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Apple Appears to Have Acquired Intrinsity

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Apr 12, 2001
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In February, we profiled Intrinsity, a company made up of former Exponential Technology employees that was gaining attention for its efforts to speed up ARM CPU designs. Intrinsity had cooperated with Samsung to announce the 1GHz Hummingbird processor back in July, and due to Apple's increasing reliance on ARM processors for its mobile devices, we speculated that Apple and Intrinsity may cross paths in the future.

EDN first reported that Intrinsity has been acquired and speculated that Apple could have been the buyer. We have since discovered evidence that this is likely the case. A couple of Intrinsity employees and one of the founders of Exponential (Jim Blomgren and Mark Nodine) have begun listing Apple, Inc as their current employer on their LinkedIn profiles:

140959-blomgren.jpg


The job changes are dated April 2010, and so either Apple has recently acquired Intrinsity or has recruited some key talent from the company.

Article Link: Apple Appears to Have Acquired Intrinsity
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/02/apple-appears-to-have-acquired-intrinsity/
If a public company makes any transactions of this nature, they've got to announce it...Apple's secrecy around product announcements is one thing, but even the almighty Jobs isn't above the SEC. Either the deal isn't officially done yet, or Apple just pulled away some talent.
 
gfiz said:
If a public company makes any transactions of this nature, they've got to announce it...Apple's secrecy around product announcements is one thing, but even the almighty Jobs isn't above the SEC. Either the deal isn't officially done yet, or Apple just pulled away some talent.
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Given how little they likely would have to pay for intrinsity, it's unlikely the transaction rises to "material impact.". Probably don't need to disclose it. I bet they paid around 10-20 million.
 
This is interesting. Apple is further solidifying their SoC expertise to ensure hardware novelty. Seems the A4 is only the beginning. I expect an A9 variant from them in something by Summer 2011.
 
BRLawyer said:
Are these the same guys who came up with the VAPORWARE x704 that promised to save PowerPC back in the day? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It wasn't vaporware. We sold 7000 of them to Power Computing and UMAX. Apple cancelled its orders and refused to allow the clone makers to modify the bios to work with our chips.
 
I don't see Apple ever being successful at that.

doctoree said:
@Apple: Making your own ARM silicone is good but please expand this group to desktop GPU and CPU. Only a logical step. Will cost you about 15bil $, no big deal!
Click to expand...

At least not in X86 land. It would take them years to catch up to the likes of AMD, intel and the others.

Besides they have a lot of room to accomplish interesting things in ARM land. It is not just faster and cooler processors but new ideas in vector engines, a 64 bit generation, and far better GPU support.

That doesn't mean that they can't put these guys to use in X 86 land. They could work with intel for example to produce their own integrated GPU for Arrandale for example. Even there you would have to question the value and then get intel to buy in.

Right now Apple is doing the right thing concentrating on ARM devices. I can imagine enough products to keep them going for a few years. Besides taking Intrisity off the market also pulls that low power tech off the market if Apple wants.

Dave

Dave
 
I'm more concerned about what will be in the next iPhone!

chrmjenkins said:
This is interesting. Apple is further solidifying their SoC expertise to ensure hardware novelty. Seems the A4 is only the beginning. I expect an A9 variant from them in something by Summer 2011.
Click to expand...

my iPhone is addicting but the two things it needs are faster performance and much better battery life. I'm hoping that the next rev iPhone will have the tech to deliver that.

Dave
 
wizard said:
At least not in X86 land. It would take them years to catch up to the likes of AMD, intel and the others.

Besides they have a lot of room to accomplish interesting things in ARM land. It is not just faster and cooler processors but new ideas in vector engines, a 64 bit generation, and far better GPU support.

That doesn't mean that they can't put these guys to use in X 86 land. They could work with intel for example to produce their own integrated GPU for Arrandale for example. Even there you would have to question the value and then get intel to buy in.

Right now Apple is doing the right thing concentrating on ARM devices. I can imagine enough products to keep them going for a few years. Besides taking Intrisity off the market also pulls that low power tech off the market if Apple wants.

Dave

Dave
Click to expand...

More importantly, they don't have a license. They would have to use IBM as their fab, which would be expensive.
 
Apple wasn't the only one in a buying mood. Google bought Episodic today. Episodic does live online video streaming, as well as analytics and monetization. Episodic and YouTube overlap a little bit, but Episodic is a serious move into online broadcasting to web and mobile.

I wonder if they chose to unveil this today so it would be more under the radar.
 
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