Apple Acquires 200+ Patents from Freescale Semiconductor

[MacRumors]

Accoridng to PatentlyO, Apple has recently recorded the receipt of 200 patents and pending patent applications from the electronics company Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. Freescale was originally a division of Motorola but was spun off in 2003. The patents reportedly represent a wide range of topics related to computer hardware and wireless devices.

it is unclear from the information now available whether (1) Apple obtained full title to the patents and (2) whether Apple purchased the rights or obtained them through some other type of transaction.

It's not clear what Apple's intentions are with the patents or if they were part of some sort of settlement.



Article Link: Apple Acquires 200+ Patents from Freescale Semiconductor

 

[nagromme]

MacBook G5! Clearly this is a return to PowerPC.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Very interesting news

Freescale has a large amount of interesting patents and research in RF, Microcontrollers, DSPs, Sensor technologies, etc.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

MacBook G5! Clearly this is a return to PowerPC.

@Apple: Replace Xcode with CodeWarrior!

 

[arkmannj]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

MacBook G5! Clearly this is a return to PowerPC.

You may not be too far off, Arent ARM processors RISC based? so Apple may be seeing about incorporating some technologies that Freescale has that could still be of value. I dunno just, I'm just throwing out a thought.

 

[Hrududu]

They were working on dual core G4 chips back in 05 when they were fighting for the bid in Apple's next generation laptops. They were very compatible with the Core Duo at the time. Its a shame Intel won.

 

[kjs862]

Must have PowerBook G5!

err MacBook

 

[gmcalpin]

You may not be too far off, Arent ARM processors RISC based?

Yep: The R in ARM stands for RISC. (Advanced RISC Machine)

 

[Doctor Q]

Apple is clearly after the 1983 Motorola cell phone technology!

Source: Motorola Mobility History​

 

[rmwebs]

As long as they dont start trolling with them I dont mind! Lets hope something innovative comes out of it...unlike Mr Allen's patents!

 

[anthonylambert]

Surely it is to defend against....

Surely it is to defend against.... NOKIA and co in the Mobile Suing wars that have broken out.

I would imagine they have patents that pre-date a lot of the Nokia stuff.

 

[nwcs]

@Apple: Replace Xcode with CodeWarrior!

LOL, those were the days...

 

[dvswede]

This brings back memories.

I was brought into Freescale to help design/verify a sister version of the actual processor for the Dual Core G5 aimed at network processors. The main group worked on the apple version (faster and with graphic support ) we worked on the other version with different interfaces (FibreChannel).

Had only worked there for a couple of month when Apple announced they where going Intel and 3 months after that we in the sibling group was let go...

Got a nice separation package that bought me my current car so it worked out in the end.

I agree that it's possible Freescale has a number of RISC based patents that could be applicable to custom ARM designs. Wouldn't surprise me if Apple moves to ARM for their lower end laptops, combine it with the graphic power they are showing and it will feel more then fast enough for most daily usage.

 

[ehoui]

LOL, those were the days...

Yes, I was such a happy camper to uninstall Think and install Codewarrior. It was like Christmas each time we received an update in the mail.

 

[Wolfpup]

MacBook G5! Clearly this is a return to PowerPC.

:laugh: Yeah, my first thought was...they're using PowerPC again? For a split second. Then I'm like "they're going to add compatibility back in? That's cool. For another second.

Then I'm like "eh, probably just some weird legal thing or patents they can use on their ARM chips, or whatever".

 

[42streetsdown]

You may not be too far off, Arent ARM processors RISC based? so Apple may be seeing about incorporating some technologies that Freescale has that could still be of value. I dunno just, I'm just throwing out a thought.

Apple could be thinking about uses in it's iOS chip line, but most processors (including intel's current ones) incorporate both RISC and CISC processing techniques so it's not new or anything

 

[Wolfpup]

Apple could be thinking about uses in it's iOS chip line, but most processors (including intel's current ones) incorporate both RISC and CISC processing techniques so it's not new or anything

Yeah, it's so funny, there used to be this big war. And then the Pentium Pro and most Intel CPUs after that are really RISC chips...not that the "RISC" part even means anything, given instruction sets are HUGE now even on officially "RISC" chips, but you know, uniform instruction lengths and everything.

And vice vera, and...

Just all kind of blurred together past the point of meaning much :laugh: