forbes.com — Late Tuesday, in response to questions from Forbes.com, an Apple spokesman said 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.
Apr 23, 2008 View in Crawl 4
synoticApr 23, 2008
Owning the company allows them Apple further differentiate its products. Apple can now produce custom chips that are more powerful and energy efficient than its competitors. Unless you own the company, you can't buy that kind of control.
cthellisApr 23, 2008
Yes, and they fit in my pocket quite well.
Closed AccountApr 23, 2008
neat!
thursdayevrydayApr 23, 2008
Brilliant!
blandymanApr 23, 2008
dude. totally.
whitenerdy92Apr 24, 2008
i dont :[
headbandApr 24, 2008
If it was well thought out, wouldn't they have realized that if the Atom was too power hungry this is going to be much worse?
nsresponderApr 24, 2008
The intriguing bit of information in this story that jumped out at me is that the founder of PA Semi was the leader of the DEC Alpha design team. Apple's rich enough to take the risk of developing a new CPU, and if they do that, they can not only optimize it for OS X, they can pretty much eliminate any possibility of cloning.One thing that SJ has demonstrated over the last ten years is that he's willing to throw ALL the balls in the air, and see where they come down. A new CPU from Apple would be risky as hell, but the payoff could be fantastic.How likely is that? Well, the last time Apple spent over $100M for an acquisition, it was the $400M they spent to buy NeXT. If they were only after a lower-power CPU for the iPhone, they could have gotten that for a lot less than a quarter of a billion dollars.-jcr
cthellisApr 25, 2008
<a class="user" href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/25/steve_jobs_on_p_a_semi_love_for_intel_3g_blackberry_delayed.html">http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/25/stev ...</a>- - -Though some have speculated that Apple's recent acquisition of P.A. Semi would in some way detract orders for future Intel chips, Jobs explained that the purchase was mainly driven by a liking for the firm's intelligence, rather than its existing products. Corroborating a recent report by the EETimes, Jobs said Apple has long been involved in custom designing chips for iPhones and iPods and suggested that the company would rely on P.A. Semi?s expertise primarily for the forward development of those handheld products which were never based on Intel designs.Although P.A. Semi is known for chips based on IBM's Power technology, from which Macs recently defected, there's absolutely no plans to ressurect a PowerPC-based Mac offering."I wouldn?t lose too much sleep over that,? he said. ?We?re very happy with Intel."
cthellisApr 25, 2008
It wouldn't make it a "gift," but it could provide Intel with incentive to let Apple have more influence in the chips designed specifically for Macs, and suchlike.
imcquillJul 5, 2008
I doubt it. Apple is going to try to get better deals with networks for on demand TV. Not put a temporary bandaid on traditional TV. They never care about products that are only going to be relevant for a little while.