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P.A. Semi Acquisition for iPod and iPhone Chips
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macrumors 6502a
That cat (leopard) was out of the bag a long time ago. 😉🙂
Seriously, I believe it's a little too early to speculate on what will or might be release 2+ years down the road.
i agree, but it's still fun 😀
anyways, this is pretty cool, as it gives them even more control over how they design their iPods and iPhones, so theoretically, they should run better.
Bubba Satori
Suspended
I knew it!!!
Apple is very smart. Im so happy they not relying on Intel!!! Go beyond Intel. In the future they will have Ads making fun of Intel Speeds comparing to Apple's. =)
Just thinking
Just barely. 😀
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice will investigate Apple for anticompetitive monopolistic practices, not the SEC.
mdriftmeyer
macrumors 68040
I pointed this out when the acquisition happened...
and most showed they know little about such by proclaiming Atom.
Therefore, ``I fart in your general direction.''
and most showed they know little about such by proclaiming Atom.
Therefore, ``I fart in your general direction.''
Yep. I think we all already knew that though, but are hopefully for the Newton MessagePad replacement and some other totally new product lines. 😀
well this certainly isn't groundbreaking, but the question remains: will they be using their chips, or just the designs and intellectual properties to build upon other chips? or both?
Awesome now hopefully they PA Semi will be the first to release a Cortex-A9 quad core system on a chip.
It gives today's desktop levels of performance in the 250mW class... Amazing.
"The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor and ARM Cortex-A9 single core processor deliver up to 8000 DMIPS performance within a 250 mW power budget."
In fact it gives the same performance as the PA Semi PWRficient processor using 1/100th the active power consumption of this "power efficient" processor!
ARM has finished this outstanding core a while ago and is waiting for licensees to put it in their systems-on-a-chip.
They aren't interested in the PowerPC:
P.A. Semi has said that they are willing to supply their PWRficient PA6T-1682M chip on an end-of-life basis, if the Power Architecture license that P.A. Semi holds from IBM can be transferred to the acquiring company.[7]
It gives today's desktop levels of performance in the 250mW class... Amazing.
"The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor and ARM Cortex-A9 single core processor deliver up to 8000 DMIPS performance within a 250 mW power budget."
In fact it gives the same performance as the PA Semi PWRficient processor using 1/100th the active power consumption of this "power efficient" processor!
ARM has finished this outstanding core a while ago and is waiting for licensees to put it in their systems-on-a-chip.
They aren't interested in the PowerPC:
P.A. Semi has said that they are willing to supply their PWRficient PA6T-1682M chip on an end-of-life basis, if the Power Architecture license that P.A. Semi holds from IBM can be transferred to the acquiring company.[7]
teknikal90
macrumors 68040
why woudl that be illegal?
alot of companies have corporate vertical networks...
MattInOz
macrumors 68030
True, But Apple had been working with PA semi on 'some cool' for some time when it seemed logical for them to just buy them up, to paraphrase the apple dude who made the announcement.
Apple already has a lot of vertical integration. How is vertical integration a monopoly and why would the SEC care anyway? It's not like they are buying out their competition. P.A. Semi isn't even a supplier of any significance to any of their competitors.
lol poor guy said he's kidding and already like 5 people responded to it as if it were serious. He makes a valid point - this is a step toward vertical integration, which has been problematic in the past. I'm not saying it will be in this case......
lazyrighteye
Contributor
The iPhone will be 16 & 32 GB only around Oct-Nov 08 (Feb 09, absolute latest).
An 8 GB 3G iPhone will be very short-lived.
Once the App Store is live, storage will be a premium - making an 8 GB virtually useless. Even at $200.
emulator
macrumors 6502a
People should stop posting this PPC nonsense. Get over it and be grateful the PPC is gone.
stephenli
macrumors 6502
whats wrong with the powerPC architecture?
there still some good chips e.g. CELL.
whatever PA Semi's chip is powerPC based or not,
custom chips does enable Apple have better control and have better efficiency on iPhone / iPod system, and finally we would be benefited from great products right?
speakerwizard
macrumors 68000
No its not Jobs has said this in an interview as well as they are specifically for ipods and iphones.
morespce54
macrumors 65816
Steve Jobs never lets ALL of the cats out of the bag.
Yes Steve Jobs said that they were bought for iPhone/iPod chips. He didn't say Apple bought them for ALL of the iPhone/iPod chips or the entire system board.
The main thing is finding places in those devices that are not fully optimized for performance and power.
The other half is making it so that Microsoft can't continue to buy all the same hardware that Apple is and create another copy cat known at the Zune so easily. Microsoft won't know the specs of these new chips or the programming used for them. Making it hard for other companies with less brains, or at least less ability to use those brains to their fullest, won't be able to copy so easily.
Speaking of copying. You heard about that company, or at least we did at first, that created a Mac clone to run Leopard on ... I would be VERY surprised if Apple didn't also buy PA for custom chips for Macs too so that this can't be done either. The idea would be to ramp up how much it would cost to make a clone until it isn't affordable.
As for what chips will run in any Apple products ... I DO NOT expect them to come out with a cell processor based Mac. BUT I would NOT BE surprised in future years to find out that they have a version of OS X (we don't use "Mac" in the name anymore apparently) that runs on a PS3 or at least cell processors.
This is not to start rumors. Apple had OS X running on Intel chips long before they came out with a computer running on it. Yes this was of course brought over from nExt but Steve Jobs is smarter and knows how to hedge his bets.
Why would he do this other than just doing this? The best reason is parallel computing. There is no better way to learn parallel computing then learning how to program it for the best affordable parallel system out there. What they could learn on that system now could pay HUGE dividends on learning how to program OS X (even for iPhones/iPods) for future Intel with custom PA chips.
Yes Steve Jobs said that they were bought for iPhone/iPod chips. He didn't say Apple bought them for ALL of the iPhone/iPod chips or the entire system board.
The main thing is finding places in those devices that are not fully optimized for performance and power.
The other half is making it so that Microsoft can't continue to buy all the same hardware that Apple is and create another copy cat known at the Zune so easily. Microsoft won't know the specs of these new chips or the programming used for them. Making it hard for other companies with less brains, or at least less ability to use those brains to their fullest, won't be able to copy so easily.
Speaking of copying. You heard about that company, or at least we did at first, that created a Mac clone to run Leopard on ... I would be VERY surprised if Apple didn't also buy PA for custom chips for Macs too so that this can't be done either. The idea would be to ramp up how much it would cost to make a clone until it isn't affordable.
As for what chips will run in any Apple products ... I DO NOT expect them to come out with a cell processor based Mac. BUT I would NOT BE surprised in future years to find out that they have a version of OS X (we don't use "Mac" in the name anymore apparently) that runs on a PS3 or at least cell processors.
This is not to start rumors. Apple had OS X running on Intel chips long before they came out with a computer running on it. Yes this was of course brought over from nExt but Steve Jobs is smarter and knows how to hedge his bets.
Why would he do this other than just doing this? The best reason is parallel computing. There is no better way to learn parallel computing then learning how to program it for the best affordable parallel system out there. What they could learn on that system now could pay HUGE dividends on learning how to program OS X (even for iPhones/iPods) for future Intel with custom PA chips.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Do you mean an HP or Dell quad-core mini-tower? 😀
(below)
Oh. I'm not sure that I'd agree that an asymmetric system with a relatively weak general purpose processor and a bunch of specialized SIMD arithmetic processors is the best system on which to learn parallel programming.
I'd suggest a quad-core, perhaps with CUDA, would be a better teaching system.