.

No it's not. It's a consequence of NVIDIA keeping secrets, but that doesn't make them at fault. And the way you wrote it was suggesting nvidia was late to the party and actively worked against nouveau. Neither of which is true. Nvidia has made closed source drivers for 20 years now and has behaved the same for all of those 20 years. They're entirely predictable and entirely what you would expect from a big market leading company.

This sucks big time, because it's going to create a new HPC hardware monopoly. Also given Nvidia's company "culture" about openness, this hardware monopoly can potentially become even worse.

Money is the only argument that prevents me from building an all-new full AMD rig and scrap both Nvidia and Intel parts for good right now.

They still have to face competition from AMD and Intel so it's not exactly a monopoly. And other companies are still going to be able to license ARM IPs.

There is competition indeed, but do they stand a chance? It is like suggesting Microsoft didn't have a monopoly in the 90's because there was Apple. HPC is already their biggest source of income right now, and with the ARM buyout, I can't think of anyone who can stop them as we speak.


Last edited by omer666 on 14 September 2020 at 7:20 pm UTC

No it's not. It's a consequence of NVIDIA keeping secrets, but that doesn't make them at fault. And the way you wrote it was suggesting nvidia was late to the party and actively worked against nouveau. Neither of which is true. Nvidia has made closed source drivers for 20 years now and has behaved the same for all of those 20 years. They're entirely predictable and entirely what you would expect from a big market leading company.

Five to six years ago nouveau didn't have this problem but some Nvidia changes made almost useless Nouveau, changes that they don't want to bring nor share with the the OSS software eventhough they still take their time in order to submit patches for 2D acceleration in nouveau. And no, their behavior is far from being what you should expect from "a big market leading company" as Intel is also a big one and they properly support Linux with their products.

It seems that you can justify their behavior but sorry, I can't do the same.

I find myself wondering if this is all going to happen as smoothly as they act like it will. People, and governments, are starting to fear the big tech monopolies; there's talk about waking antitrust up again. This might make a convenient test case, in say the EU--big enough to look like the kind of market concentration that's problematic, small enough that you don't have to lead by taking on frigging Google or Amazon.

This sucks big time, because it's going to create a new HPC hardware monopoly. Also given Nvidia's company "culture" about openness, this hardware monopoly can potentially become even worse.

Money is the only argument that prevents me from building an all-new full AMD rig and scrap both Nvidia and Intel parts for good right now.

They still have to face competition from AMD and Intel so it's not exactly a monopoly. And other companies are still going to be able to license ARM IPs.

There is competition indeed, but do they stand a chance? It is like suggesting Microsoft didn't have a monopoly in the 90's because there was Apple. HPC is already their biggest source of income right now, and with the ARM buyout, I can't think of anyone who can stop them as we speak.

How are they more likely to dominate this market that already is dominated by Intel? ARM doesnt have significant portions of the HPC market.

Nvidia does have a good share of the AI market but other comapnies are growing up a lot and some like tesla are making their own technology

I came here expecting anti-Nvidia bile and I wasn't disappointed! I'll step away and do some gaming whilst enjoying the working proprietary drivers on my 1660TI ;-)

I came here expecting anti-Nvidia bile and I wasn't disappointed!

Oh, we totally should have cheered a nasty anti-competitive bully swallowing a major chip company that has a major industry impact? No, thanks.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 September 2020 at 1:07 am UTC

Good for them.

I know I'm swimming against the current here, but despite the fact that their interests don't really align with us, I always liked and respected Nvidia.
They always treated me right with their drivers, they worked on par with the Windows ones, they were reliable (sure, bug happens), and in about 20 years as a Linux user I knew I could always count on them to deliver the best performance.
Sure, there's more than looking for performance, I'm not living in a bubble oblivious to the existing Nvidia issues, and I've heard (or some experienced myself) them all, here, reddit, discord or whatever place where someone mentions Nvidia and shit start hitting the fan, so please, don't try to "open my eyes". And I'm not an "Nvidia or bust" person either, as you can see I'm rocking a AMD GPU right now, since it was the best card for the money at the time.
Maybe is a bit of nostalgia, since in my early Linux years I used only Nvidia cards, I dunno...I used to break my system all the time in all the imaginable ways, and there was a single constant piece if software that refused to break, guess which one :)

But anyway, I just think that Nvidia is an impressive front-runner company that excels at what they do. I hope they put this acquisition to good use, so yeah, good for them.

Good for them.

I know I'm swimming against the current here, but despite the fact that their interests don't really align with us, I always liked and respected Nvidia.
They always treated me right with their drivers, they worked on par with the Windows ones, they were reliable (sure, bug happens), and in about 20 years as a Linux user I knew I could always count on them to deliver the best performance.
Sure, there's more than looking for performance, I'm not living in a bubble oblivious to the existing Nvidia issues, and I've heard (or some experienced myself) them all, here, reddit, discord or whatever place where someone mentions Nvidia and shit start hitting the fan, so please, don't try to "open my eyes". And I'm not an "Nvidia or bust" person either, as you can see I'm rocking a AMD GPU right now, since it was the best card for the money at the time.
Maybe is a bit of nostalgia, since in my early Linux years I used only Nvidia cards, I dunno...I used to break my system all the time in all the imaginable ways, and there was a single constant piece if software that refused to break, guess which one :)

But anyway, I just think that Nvidia is an impressive front-runner company that excels at what they do. I hope they put this acquisition to good use, so yeah, good for them.

I don't actually agree with you but I liked the comment because I respect where you're coming from and the way you expressed it.

