If you don’t see RISC-V taking off commercially, then why is ARM trying to sell? I ask because my understanding was that they were trying to exit because of RISC-V.
I think it's just trying to sell because Softbank is a venture capital company, they only care about short-term profits.
PS I applaud RISC-V but it won't take over the market for a long time, and it wouldn't drive ARM out completely, I'm sure. Intel's had many competitors and they're doing just fine (even despite screwing up repeatedly with their processes!)
Look at all the failed attempts to move away from x86(/64). Even intel tried it with Itanium and failed, HP has to pay them to keep making it so they can fulfull their server contracts. I'm sure ARM has a similar hold on the mobile market.
> Intel's had many competitors and they're doing just fine (even despite screwing up repeatedly with their processes!)
With AWS offering ARM systems, all the Chromebooks, Apple, the complete loss of the phone market, Intel’s staying power is about to be tested to the extreme.
Most of those don't matter and didn't matter anyway: Chromebooks and Apple desktops are a tiny portion of a small market; Apple's volume chips are iPhones. Intel never really had a grip on any kind of mobile handset market and hasn't for years, despite that they still post record profits. That's because the margins on handsets are very slim, unless you're Apple.
The only actual major change here is AWS offering Graviton, which actually hints at their real cash cow: datacenter SKUs with absurd markup. Something like 80% of their profit margins are here. More accurately, the change is that there are now viable silicon competitors to Intel in the performance department. So it's now clear that ultra-integrated hyperscalers who can actually afford tape out costs (7nm CPUs are not cheap to produce in volume) have an option to vertically integrate with e.g. Neoverse. Smaller players will not do this still, because alternative options like Rome will be adequate. But the only reason any of them are changing anything is cost savings, because now there are actual viable competitors to Intel when there were zero of them for like, 15 years. Producing cutting edge silicon products isn't easy, but it's very profitable, it turns out.
To be clear, Intel isn't charging $10,000 for a Xeon Platinum because it costs $9500 to make and they make $500 in profit. (Likewise, AMD doesn't produce competitors at 1/5th the price because they made a revolutionary, scientific breakthrough in processor design.) They're charging what you'll pay, not what it takes to produce. Seeing as they currently still have a complete stranglehold on the datacenter industry and make more in a quarter than most of their competitors do in several years, I suspect they've got much more "staying power" than the watercooler chat on this website would lead you to believe.
The Softbank guy invested a ton of money on WeWork. Tried to sell WeWork for 60 billion, but before that happen WeWork valuation dropped out to 2-5 billion (huge loss). That was in 2019. Afterwards, Softbank invested another 10 billions to try to save it. WeWork owns and also pays rent or hundreds of office buildings in the most expensive zones of all the major capitals in the world. 2020 COVID now means these super expensive offices are now empty, since WeWork customers pay a premium to be able to cancel their leases in <1 week. So essentially, WeWork is broke, worth 0, and Softbank has lost dozens of billions on it.
On top, Softbank owns a huge chunk of Uber, which is also worth close to zero now that people are not travelling due to COVID...
So... yeah... Softbank is selling ARM because they must. They are super broke, and investors are going to pull the money that remains out. Selling ARM and giving investors a tiny benefit so that they keep their money is better than them taking a huge loss this year.
