Apple buys P.A. Semi chip designer, Intel says wha?

Apple loves 'em some Intel right? Sure, it was the Intel power-per-watt roadmap which Jobs cited as the reason to ditch IBM's PowerPC platform. Analysts have since been tripping over themselves with speculation about future generation iPhones and iPod touches going Intel -- especially since the arrival of Atom. So what will analysts make of Apple's $278 million in cash purchase of the 150 person P.A. Semi microprocessor design company? The company was founded by Dan Dobberpuhl, lead designer of DEC's doomed Alpha and StrongArm processors, and responsible for the introduction of a 2GHz, 64-bit dual-core microprocessor which in February 2007 was said to be 300% more efficient than comparable chips running at 5 to 13 watts. Forbes speculates that Apple will wrap its ARMs around the company's boutique processor in a bid for exclusivity -- a move meant to differentiate itself from competition using Intel and other off-the-shelf processors. Interestingly, after a long courtship with P.A. Semi, the acquisition discussions only began in the last few weeks. Say what you want about Jobs, but he's nothing if not a man who knows what he wants and makes damn sure he gets it.

Update: Oh shazam! We just remembered that P.A. Semi and Apple had been this close to a deal just prior (as in minutes) to the announced Intel switch in 2006. Interesting, very interesting. Why now Apple?

Read -- P.A. Semi PWRficient processor announcement
Read -- Forbes

[Labrador @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:21AM]

This is a big blow to Intel's Atom plans. If Apple had gone Atom, its success would have been guaranteed.

[love_intel @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:23AM]

Whose success? Apple's or Intel's?

[Ellianth @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:35AM]

Lol, did you just say Intels success depended on Apple?

[Brandon @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:47AM]

If it was for the iPhone, yes it would have meant millions of sales.

[Josh Warner @ Apr 23rd 2008 3:37AM]

Atom will have no lack of sales without Apple. They've got a guaranteed one right here with an EEE 900 once they officially release it.

Apple likes being on top and dictating terms themselves; I'd say this gives them in-house leverage to use against Intel. They also might force P.A. in an entirely new direction if Atom is better - let Atom be the general purpose CPU, but develop better h.264 hardware acceleration with the P.A. chips. The iPhone uses a similar arrangement with a dedicated hardware decoder.

Or maybe P.A. really does have something in the pipeline that is better than Atom. Only time will tell, but bring on the tiny cheap devices with insane battery life!

[Erwos @ Apr 23rd 2008 10:41AM]

The Atom has nothing to do with the iPhone. What is it with you Apple fanboys?

[Nabil @ Apr 23rd 2008 10:42AM]

And how long before Jobs announces that iPods and iPhones are switching to Intel processors because of Wattage issues ?

Whatever Steve, whatever....

[NeonRush @ Apr 23rd 2008 10:55AM]

Unless there was a word order error, this is one of the most fanboyish comments I've ever seen.

Course it could have been posted from a Mac in which case the tormented souls that power those machines are probably responsible. I hear Jobs gets them wholesale from Satan in exchange for free iPod Touch updates!

[James Yopp @ Apr 23rd 2008 11:02AM]

I don't care if it's ATOM or PWRFicient -- Just BRING BACK MY DAMN 12" POWERBOOK!!!!

I know I'm not the only one who was disappointed with the MacBook Air. Let's get a better small laptop in here.

[Nabil @ Apr 23rd 2008 11:53AM]

@James Yopp

I have the last 12" powerbook ever made...

Wana buy it :)

[techFTW @ Apr 23rd 2008 12:02PM]

@James Yop

I hear you! I love my 12" powerbook and can't understand why apple think's a crippled macbook can be classed as "ultra-portable". It's absolutely useless, no optical drive, only 1 USB, no ethernet etc. And why oh why did they put a 13.3" screen on it, thats NOT ultraportable if you ask me LOL They should have definately put an 11" widescreen on it.

The ASUS U2E looks really nice though (well... if you don't mind the leather lol)

[pgborja @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:23AM]

What a politician.

[dazepro @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:24AM]

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple as a company, and I love their products, but I can't stand to read an article like this. Just like every other Mac product I am afraid to buy it (the iPhone), because it is going to be out of date and not upgradeable. I wanted to buy the iPhone this June when the 3G model comes out, but now I am afraid that by Christmas it is going to have a faster processor. Arghhhhhh! Anyone else feel my frustration!

[ClaMs @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:26AM]

Seriously, how many "upgradeable" mobile phones have you ever had?

[dazepro @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:30AM]

You have a point, but how often do other smartphones get upgrades. At the rate Apple is going they are putting out a new iPhone every 6 months.