Nvidia is big time SoC vendor (tegra) and this is very bad for market, where are anti-trust laws?

Nvidia is big time SoC vendor (tegra) and this is very bad for market, where are anti-trust laws?

As Liam notes in the article: "This includes regulatory approvals across the U.K., China, the European Union and the United States which they're estimating to take 18 months." Of these the EU and maybe the U.K. are the only entities I could possibly see pushing back, but I doubt they will.

but let me add something... everyone is saying that AMD drivers were trash, but the last Nvidia card I used was a Geforce 440MX, I give you that when it was ATI and not AMD it was a mess, but when AMD started getting the management the fglrx driver improved a lot I guess since the HD 3xxx series or so. I've been gaming on AMD since then, and I give you that it was a worse experience, (with ATI it was a disaster) but with AMD it wasn't that bad, it was totally possible to have a decent gaming experience. And since the gallium drivers things kept getting better and better.

So I take it that is specifically about fglrx here.

Well, I'm also a bit annoyed when I see fglrx categorized as trash, is like people like to go only to extremes, with awesome and trash and the like being the only vocabulary options, and nothing in between.

In all fairness IMO fglrx was usable, or yes, decent. When Steam introduced the Linux client I had a AMD HD6990 in my system. Now, the HD6990 was a good card at the time (at launch it was touted as "Simply the most powerful card in the world", imagine that) but on Linux only one of the two GPUs was working (Crossfire crap and all that), and performance was significantly reduced.
Nevertheless, fglrx did managed to run all the Linux games I had, with just minor issues. Good times.

Afterwards I switched to a HD7970, which did much better (again with fglrx) and eventually went back to Nvidia, but yes, for as long as I used it, fglrx served me well and hardly deserves the label "trash".

Nvidia is big time SoC vendor (tegra) and this is very bad for market, where are anti-trust laws?

As Liam notes in the article: "This includes regulatory approvals across the U.K., China, the European Union and the United States which they're estimating to take 18 months." Of these the EU and maybe the U.K. are the only entities I could possibly see pushing back, but I doubt they will.

I can imagine the EU doing it. If this gets embroiled in China vs. the US tech-politics, the realities are shifting rather fast. The EU is having to re-evaluate just who is their best trading partner, who they are going to be most involved with geopolitically, and the answer is looking somewhat different from even a few years ago; it may come up "The ones who own the New Silk Road" rather than "The ones who own big aircraft carriers and are too incompetent to handle a public health emergency" . . . especially since the aircraft carriers are obsolete in the hypersonic missile age.

As somebody pointed out elsewhere, at least be happy it's not bought by Apple, Intel or Qualcomm.

This sucks big time, because it's going to create a new HPC hardware monopoly. Also given Nvidia's company "culture" about openness, this hardware monopoly can potentially become even worse.

Money is the only argument that prevents me from building an all-new full AMD rig and scrap both Nvidia and Intel parts for good right now.

They still have to face competition from AMD and Intel so it's not exactly a monopoly. And other companies are still going to be able to license ARM IPs.

There is competition indeed, but do they stand a chance? It is like suggesting Microsoft didn't have a monopoly in the 90's because there was Apple. HPC is already their biggest source of income right now, and with the ARM buyout, I can't think of anyone who can stop them as we speak.

How are they more likely to dominate this market that already is dominated by Intel? ARM doesnt have significant portions of the HPC market.

Nvidia does have a good share of the AI market but other comapnies are growing up a lot and some like tesla are making their own technology

They are more likely to dominate because for years now, HPC projects have been willing to get rid of x86 for many reasons, including (but not limited to) lack of parallelization capabilities, thermal efficiency, and scalability.
ARM doesn't dominate this market because it's quite a newcomer, but its progress has been tremendous.

As somebody pointed out elsewhere, at least be happy it's not bought by Apple, Intel or Qualcomm.

I don't understand to what extent Nvidia is any better.

Interesting but i guess desperate: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/14/arm-co-founder-starts-save-arm-campaign-to-keep-independence-amid-40b-nvidia-deal/

This puts Britain in the invidious position that the decision about who ARM is allowed to sell to will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street,” he writes

His apparent trust in the current UK government's ability to do anything productive let alone efficient is touching.

I can imagine them doing some "This British! We keep British!" (imagine Neanderthal man here) though.

Interesting but i guess desperate: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/14/arm-co-founder-starts-save-arm-campaign-to-keep-independence-amid-40b-nvidia-deal/

This puts Britain in the invidious position that the decision about who ARM is allowed to sell to will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street,” he writes

His apparent trust in the current UK government's ability to do anything productive let alone efficient is touching.

It's kind of amazing when you think about it that, stripped down, what he is saying, and it's being taken somewhat seriously for frankly solid reasons, is that being taken over by an American company could torpedo a business. Even ten years ago, can you imagine the idea that a company becoming American would be the kiss of death commercially being seriously contemplated? And yet here we are--the US picked their trade war with China and the fallout is beginning to filter down.

You'd think that Linux users, who have been on the receiving end of FUD, would be slightly more careful with what they say. Unfortunately not the first time this has been proven wrong.

So Noveau poor performance is not Nvidia fault? Facts != FUD.

No it's not. It's a consequence of NVIDIA keeping secrets

Bulldust - there is plenty of hardware out there - including niche hardware - that is just as "secret" as Nvidia's GPUs... Yet many of those, dare I say the vast majority, work just as well as they do under Microsoft Windows-based operating systems.

Yes, Nvidia being secretive about their GPUs doesn't help the situation... But it is a very small cog in a very large machine.