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

[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! :( )

[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...), but Apple dropped the project abruptly (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2168_v43/ai_...), leaving their project so broke that it couldn't even offer severance to its laid-off employees.

[wmf]

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