[Mr. S. @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:44AM]

Ya, i need a faster iphone proc so i can type faster then 35 wpm.. ? What? it works, could be a little quicker, but faster procs wont matter when the device does what its supposed to do. And it do's run's doomz.

[luzzio @ Apr 23rd 2008 3:42AM]

How does the iPhone getting upgraded faster/more constant than other smartphones make buying the iPhone scary?

Unless you're someone who likes having something new and latest just for the sake of being, well, latest.

Otherwise buying it isnt any different from any other generic phone. Technology is always improving.

[thetinguy @ Apr 23rd 2008 3:47AM]

It will and you will have to buy a new one.

[Fraser JK @ Apr 23rd 2008 6:15AM]

Tell me about it... am afraid to buy any Apple product, period!

After using Windows PC's for over 10 years decided to switch to Mac's in late 2005 with an iBook G4. Months later better iBooks come out with Intel processors, that could run Windows as well.

Still thinking hard about purchasing any further products... maybe I'll keep waiting till they stop upgrading them.

[Argot @ Apr 23rd 2008 6:38AM]

You can always upgrade your cellphone with more memory. Just put a bigger SD-card in it. You can do that on any modern cellphone, right?

[From Montreal, Canada @ Apr 23rd 2008 8:08AM]

Been waiting for 2nd gen iPhone but your right... In six month the price will be cut or more features released on a new model... SUX BIG TIME, EH?

[Bloobie @ Apr 23rd 2008 7:56PM]

Fraser: so you bought an iBook which came out in July 2005 and are bitching that it was replaced with a faster MacBook in May 2006? Get over it. That's how tech products work.

[Abuzar @ Apr 23rd 2008 8:52AM]

Bloobie, you need a new sarcasm meter.

[eMAx @ Apr 23rd 2008 9:16AM]

They wont release a new one with a faster processor for a while. And if they do it will be a "different platform"

Apple is going to treat the iPhone and iTouch as a platform, just like Video game consoles. All the same software is going to have to work and be coded for exactly the same. At least until the end of the life of the hardware. Apple has not even released the App store and the SDK is still in its infancy. Even if they change the insides of the iPhone, it will be no different from a user point of view.

Look at the Xbox 360. Microsoft maintains the exact same instruction set, CPU speed, etc... but they use smaller CPUS, and cooler CPUS. The end user sees the same 360. the developer sees the same 360. It will be the same with the iPhone.


Despite all of this. My money is on something in between the lines. I'm willing to bet Apple purchased this company to own some patent, or special process they have, not to make them the sole builder of their chips in anything. If Intel is willing to repackage its Core 2 Duo CPU for a single compute for Apple's mac book Air, then who knows what intel will do with some type of CPU design patent, or design process that Apple owns.


Thats my nickel..

[JAmerican @ Apr 23rd 2008 9:47AM]

My Dash is upgradable. Went from WM5 to WM6 to WM6.1. Most upgradable phone I've ever had. Also I added 2GB MicroSD.

JAmerican

[Striker @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:27AM]

WTF APPLE, WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Can't they stick with an architecture for longer than 10 years anymore?

P.S.- Ubuntu FTW

[Ray @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:30AM]

if it increases speed and performance who care

[Ray @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:31AM]

cares*

engadget you need to allow people to edit posts!!!

[yumchips @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:36AM]

This move just goes to show that Apple (and Macs as a platform) are architecture independent. Apple dev tools compile universal binaries, go ahead and forget what runs under the hood. I, for one, don't care one lick.

[Striker @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:38AM]

Are they dropping Intel all together, or just moving their processors in mobile devices to these? If I am right, Windows compatibility is one of their strong selling points, and if they move to ARM, then people will have one less reason to buy an overpriced computer.

[Vic the One @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:43AM]

I doubt they'd drop Intel. I'm guessing this is just for mobile devices.

[watta_loada @ Apr 23rd 2008 3:56AM]

just goes to show, Engadget readers only think they know what they are talking about.

Oh well, I suppose this is a site about "gadgets", not technology.

1. ARM CPUs are typically crap at float point operations. If Apple uses ARM for their computer, it's going to be worse than the worst scenario back when it was using

[Datsond @ Apr 23rd 2008 4:02AM]

They are. Intel AND... POWER/Power PC.... (Cool! I think POWER's 64-bit implementation is probably a "cleaner" and better one than what they have to deal with than a AMD/Intel x86 retrofit for 64 "bit~ness" )

So to me this is all good.

[Geir E @ Apr 23rd 2008 7:29AM]

What? They have intel for desktop and laptops, and then this for mobile.

From the chip companys webpage:

"The product is targeted at the multibillion-dollar high-performance embedded- computing and -control markets. "

[NG @ Apr 23rd 2008 7:34AM]

I miss the IBM chip :(

[Jon H @ Apr 23rd 2008 12:05PM]

This is about the ARM processors used in the iPod and iPhone, not the Mac.

