Submitted by Does anyone remember the chip start-up P.A. Semi? This company made its rounds around the internet in 2005, when it lifted the veil of secrecy on a new, highly efficient PowerPC processor it had been working on. 2005 Being the year that Apple announced its switch to Intel, people started to doubt Apple’s reasons. A few months later, in May 2006, it became known that Apple had been working with P.A. Semi right before Apple made the switch. P.A. Semi released their chip a year later, and now the company has been bought by… Apple.An Apple spokesman has confirmed to Forbes that Apple has indeed bought the small chipmaker. Even though the spokesman did not reveal any details as to the why’s and how’s behind the deal (as is usual with Apple’s policy) it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise P.A. Semi’s energy efficient chips are a good candidate for Apple’s line of iPods and iPhones. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans,” the spokesman said. He refused to make financial statements, but someone “familiar with the deal” said USD 278 million is involved.
P.A. Semi has 150 employees working on their PowerPC chips, which they say are 300% more efficient than whatever the competition has to offer. Their chips are popular among telecommunications, networking and wireless companies, and even the vapourware new Amiga machines promised by ACK Controls were supposed to use P.A. Semi’s chips. Forbes writes that “although Apple plans to continue supporting P.A. Semi’s current customers, insiders suggest that Jobs plans to use future P.A. Semi chips exclusively within Apple products.”
So, Apple switches from PowerPC to Intel, then buys a PowerPC chip maker, which will probably mean we’ll see PowerPC chips once again in Apple’s future products – not their desktops and laptops, of course, but their iPods and iPhones.
Sounds good. Apple does not want a hardware lock-in for it’s software. And being CPU agnostic means that the software must be flexible, modular and maintainable, which are signs of good software quality.
Yeah. I could see why a company that makes a living off of locking users wouldn’t want to lock themselves in.
I guess we’ll find out how serious they are about leveraging LLVM to do their porting work for them.
1 – iPod touch
2 – iPhone
3 – tablet/PDA (i.e. future handhelds)
4 – AppleTV
5 – AppleTV server
Edited 2008-04-23 12:26 UTC
My guess is that the iPhone and iPod lines will stay ARM for the forseable future, and this chip will instead be heading to territories that Intel’s (lower end mostly)Atom and VIA’s proccessors are starting to target, the mini tablet/MID/overgrown PDA/what ever you want to call it market, that Apple will probably be entering soon. I could also see it in the Apple TV where Intel doesn’t really hurt or help.
Right now PA Semi’s stuff doesn’t look phone level yet, and I don’t see any reason for Apple to ditch Intel in the higher segments.
So…if I can hypothesise for a moment:
Apple continue to develop the PPC version of OSX alongside the x86 version.
They then buy a low-power and very efficient PPC chip for use in mobile devices which can run a ‘real’ version of OSX (as opposed to whatever it is that’s really running in the current iPhone).
OSX based tablets, iTV, iPhones and iPods…all relying on an in-house chip that no-one else has access to…hmm. ‘Unsigned’ third-party apps might have a tougher opponent in the future.
all hardware made by apple, all software via itms, it would not surprise me at all. “the whole widget” indeed.
the osx running on iphone & ipod touch is the real osx. and as i just wrote, p.a. semi doesn’t offer anything comparable to arm-processors.
but their processor might be a nice choice for blades.
the only processor the company if offering right now falls somewhere between the intel atom and intel core 2. it might be an alternative to x86-processors for laptops, settop-boxes, tablets etc. – but it can’t compete with the arm-processors in iphone & ipod on the low end or the intels core 2 processors on the high end.
maybe it’s just for patents, man-power, some undisclosed project which where started after the negotation for an successor for ibm’s g5 failed. at least i don’t see what they can offer apple right now.
“it might be an alternative to x86-processors for laptops, settop-boxes, tablets etc.”
And in my opinion… BINGO!
What with the recent landrush to Eeepc type mini-laptops, I can see the apple version being released soon. This sounds like just the processor to run them.
IMO there’s not enough profit margin for Apple to enter the low budget laptop arena. They’ve built their current dynasty on forcing the consumer to believe that because Apples wares are overpriced, it’s of the highest quality. Mod it down if you like, but that fact will still remain.
An eeepc-ish Macbook Lite would be dirtying the knees of the company’s financial goals, and would provide nothing beneficial in return. There’s nothing “commodity” in Apple’s entire product line, except all the parts inside their pretty little packaging.
Shit I am late!
🙂
this doesnt make any sense, i am waiting for more conformation as to the validity of this.
You know what would be funny (although not really funny ha-ha)? If the only reason the ACK controls thing is vapourware is if P.A. Semi strated blowing them off halfway through the deal stages because they knew that they were going to be bought. </complete_speculation>
Isn’t the PPC version of Leopard crippled? I remember reading that somewhere and a bunch of PPC users being pissed.
Now they buy this company? Does that mean Apple is gonna play catchup?
It doesn’t work well on my PowerPC-based machine but it’s hardly crippled. Apple have already made their application software incompatible with PowerPC-based machines, so they’re not thinking of computers, per se.
