Valleywag
Steve Jobs likes to say that Apple is the last company that makes "the whole widget." But it doesn't, not really. Sure, Apple makes software and designs hardware — but inside its gadgets are silicon brains from the likes of Samsung and Intel. Jobs is adept at bullying chipmakers for lower prices and faster delivery, but he can't order around their engineers like he does his own employees. That must rile him. Jobs's ego, therefore, is the best explanation for Apple's $278 million acquisition of PA Semi, a microprocessor design startup. But is Apple getting into the ruthlessly competitive semiconductor business?
Likely not. Expect to read lots of gadget-press slavering over PA Semi's speeds and feeds, and debate over its chips' suitability for an iPhone. That may well have nothing to do with why Apple bought the company.
PA Semi's prize is its founder, Dan Dobberpuhl, a famed chip designer, and his 150-person staff. At less than $2 million per engineer, the price Apple paid is in the range Cisco pays to snap up talented engineers. With them working at Apple, Jobs can push established chipmakers to adopt its technical innovations and perhaps swap licenses for intellectual property. That's far more likely than actually switching away from Intel chips for the Mac; Apple actually explored using PA Semi's chips before choosing Intel. Even the iPhone, which would benefit more from PA Semi's low-power chips, is an unlikely candidate for an all-new chip design.
Why? Volume economics favor Intel and Samsung so strongly that it's hard to imagine that a new microprocessor design from the PA Semi team could replace their wares. $278 million doesn't buy Jobs a rival chip; it buys him a tool to chip away at his suppliers' prices.
Comments
You missed:
-- chip on his shoulder
-- when the chips are down
-- chip off the old block
The PA engineers are mostly processor designers - Apple will have to give them an equally interesting project to work on if the company aims to keep them for any length of time. So, it pretty much commits the company to implementing a processor, or reworking an existing one. Dobberpuhl has already worked on ARM - the StrongARM at DEC - so these guys could either work on a lower-power PowerPC (unlikely) or a processor that undercuts ARM's own A8 or A9 in terms of power consumption versus MIPS.
Just having a bunch of engineers sitting and filling out job applications doesn't give you that much of a bargaining chip. Saying to Samsung and TI, "We're designing our own because yours suck", will probably focus their attention.
Well, at least they're using Power and not ARM or x86. Good for Apple. Maybe they can use some of that cash they have to help create something more competitive.
Alternate theory? Jobs is looking for a low power, high speed alternative for future MacBook Air replacements. After all, his compilers are all spitting out Universal (aka PowerPC and Intel compatible) code to support the legacy base of G4 and G5 machines... it's not like he'd have to retool the developer community again.
Then again, Owen has always been right. ;)
If you really, really want to tool up for the next bevy of portable devices that are highly optimized for mobile broadband, video, the whole shooting match, now is the time to craft an architecture for those devices, rather than accept off-the shelf.
think highly integrated stuff. But, it will be hard to beat the Broad comms and their ilk at the Fabless game.
It costs Apple like half a percent of their cash to buy this company, and they probably aren't even going to pay cash.
It's a pretty good price because people don't value processor designers in this Intel world.
But PA Semi blew their ship dates on their revolutionary kit and you have to wonder about that.
I think Apple thinks they need to design chips and this is a reasonably logical and inexpensive way to get into doing that.
Hey am I, like, banned or something? Second post in the last two days that hasn't appeared.
risky move ... [sramanamitra.com]
Nobody else remembers Steve Jobs’s famous beach quote?
“I want a computer factory that takes raw beach sand in one end and outputs fully assembled computers on the other.”
Whole widget, indeed.
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