Just weeks after Intel announced its low-power "Atom" chip platform, Apple has surprised, well, everyone by buying PA Semi, a "boutique" fabless chip design company, for $278m (£139m). (Gotta love that word "boutique": "ooh, that processor looks simply fab on you!)
"Fabless" means PA Semi doesn't bake its own; it lets other companies do that. It just designs - specifically, low-power chips. Possible uses (which you can be sure Apple will be quizzed on much further this evening, when it reports its quarterly results) look likely to be for the iPhone and iPod lines.
But as for dropping Intel? Having got into the computer CPU boat there, it wouldn't make sense to try to rewrite Mac OS X for yet another architecture. However Intel did want Apple to use the Atom in the iPhone and iPod. So...
Engadget notes:
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.within a hairsbreadth of doing a deal
there were a group of employees at a startup chip manufacturer called PA Semi who were even more shocked than most [at the 2005 announcement of a switch to Intel], according to reports, because right up until that keynote, they were sure that their company, and not Intel, would be chosen to supply the brains for what's now known as the MacBook family of laptops.
Chris Edwards, whose ear is close to the ground on chipmaking, remarks:
the move by Apple suggests that the company is not all that happy with the shape of today's integrated circuit (IC) business.
One possibility is that Apple has decided it needs more in-house chip designers and buying PA was a quick way to staff up. That's not unusual in this business: it's a surprisingly common way of getting hold of people who can design the analogue circuits that most electronics engineers fear to touch. Even after you've bought in a bunch of processors and memory, there are other places a computer maker can use experienced IC designers to get an edge on its competitors. You don't see that much in the PC business but it's a lot more common in places like the phone market.
He also points out:
Apple might be able to lock the senior people in for a while but, if the project isn't a processor or something similarly complex, you would expect most of them to drift away quite quickly. So, it's fair to assume that Apple is serious about having its own processor design team, if not the PA processor itself.
To round up:
Apple's decision is not just a poke in the eye for Intel, which would have liked to sell its Atom into the world of MIDs (mobile internet devices). There are a ton of companies out there with processors based on ARM all desperate for a slice of the phone and MID markets. And it looks as though Apple looked at all of them and found them wanting.
Hmm, is that the sound of chairs bouncing off the walls at Intel?
