

Apple buys into the chip business, acquires P.A. Semi for $278 million - fromedome
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/apple_buys_chipmaker_p_a_semi_for_278_million

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timburks
Back to the PowerPC? PA Semi's only announced product so far is a dual-core
PowerPC: <http://www.pasemi.com/processors/index.html>

I was working on PowerPC processors with IBM and Motorola in the late 90's.
Back then, Apple's investment in Exponential was big news:
<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_/ai_17921250>

It seemed then that Apple was using Exponential to put pressure on its
partners ([http://www.allbusiness.com/electronics/computer-equipment-
co...](http://www.allbusiness.com/electronics/computer-equipment-
computer/7280557-1.html)), but Apple dropped the project abruptly
([http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2168_v43/ai_...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2168_v43/ai_19471588)),
leaving their project so broke that it couldn't even offer severance to its
laid-off employees.

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supahfly_remix
Chips are expensive to develop. It doesn't make sense to me that Apple is
willing to spend the R&D for new generations. It would make more sense that
that R&D cost is amortized over multiple chips from multiple vendors. That was
their thinking in switching over to x86 (I should know: I was working on
Freescale's last PowerPC project for them when it was canceled! :( )

------
wmf
Many of the PA Semi team also worked on StrongARM; maybe Apple thinks they can
outdo the Cortex.

