Apple expected to invest in Arm ahead of possible September IPO
The SoftBank-owned Arm is expected to receive considerable investment from Apple and other chip companies as part of its IPO, a report claims, with the introduction to the market now thought to occur in mid-September.
SoftBank has been eyeing an IPO for chip design unit Arm for quite some time, but it now seems that the initial public offering will be happening in the fall. As part of that IPO, Apple and other major chip firms may want a piece of the action.
According to sources of Nikkei, SoftBank plans to float Arm on Nasdaq in September, with expectations that the deal could be worth more than $60 billion. SoftBank will make the IPO official with an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later in August, followed by gaining approval from Nasdaq itself.
Currently, SoftBank Group controls approximately 75% of Arm shares, with the remaining 25% held by the SoftBank Vision Fund, with the latter intending to sell 10% to 15% of its shares on the market.
As part of the IPO, Arm is apparently hoping major chip producers will become medium to long-term shareholders, owning a few percent of the stock. This list is said to include Apple, Samsung Electronics, Nvidia, and Intel.
While purchasing the shares could be viewed as a prudent investment, the chip-maker holdings should help stabilize the stock price at the time of its listing. Owning some shares could also give the companies a little more say over how Arm's management controls the company and its circuit designs.
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Please, correct me.
I have been following Apple since 1984 (Mac 128 ߘꩦlt;/p>
Was it not S Jobs who at some point, during the tough times, sold ARM (since it was Apple’s company)? I think I understood it was Apple Reduced Memory. It was one of those developments that were undermined by Microsoft with the permanent: “stop the presses we are coming with something better”. So many Apple developments were drowned by, at the time, all powerful MS.
Please advise.
It sold off a chunk of its ARM shares around 20 years ago.
ARM is/was a British company. In fact, it started as a contest on show on BBC (or was it iTV) in the late 70s on how to make a low powered computer chip.
Personally, I think Apple will eventually end up switching to RISC-V chip. In fact, if they're not already developing a chip...they are...for sure. 10 years, they will come out with their own design.
In short, I don’t think Apple sold off the intellectual property (patents) that led to the creation of that chip that was used in the Newton or the Newton itself, that was something they had to come up with from the ground up and I don’t think it left Cupertino.
None of Apples, A series, M series, or R1 chip designs are going to be folded back into Arm, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or Samsung won’t see any benefit to anything Apple has done, and that includes the Newton and that chip that was designed for it originally. Using Arm’s tech allows you to fork your own chip (SOC), if you desire to do so assuming you actually have the capability in house to do so, most of the companies buy the base level designs, and do not have that capability beyond making minor changes.
Side note, Qualcomm is the closest to Apple by virtue of their acquisition of NUVIA (and the three engineers who used to work for Apple), and they haven’t released their chip yet with the new boys in control from the ground up, they are still working on it?
https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/john_sculley_the_full_transcript_part2/
There is a movement to RISC-V, but it is primarily IoT, which sets a low bar of entry, and various arcane compute systems that aren't mainstream. Mostly though, it is popular with academics, or regions that are not allowed leading edge ARM licenses or design tools. There isn't any performance or technical advantage to RISC-V, and open source is irrelevant to players such as AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and of course, Apple.
https://wccftech.com/jim-keller-tenstorrent-wants-to-compete-with-nvidia-ai-gpus-using-risc-v-based-ai-cpus/
Originally ARM stood for the Acorn RISC Machine. In the late 80's when Apple started the development of the Newton, they needed an extremely low power, but powerful CPU design. They partnered with Acorn Computers and VLSI Logic to form ARM Holdings, Ltd. The CPU produced from this partnership became known as Advanced RISC Machine. And it was this design that went on to become the basis of the modern design used today.
Steve Jobs sold off Apple's share in ARM Holdings after he axed the Newton project, along with many other products and projects to get Apple back on track and focus on their core competencies. (Although it was rumored that, out of spite, Steve Jobs basically tore down everything John Scully built.)
I believe what you're talking about with Microsoft, is their infamous use of spreading F.U.D. throughout the industry to keep clients from buying a competitors product. They would promise that they were working on something similar to a competitors product and it would be released "soon". Hell, even Windows 95 was advertised as "More Mac Like". Most of MS's competition basically floundered or went out of business from these business "practices". They were also infamous for their "Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish" practices to co-op competing standards and technologies.
Yes, AIM was a partnership to create a next generation CPU for Macs - It was a design based off of IBM's POWER architecture.
But ARM as it is known today is not Acorn Computers. It is Arm Holdings which is a company formed by Acorn, Apple and VLSI Technologies in the late 80's. It's designed was based off of Acorn's ARM and was originally designed for the Apple Newton.
In both cases, while the original IP was not Apple, they played a huge part in the direction the design for both went as they were going to be the major customer for both ARM and PowerPC.
If Jim Keller can create an AI CPU architecture with RISC-V, and take that mainstream, then kudos to him. So then the question becomes, would Nvidia be able develop a competitor AI CPU with ARM architecture, or would they too go down the RISC-V path.
Remember, Nvidia is a $1.1 T company, so virtually infinite resources at their disposal, and the ARM ecosystem is very mature and robust compared to RISC-V.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-claims-breakthrough-in-chip-production-speed
It will come down to many factors and cost is obviously one of them, be it direct or indirect.
It's not a case of this or that either. Systems can be mixed:
https://semiengineering.com/risc-v-open-platform-for-next-gen-automotive-ecus-eth-zurich-huawei/
Things have changed a lot for RISC-V in the last five years. It is still being used for IoT, microcontrollers etc but more and more designs and ideas are coming to market and I wouldn't bet anything against another big leap five years from now.
Here’s another AI design from a couple of years ago:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/risc-v-ai
The HPC goals of the EU are tied in with RISC-V too.
https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/accelerator/
Of course, Jim Keller might change that equation, but even then, there doesn't seem to be any technical reason that ARM with ongoing evolution, can't compete, so best watch Nvidia on that front.
Cough, Darwin, cough!
Nor the impact of weaponisation of IP by the US government.
RISC-V is growing at an unprecedented rate.
https://linuxfoundation.eu/newsroom/rise-project-launches-to-accelerate-development-of-risc-v
Look at the names making up the consortium.