Apple With Specific Plans for P.A. Semi

[MacRumors]

EETimes provides a little background to the recent acquisition of P.A. Semi by Apple.

According to their source, Apple had already been an investor of the company and had previously been in negotiations with it for low-power PowerPC chips. Apple's switch to Intel, of course, ended these talks and eliminated a potentially large revenue stream from the company.

More recently, Apple is said to have had a new chip design in mind and wanted the P.A. Semi team involved. According to EETimes, P.A. Semi had essentially run out of funding and "the only way to get the project funded was for Apple to pay off the other investors and bring P.A. Semi in-house."

As a result, the $280 million acquisition was to bring their talent in for this new project rather than any specific technologies P.A. Semi had already developed. This explanation is consistent with early statements from P.A. Semi to their existing customers that the company was bought for "intellectual property and engineering talent".


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[gphoto]

Sounds awesome! What ever they come up with will be amazing!

[pederg]

Good to know that we'll be staying with intel for a while Shame that we miss out on the PowerBook G5 tho..

[inkswamp]

Originally Posted by pederg

Good to know that we'll be staying with intel for a while Shame that we miss out on the PowerBook G5 tho..

The poor PowerBook G5. Its "next Tuesday" just never came.

So not to derail the PA Semi discussion too much with wild-*ss speculation, but let's connect a few dots.

1. PA Semi has experience making PPC chips.

2. Apple believes PA Semi has talent to do something great with the PPC (presumably).

3. Apple has signaled an interest in games lately.

4. XBox 360 and Wii are both powered by PPC processors.

Hmm....

[BornAgainMac]

A-Box 360 from Apple. Hey Microsoft, how do you like being copied?

[JG271]

Good to see that apple are making their own chips!

Originally Posted by inkswamp

1. PA Semi has experience making PPC chips.

2. Apple believes PA Semi has talent to do something great with the PPC (presumably).

3. Apple has signaled an interest in games lately.

4. XBox 360 and Wii are both powered by PPC processors.

Hmm....

Although PA semi have usually made small, power efficient chips though - less need for them in a gaming machine - however - apple cover most of the tech gadgets spectrum, apart from gaming...

[arn]

Originally Posted by inkswamp

The poor PowerBook G5. Its "next Tuesday" just never came.

So not to derail the PA Semi discussion too much with wild-*ss speculation, but let's connect a few dots.

1. PA Semi has experience making PPC chips.

while true, I think PA Semi's experience is making low-power PPC chips, so they do have some skill that could be useful for portable devices that could translate beyond PPC.

I took a look through their patents but it was a bit technical, so I was unable to get anything out of it.

arn

[CaptainScarlet]

Originally Posted by arn

while true, I think PA Semi's experience is making low-power PPC chips, so they do have some skill that could be useful for portable devices that could translate beyond PPC.
arn

I would have to agree that the "PPC" isn't necessarily the point here. The patents and or the technology for the low watt chips are.

If Intel can't design the same type of chip, I'd suspect that PA Semi will design the chip and Intel will produce it (as someone stated before).

This all probably revolves around battery life.....

[aLoC]

Originally Posted by CaptainScarlet

This all probably revolves around battery life.....

I agree. Nearly anything that can be done on a custom chip can be done in software on a general purpose chip, so if they are doing a custom chip it must be for efficiency reasons, whether that be battery life or pure performance I don't know.

[firewood]

Originally Posted by arn

while true, I think PA Semi's experience is making low-power PPC chips, so they do have some skill that could be useful for portable devices that could translate beyond PPC.

I took a look through their patents but it was a bit technical, so I was unable to get anything out of it.

A few random theories:

PA Semi might have patents (issued or pending) on low-power design technologies that could cover what Apple wants to do with portable devices in the future (as well as Apple's competitors!).

If those patents cover something Intel needs on its future roadmap, that would put Apple in an even better position when time comes to negotiate pricing the next few rounds.

Portions of PA Semi's team have already designed an ARM processor, and with higher performance than ARM Inc. could at the time. And Safari on the iPod is still a bit sluggish. But the XCode toolpath doesn't seem to care what CPU architecture is under the hood.

PA Semi's current technology includes something like an integrated security processor, the kind that might make jailbreaking an iPad many orders of magnitude more difficult. Might be one reason the defense industry is buying PA Semi's current products, as well as performance/power ratio.

Lastly, buying PA Semi might have been cheaper than the cost of a potential lawsuit for backing away from some sort of letter of intent.

^^
(but all the above are just some random characters due to my cat walking across the keyboard... )

[cnote678]

Originally Posted by arn

while true, I think PA Semi's experience is making low-power PPC chips, so they do have some skill that could be useful for portable devices that could translate beyond PPC.

Perhaps the interest in low-power chips + the interest in games = handheld gaming device? We all know how miserably the Nokia N-Gage failed but...could Apple pull it off?

[danbob]

Originally Posted by cnote678

Perhaps the interest in low-power chips + the interest in games = handheld gaming device? We all know how miserably the Nokia N-Gage failed but...could Apple pull it off?

Doesn't Apple already have a handheld gaming device - called the iPhone and/or iPod Touch? The games are not available just yet, but will be soon...

