Filed under: Apple Corporate, iPod Family, Rumors, iPhone
Apple buys P. A. Semi, designer of ultra-efficient processors
Here's an interesting tidbit sure to stoke the rumor mill. Forbes is reporting that after negotiations in Uncle Steve's own home Apple has acquired the small Santa Clara chip company P. A. Semi founded by Dan Dobberpuhl, the former lead designer of the DEC Alpha and StrongARM processors. What's interesting about P. A. Semi's chips is their great power efficiency, on the order of "300% more efficient than any comparable chips" according to the company.This of course has tongues wagging about future iPhone / iPod touch iterations which might use some of this highly efficient technology. The development is particularly interesting in light of Apple complete transition to Intel on the Mac, and perhaps suggests that its mobile platforms will be going in a different (more traditionally Apple) direction. Given Apple's proven ability to have OS X running on multiple underlying architectures, however, it not that surprising that Apple might like to retain more control over handheld hardware than it can on the desktop.
[via Gizmodo]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Allan said 10:32AM on 4-23-2008
Maybe if they put these in the iPhones, people won't worry so much about the 'non user changeable battery' thing? If they're really THAT efficient anyway. Not to mention I have no problems getting some extra life out of my iPod battery. Though I have to say going from my 4th gen's 8 hours to the 30+ of a Classic is a nice upgrade. :)
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Onny said 10:41AM on 4-23-2008
from the PA Semi website: "PWRficient™ processors are based on the highly regarded Power Architecture through a P.A. Semi architecture license agreement with IBM."
Does this mean that Apple can use its existing OSX for PowerPC code? (I know little about these things)
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mark said 10:45AM on 4-23-2008
Bzzzz. Battery life is still abominable. I want a user replaceable battery! There are still only so many cycles in a battery. Chip efficiency is a nice term to use in a lab but not outside of it.
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Antony Watts said 11:06AM on 4-23-2008
Maybe Apple wants some in-house semiconductor design skills to be able to interface better with peripheral and processor companies? This would make a lot of sense as someday soon we will have a one chip MacBook...
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gil said 12:11PM on 4-23-2008
This is the second bridge - http://tinyurl.com/4qacsx -two OS X platforms.
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SubGenius said 3:27PM on 4-23-2008
I believe Apple's Desktop and Notebook computers will continue to use Intel processors. However Apple will opt to use "their own" PA Semi chips in embedded devices such as iPod/iPhone, AppleTV, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, future in-car com/nav/ent device.
Tony Bowman said 3:14PM on 4-23-2008
this makes perfect sense to me. Apple doesn't want to be wholly dependent on Intel for it's chips, and Apple has always wanted to control as much of their hardware as they could.
And a deal with PA Semi was in the works right before the Intel deal was announced, but it was put on hold or died outright.
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Sir. Poopy Pants said 3:37PM on 4-23-2008
Even though though the switch to Intel brought a lot more performance to the platform, I'd like to see apple design an in-house chip with some unique features. Maybe in future portable devices/laptops?
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iPhoneinator said 4:14PM on 4-23-2008
okay this has absolutely nothing to do with this but i need help...
i have just jailbroken my iphone bout a week and a half ago and btw... LOVIN IT!!.... anyways.. youtube will not work and i have installed every youtube fix there is in installer.. any1 kno wat 2 do?
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Adam said 5:33PM on 4-23-2008
Interesting all this chatter about using their chips in Apple products when PA Semi is telling everyone their products aren't a consideration in the deal.
"P.A. Semi customers were told the acquiring company was not interested in the startup's products or road map, but is buying the company for its intellectual property and engineering talent." from EETimes via 9to5mac.
Doesn't sound to me like Apple wants anything from them except knowledge of power efficient design. Dreams of a PowerPC renaissance can stop now. You're gonna see Silverthorne/Atom in new handheld devices from Apple. It's almost a given. These new engineers will help them make the full platform as power efficient as possible. End of story, in my book.
Not to mention the Pentagon may block the deal altogether.
http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=GX4NTBNWIFBBSQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=207401605
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Serrano Slim said 7:19PM on 4-23-2008
This would allow Apple to wrap their version of the ARM processor with with very efficient, customized hardware so they control and differentiate the iPhone platform. I assume PA Semi went to Apple with an alternative to their current iPhone chipset, that uses less power with more features. Once Apple was satisfied that the technology could have an ARM core rather than a Power core, they bought the cow rather than the milk.
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Fontosaurus said 6:15PM on 4-25-2008
I'm thinking it might go something like this:
http://www.danbailey.net/117/apple-chip-fab
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