[Darwin @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:32AM]

Smart move by Jobs. DEC's design team had a focus on extracting every last ounce of performance from the processor by tweaking everything by hand. The irony is that they were done in not because of performance problems, but because of incompetent sales and marketing, poor guidance, and lack of NT uptake at the time, the Alpha PC and FX!32 combination failed to be the crowbar DEC needed to break into the consumer market and maintain relevance.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Apr 23rd 2008 5:20AM]

Let's just hope the whatever sickness of DEC will not stick now to Apple.

Though situation is really awkward. Even for me PowerPC lover, the move by Apple looks really silly. All Apple had to do is to pitch Intel to include multimedia capabilities (audio/video decoding, or whatever Apple wants) in their CPUs - Intel would have gladly done it, since they made several attempts in past for such integrated solution. (Or could it be that Apple and Intel had some talks - but Intel rejected Apple requests?)

Another possibility was a development of companion chip for their iPhones (what is also popular practice in hand-helds). But seeing that due to power consumption now everybody moves into system-on-chip direction, the possibility can be safely excluded.

Though PowerPC is prevalent in high-end embedded market, Intel's Atom is promising to change that pretty quickly. Pricing of Atom (which is absolutely new) is only slightly higher than that of PowerPC chips. But Atom has advantage of cheaper development since it is x86 compatible - the advantage which especially in embedded world is crucial.

[John Stracke @ Apr 23rd 2008 8:49AM]

I dunno, my experience with Alphas (around 1995) was that they weren't anywhere near as fast as their reputation. That was under OSF/1 (er, Digital Unix, er, Tru64); most tasks took longer on a 233MHz Alpha than an 80MHz HP. (Big exception: linking. The HP-UX linker was *slow*.)

Meanwhile, under NT, most apps suffered from the high cost of unaligned memory accesses. (The CPU couldn't do them, so it would trigger an exception, just like an illegal instruction, and the kernel had to emulate it.) One of my coworkers, Igor, found this out when profiling his video codec; there was a system tool that would report how many CPU exceptions a process was seeing. The interesting thing is that a compiler can prevent this sort of thing (it optimizes the unaligned access away, or emulates it in-process, so you don't have the cost of a kernel call). Microsoft *did* have a compiler that could do that--Igor could see that Office and everything else from MS weren't getting any CPU exceptions--but they hadn't released it. (I don't know whether they ever did.) So their own apps were nice and fast, but everybody else's were slow.

(Igor wound up rewriting his code not to do unaligned accesses in the first place. But he could afford the time to do that because we really needed that codec to be fast. Someone for whom NT-on-Alpha wasn't a priority would just push it out the door and say "I don't know why it's slow; at least it runs.".)

[Cellenin @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:43AM]

Fan boys...take it easy. I know you are about to have a orgasm.

[LordFarkward @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:50AM]

"I know you are about to have a orgasm."

it's "an orgasm". evidently you've never said it enough times to know how to say it right.

[Brandon @ Apr 23rd 2008 2:00AM]

Why the hell would he EVER say "I know you are about to have an orgasm."? Now I question your experiences in this subject matter.

[Cellenin @ Apr 23rd 2008 2:58AM]

Oh lordy. Two fan boys above.

[Brendan Sheehan @ Apr 23rd 2008 11:52AM]

And one below you - your favorite kind of sandwich!

[Andrew @ Apr 23rd 2008 9:44AM]

Atom still uses too much power for a phone, Intel doesn't have anything to compete in this space. Now that the iPhone sdk is finalized it doesn't really matter what happens with the hardware any more, they can switch processors, add GPS, 3G radios, more storage whatever and the apps will all work fine as long as the are using the SDK. That's why it's a platform.

[the_fozz @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:57AM]

I could curse Apple for buying the company instead of buying FROM the company since this means that only Apple products will have that efficiency, instead of being able to get, say, an HTC smartphone, but it won't matter since it's inevitable that someone will put Android on an iPhone, and that HTC phone will always be slooooooooooooooooooow.

[govertical @ Apr 23rd 2008 2:10AM]

You need to look up Vertical Integration. Notable beneficiary of this practice: Berkshire-Hathaway

This is a very good move for Apple.

[rayw @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:56AM]

It's also Lord "Farquaad".

Apple are probably tired of the apples to apples comparisons they've been having to put up with, pardon the pun, and are moving on to oranges instead. That way at least no one will be able to say "well a PC on a Core 2 Duo ?Mhz costs so much less!" anymore.

[gabe @ Apr 23rd 2008 2:02AM]

Homo say what?

[Ray @ Apr 23rd 2008 3:26AM]

.....your an idiot