Will be interesting to see what Apple has in mind, and where they intend to apply the P.A. Semi chip stuff... I'm guessing its not going to be in one specific area, but a number of areas.

[lazyrighteye]

Originally Posted by inkswamp

So not to derail the PA Semi discussion too much with wild-*ss speculation, but let's connect a few dots.

1. PA Semi has experience making PPC chips.

2. Apple believes PA Semi has talent to do something great with the PPC (presumably).

3. Apple has signaled an interest in games lately.

4. XBox 360 and Wii are both powered by PPC processors.

Hmm....

Mmmm, yes. I like your wild-*ss speculation.
Tell me more.

[twoodcc]

well i hope they are a good help to Apple. i wonder what this new chip will be?

[deputy_doofy]

Hmmm. Apple gets PA Semi to design a chip that is sort of a PPC/x86 hybrid. Intel then runs with the design for their new Core 4.
Runs all the current stuff today - OS X, WinXP/Vista/9x, Linux, etc. However, due to the extra stuff, Apple gets a bit of the revenue from the chips IF used by other companies (HP, Dell, Alienware, etc.), otherwise, Apple pays for the chips since Intel still has to create them.

Cool. Yes. I just made that up. May Fools == me.

[DaBrain]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

well i hope they are a good help to Apple. i wonder what this new chip will be?

Yep! I sure was wondering just what this special chip may be used for and what platform or product Apple is planning on implementing them? Very Interesting!

For them to invest $250 million plus IM sure Apple plans on reaping mucho profits from this chip production down the road. Guess only time will tell!

[wordmunger]

The bad news: Your company has been acquired
The good news: You still have a job
The bad news: You now have the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet

[BenRoethig]

Originally Posted by wordmunger

The bad news: Your company has been acquired
The good news: You still have a job
The bad news: You now have the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet

The other bad news, the good news depends on how said boss feels that particular morning.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by wordmunger

The bad news: Your company has been acquired
The good news: You still have a job
The bad news: You now have the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet

Not even close. I worked for him at NeXT and Apple. Perhaps I'm just a hard driven, perfectionist who can't stomach mediocrity because I found him to be the most engaging, bluntly honest and compassionate boss I've ever worked under.

If you want angry, lifeless, morons just work in the Seattle Area.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by wordmunger

The bad news: Your company has been acquired
The good news: You still have a job
The bad news: You now have the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet

The excellent news: Your work will be used in products that you can be proud of and that people love.

[inkswamp]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

The excellent news: Your work will be used in products that you can be proud of and that people love.

The not-so-excellent news: those products will always have essential features missing for no good reason beyond your new boss thinking them unnecessary or inelegant.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by wordmunger

The bad news: Your company has been acquired
The good news: You still have a job
The bad news: You now have the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet

The good news: Someone decided that you and your 149 colleagues are worth $260,000,000. Which means they value _you_ at about $1.7 million. How many Apple share options does it take to keep you at least for the next five years?

Wordmunger, as tempting as it seems to put the worst possible spin on this acquisition, this is not a buyout to get rid of a competitor, this is not a buyout to gain "synergy", this is a strategical purchase with the goal of getting and keeping these developers.

And Steve Jobs is light years away from being the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet. You are confusing absolute devotion to quality with begin "picky" and "cranky". People who are picky and cranky don't turn $10bn companies into $100bn companies.

[jemo07]

Originally Posted by wordmunger

The bad news: Your company has been acquired
The bad news: You now have the pickiest, crankiest boss on the planet

Your company been acquired is not necessarily a bad thing, you don't know the detail of the deal (or do you? )

You could also think of his Steveness as been the most future looking boss in the world, capable of producing products that not only impact UI, design, but even pop culture. His might not be the courtliest person on the planet, but heck you could learn alot from the man IMHO.

JM

[swagi]

Yes please!

Gimme back the PPC feeling. Honestly, those Intel iMacs (Core Duo first iteration) really feel bad. The lasting appeal deteriorated so much. For the first time in my Mac life I experience regular system freezes with leaving Safari open for more than 24 hrs.

My PB G4 feels so good in contrast. I fear upgrading to an Intel machine, as at least those iMacs I have behave a bit...let me say...strange!

PPC was a glorious time, so here is to hoping that Universal binaries will stay!

Granted Parallels and Boot Camp are awesome and wouldn't run on PPC.

[RedTomato]

Originally Posted by swagi

My PB G4 feels so good in contrast. I fear upgrading to an Intel machine, as at least those iMacs I have behave a bit...let me say...strange!

I went from a PB15 1.5ghz to a MB C2D, and the change is amazing. It's many times faster, and the dual core goodness is fantastic.

It does need lots of RAM - my MB C2D was **terrible** on 1GB, but flies on 4GB. Fortunately RAM is dirt cheap at the moment so go for it.

Moving to a new architecture is full of pitfalls, and at the same time as a new OSX Leopard is just asking for trouble. I fully expected the first few Intel revs to be buggy as **** and avoided them for this reason. And I avoided the first few 10.5.x releases too.

I only bought my MB once it moved to C2D, GMA X3100, and 10.5.1 (or.2), meaning that every component was on at least its second revision.

The new MBs coming out soon, along with 10.5.3 are finally becoming a mature product.