Apple, a leading maker of portable digital media players as well as developer of Macintosh personal computer, has acquired PA Semi, a designer of Power-architecture microprocessors with whom Apple already held talks several years ago. While Apple does not provide any colour to the information, the rumoured sum for which the company got PA Semi implies that the Cupertino, California-based company has serious plans.
According to unofficial information, Apple paid $278 million in cash for PA Semi, but there are no direct or indirect proves for this. PA Semi was founded in 2004 by Dan Dobberpuhl, who earlier designed Alpha and StrongARM processors at Digital Equipment (DEC) back in the nineties. The company employs engineers from Advanced Micro Devices, Intel Corp. and Sun Microsystems who have a lot of experience in creating advanced microprocessors.
So far the most notable achievement of PA Semi has been dual-core PA6T-1682M PWRficient processor with dual-channel DDR2 memory controller and 2MB level-two cache made using 65nm process technology based on the Power architecture. The chip consumes only 5W – 13W – 25W while running at 2GHz. Performance of the central processing unit is not known, but it was embraced by telecommunication, networking and wireless companies. Besides, it is rumoured that Apple was in talks with PA Semi regarding usage of its chips inside Macs.
“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 in an interview with Forbes.
At the moment Apple uses x86 microprocessors from Intel Corp. inside its personal computers and it is generally unlikely that the company is interested to get back to Power architecture when it comes to Macs. However, Apple utilizes chips from a variety of suppliers for its products like iPod, iPhone, Time Capsule and others, which makes development of such devices rather complicated. As a result, with its own microprocessors, Apple can streamline its operations and show its supplier Intel that it is Apple, who picks up the chips, not Intel who feeds what it has.
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Discussion started: 04/23/08 10:03:11 AM
Latest comment: 04/28/08 04:16:09 PM
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1.
I suppose this could give Apple some leverage when dealing with Intel. Apple could switch back to PowerPC Architecture if it wanted to. They seem to very well switch architectures whenever they darn well feel like it so they could go to Intel and tell them "give us a better price or we'll use our own architecture". Not only that but having a proprietary PowerPC sub processor somewhere on the motherboard could eliminate any possibility of clones assuming that Apple made an operating system that had certain components absolutely requiring said sub processor.
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Posted by: Megamanx00
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Date: 04/23/08 10:03:11 AM]
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Part of the reason why IBM used to charge so much for PPC970 (G5) chips was that Apple never ordered in sufficient volume to make the production runs worthwhile from the economies of scale perspective. Now, they are using mass-market Intel chips instead, so they are in a much better position in that they can buy them straight off the same production lines that supply everyone else as well. In this sense, I doubt that they could get better prices by threatening to do it themselves since they would be back into the situation of a lack of volume. However, they still sometimes require special product versions, such as the reduced-size C2D used in the Macbook Air.
On the basis that Intel is all about volume and is therefore much more likely than IBM to refuse to produce custom parts on special contracts if the volume isn't there for them, Apple's ownership of their own processor design which they could have made on demand at contract fabs such as TSMC could be a very useful thing. For example, it would be ideal if they wish to produce similar ultra-portable devices in the future, for which the power of the mainstream processors isn't really needed and for which size, power consumption, and availability from a reliable but not mass-market source are very important.
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Posted by: MTX
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Date: 04/27/08 11:39:56 AM]
2.
But don't you think developers would stop producing software for them, if they need to change their code all the time?
Maybe it's easier than i think?!?
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Posted by: Enjoy Coffee
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Date: 04/24/08 04:06:09 AM]
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If software developers uses Qt from Trolltech, it gets a lot easier. Also if they use WinDriver from Jungo, it will get easy to port drivers to different operating systems and processor platforms. Though companies do not like sparing the money for ease of porting, but I would if I was a developer.
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Posted by: linuxnerd
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Date: 04/26/08 06:46:34 PM]
3.
Apple could use these in media/HTPC or even as high power HD decoders
Apple HiDef TV anyone ???
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Posted by: alpha0ne
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Date: 04/24/08 09:29:44 PM]
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So... you wanna do it?
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Posted by: Steve Jobs
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Date: 04/25/08 08:37:48 AM]
I want you to stop producing shity liying comercials.
or ill start doing the same.
Think Apple can take the publicity hit when an 18 male, geek with access to incredible editing and tech resources gets an account on youtube, veoh and mutlitple other video sites?
stop mascuading as steve jobs, and tell his ass to come here himself so I can beat it.
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Posted by: Joz
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Date: 04/25/08 11:09:19 AM]
Sorry, I should stop disguising as Steve Jobs.
Soo... you still wanna do it?
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Posted by: Bill Gates
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Date: 04/27/08 06:12:21 PM]
4.
PowerlessPC again? Given Apple was the one who rejected PA Semi's G5 successor design at the last moment, why bother wasting money to switch back to an architecture the company had spent billions to abandon? If that's some kind of bargaining chip, it was done many years too late!
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Posted by: peepeesee
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Date: 04/25/08 07:46:30 PM]
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5.
I was hoping Apple goes back to the POWER architecture because it is different than an 80x86, less bugs, super scaler with out any tricks, handles a lot of memory with out any tricks, and it is an open architecture compared to 80x86. Since they acquire a POWER designer that makes POWER processors with lower electricity consumption, Apple can start making their portable devices smaller and thiner. Though I do think that Apple is getting tired of the quality of hardware and different revisions of the hardware coming from Intel.
I am an 80x86 user. POWER processors are just better than 80x86 and I am getting tired of all the bugs that 80x86 processors have during the years.
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Posted by: linuxnerd
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Date: 04/26/08 07:02:17 PM]
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what bugs?!
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Posted by: Me, expressing myself
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Date: 04/27/08 09:26:02 PM]
The Pentium 60 has an FPU bug. Also Intel's Accelerator processors also have some bugs. Just recently AMD had an TLB bug. This does not count for the little bugs for each processor revision. Plus the chipset mainly from Intel has a lot hardware related bugs that have to be fix in software as a work around. You do not see it because the work arounds are already in place. In GNU/Linux, I can not use irqbalance on an Intel T7300 processor to increase battery usage from four hours to six hours. AMD has fewer bugs, but Intel has bugs every where.
The following list some bugs for the 80x86 processors.
http://www.x86.org/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~feldmann/86bugs.htm
BTW, I wonder if xbitlabs can do an article on bugs for 80x86 processors from now to all the way back to 80486.
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Posted by: linuxnerd
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Date: 04/28/08 04:16:09 PM]
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