They point is that the company is designing processors. They’ve got some good ideas and certainly made some progress in efficiency in what was already an efficient design.
If Apple can use them to design their own portable device processors, they won’t be stuck with Intel, Broadcom, or Samsung or any other company supplying the general market. That said, they shouldn’t be stupid enough to make things proprietary and work themselves out of flexibility.
*sigh*
the whole “i heard somewhere” meme is just an excuse to say the darnest things it seems.
LOL
just a guess, but I would say apples after there technology. and as apple works with intel for custimized chips, they will use more and more of there tech. and will most likey use they on there intel custom chips.
I run leopard on G4, G5, and Intel Xeon. All work the same. With an obvious speed boost on the newer architecture.
Installation on some of the old machines had to be done via another computer though (probably due to old CD-Rom drives)
This is interesting. Apple is not going back from Intel to PPC for the Macs – too many people buy them because they can run Windows when needed – but they can use them for iPhones and iPods: ARM processor aren’t quite good compared to the PPC, they are used for their little power requirements.
apple bought the graphics chip startup raycer back in 1999 and never used any of their original products but used the people to work on other stuff. a patent usefull for open gl was the main reason. might be similiar this time.
This is the company that came up with the chip that Apple allegedly wanted all along for their laptops. They might have been worth a fortune if Apple had not switched completely to Intel.
So now Apple buy them.
Perhaps they are just bargain hunting.
Apple will use ARM/MacOS X (ARM version) in all theirs iPhone/iPod lineup. The two main reasons here are:
1. ARM chips are less power hungry than PowerPC based chips.
2. Apple used a lot of resources to create ARM version of MacOS. I doubt that they will simply leave it. It hasn’t been made JUST FOR FUN (Jobs aren’t Linus hehe).
Desktop and high-end solutions will be using Intel. IMO It’s the best way to go for Apple right now. Adobe/Microsoft thinking about x86 as the future of MacOS X (pure speculation), and Apple cant neglect theirs 3rd party developers.
The only field for PowerPC is Time Capsule like devices, Apple TV and some mix of eeePC and Macbook Air with highly customized version of MacOS X (like multitouch-based or something like this).
Apple will reach the limit with iPods market and acquiring P.A. Semi is a way to secure the future. Think different (sorry, couldn’t hold it).
Edited 2008-04-23 21:39 UTC
I think your supposition of using ARM for the IPod and IPhone line is off. Apple has already pulled Objective C support from GCC in favor of LLVM. The ARM backend of LLVM is notably lacking compared to its PowerPC and Intel counterparts and, in particular, lacks JIT support needed for shader emulation and optimization on systems with underpowered graphics chips.
It’s possible they might just spawn a new instruction set architecture based on LLVM’s intermediate code but… Why bother when you have optimizing compiler software for the two biggest instruction sets already?
Uh… what?
no, they haven’t. llvm is using gcc as frontend and apples alternative frontend clang is still in early development.
i don’t think most arm-chips would be of much use as shaders anyway.
maybe because arm is by far the best plattform for ipod & iphone? can you name even one cell phone using ppc or even x86 processors?
apple did contribute half of the arm-backend for llvm: http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2007-January/007813.html
The point I was trying to make about LLVM being favored over GCC is that GCC 4.3 didn’t include Objective C in its distribution. Sure they use GCC as a frontend for some languages since Clang only supports the C-Like ones.
As far as the ARM backend being halfway supplied by Apple, LLVM itself is run primarily by Apple employees at this point.
and what is this?
http://packages.debian.org/gobjc
apple still uses gcc for all languages. clang simply isn’t ready for production use:
http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html
btw – jobs commented on the purchase: http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/24/jobs-still-hearts-intel/
I don’t know that there’s much (any?) demand for it, but a PPC add-in card to get non-emulated performance in ppc compiled apps could also be a (remote) possibility.
Are there many (any?) major third party apps that are yet to become universal? or maybe even migrate from classic?
I think that apple want convert (<– is right in english?) the tecnology PWR efficient for the arm processors.
For desktop and laptop they stay with intel.
Quote : “Although Apple plans to continue supporting P.A. Semi’s current customers, insiders suggest that Jobs plans to use future P.A. Semi chips exclusively within Apple products.”
Disaster.
a new PPC manufacturer was welcome, in addition to Freescale + IBM + AMCC.
I hope they won’t keep PA Semi designs for themselves.
The thing to remember is that Apple thinks it’s a hardware company. Software only exists to make the hardware more beautiful, to them. Paying other hardware companies to manufacture components not only cuts Apple out of part of the revenue stream, but also puts them at the mercy of other peoples’ production schedules. As a hardware company it makes perfect sense to internalize more of the production process.
I definitely see Apple using this chip in all of their mobile products, perhaps including some (or all) laptops.
The interesting thing to me is that Apple has not switched to x86, in their own minds. Instead what they’ve done is made the architecture irrelevant. With fat binaries once again becoming standard Apple is trying to abstract away the underlying hardware. You’re a user. Do you know what arch your system is? To you it’s Mac OS, whether it’s Intel or PPC. By forcing developers to account for both Apple gains flexibility. I can only approve.