Apple buys chipmaker PA Semi

Perhaps he (Mr Apple) needs a small group of guys that can ask Intel the right questions to help guide the furure.

Maybe Apple has found a chip which when installed on the mother board will recognize the system software, Apple system software. Keep the riff raff from buying off the shelf parts and making illegal Macs?

If you look at their website, it says they make energy efficient chips based on the Power architecture,

sorry to dig up that old (non-)joke, but does that mean we finally get a G5 powerbook!

I would have thought this ties back to the iPods and (always on the horizon) tablet of some sort. Developing a custom 2G/3G phone chipset would seem like a lot of extra work because of regulations and network constraints, but for devices using little more than bog-standard WiFi/Bluetooth the market benefits of devices that are very stingy with their power draw could be substantial.

Dig thru PA Semi's site some and you'll find the mention of the POWER Architecture_ RISC Chips baby !

The owner of the company was the designer of some of the original 64-bit chips from 25 years ago_ So he's got a piss load of experience building 64-bit Processors_

Not sure what Apple has in mind as they just switched their main product line from RISC POWER to Intel x86 - as the processors that AP Semi makes can be utilized in nearly every product that Apple makes currently_

But the main thing I did get from this is that Apple may be looking at them for their chipset design skills and not necessarily manufacturing_ But again the whole RISC thing throws me as they just left the platform and the chip design is different from RISC to x86_

interesting_

would be apple could make RISC chips for servers only and leave intel chips for the desktop!

It started with the (8 ft)**3 CDC 7600 with its 128 bit word used for finding small digital signals in among the noise. Integrating of hardware integrated software in small storage devices was very important then. As time moved on the requirement to do the same job in a (8 In)**3 package arose. In 1984 fast large storage still drove the hardware and software of computer design. Some $500 million 1984 dollars was poured into the Motorola RISC 16 and 32 bit processors by the Defense Department. Mainly driven again, by the need for fast in depth signal processing. Microsoft was becoming software bloated at the time, but had seemed to bet on the growth in storage hardware. Apple took the smart route. Even though being a 1976 birthed Apple fanboy, I was still amazed that Apple had the insight to hang onto the hardware and software approach of the RISC processor architecture. It was my first total appreciation of the genius of the inter workings of Apple and that they would not be a flash in the pan company because they lucked into an 8 bit thing in a garage.

but why would they go back to RISC chips when they just successfully converted to x86? Seems counterintuitive. Perhaps more knowledgable minds than mine could shed some light.

I meant to say, 'why would they go back to RISC chips *for servers'

Just look at IBM's servers and what they use for processors. RISC. They seem to be doing good in that market. Apple could use this to enter the enterprise market with some powerful RISC servers.