Apple has agreed to buy a boutique microprocessor design company called PA Semi. The company, which is known for its design of sophisticated, low-power chips, could spell a new future for Apple’s flagship iPhone, and possibly iPod products as well…
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans,” said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. He declined to comment on the value of the deal, which a person familiar with the deal suggested was done for $278 million in cash. Apple is due to announce its quarterly earnings today…
Apple first got to know the designers at P.A. Semi about three years ago, when the computer maker still used PowerPC chips in its Macintosh computers. Dobberpuhl and his team, which includes engineers who had a hand in designing powerful chips, including Intel’s Itanium, Advanced Micro Devices’ Operton and Sun Microsystems’ UltraSparc. Dobberpuhl was also the lead designer on a DEC chip project called StrongARM, which was ultimately folded into Intel after DEC collapsed. Intel tried to use the design as the basis of chips for the smart-phone industry, but eventually sold that group to Marvell.
Har! Who doesn’t this upset?
Apple buys a chip company, whose designer helped design the Intel Itannic Processor ??? Will this mean that Apple products with the new processor will crash and burn the first time you try to boot ???
Interesting news. Just the other day I saw again the session in D5 where bill gates and steve jobs talked together about the industry and their visions. Jobs clearly stated that Apple is a SOFTWARE company.
Buying this chip company doesn’t necessarily contradict his claim – after all chips are designed to run software, but nevertheless it means that apple will now have a hardware division designing and building chips and this means that additional resources are going to be allocated to hardware research and development. This is not exactly a SOFTWARE company.
In the end, what’s important is what Apple will DO with these chips and I also wonder what impact, if any, it will have on Apple’s relations with Intel in light of the later efforts in the mobile processors market and the Atom cpu.
StrongARM was an amazing, groundbreaking chip. This guy is a genius.
Um… It doesn’t upset me…
This is a good way to hang onto control of OSX. They make it so it only runs on those new chips. Psystar & Intel will be left in the cold soon enough it looks like.
I wonder when the Intel contract is up?
#5
I ain’t no mac fanboy and I didn’t say I believed him. I just mentioned what he said and how it compares to what is actually happening.
#2: Apple SOFTWARE company? Really? Then they should be selling OSX for you to install it on your beige box! Right?
#6 You’re delusional. So Apple is buying into the nightmare they’d just got out of when they dumped the PowerPC…
The chip will never see the inside of a Mac. My guess is a new product in the works, if you make all the parts it’s easier to keep secrets.
Makes sense. Apple wants full control of their destiny. They see the writing on the wall that Taiwan Inc will take that Intel Atom processor and produce iPhone knock-offs.
It’s a bold gamble but I think they are just digging themselves a hole.
Apple may or may not do good on the hi volume/lo margin cut throat market of consumer electronics. In fact iPhone is doing much better than I antecipated. But it will never corner the market, because there’s too much competition, and in the low margin section that Apple hates to be competing in.
I’m not upset at all… lot’s of Blog entries on this one, including insider information.
Here is another article on the subject: http://www.snappingyro.com/index.php/2008/04/24/apples-plans-for-pa-semi/