Apple Buys a Chip Company for $278M

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's just bought a chip company, P.A. Semi that could make chips for iPhones and maybe iPods. Apple wouldn't reveal the exact plans, but Dan Dobberpuhl, lead designer of Alpha's chips, is known for making super efficient processors, like a 64-bit dual core last year that was supposedly about 300% more efficient than the nearest competition, using only 5 to 13 watts at 2GHz. Apple's quarterly results are later today, so we might hear more about the deal. This is something of a blow to ARM, especially with the mobile chip market heating up recently, with forays by Intel and Nvidia adding to competition from established players like VIA."

And thus it starts anew

The Apple Product Cycle [misterbg.org]

Obvious move for Apple

Apple is increasing moving into embedded and mobile markets more and more with iPhone, iPod, etc. I think we're going to start to see more small footprint devices from Apple in the future, maybe even something that creates a whole new product category. Information-based devices and appliances are the future, and Apple is one of the companies poised to do great things in this market.

This is a precursor to some big things and I think Apple is taking itself in an entirely new direction.

Just me $0.02.

Re:Obvious ERROR by Apple

It's debatable. There have been plenty of people who've said that if they were in Apple's position, they'd license the Mac OS and let others battle it out to make the hardware. That would be a seriously foolish move for Apple partly because they make so much money off of hardware, but also because one of their main design philosophies is designing the whole "widget". Apple seems to really like being in direct control of as many pieces of their products as they can. I bet if they thought they could realistically design and manufacture their own CPUs, they'd do that to.

Maybe they've got something in mind but that they don't think they can convince different chip makers to move in that direction. They've just got a ton of cash laying around, maybe they felt like taking a little risk is worth it to get certain types of chips that they really want. This isn't Apple just blindly jumping into an industry that they have no idea about. There's got to be a specific reason for this.

Re:Obvious ERROR by Apple

Vertical integration is not necessarily stupid.

This company that they bought simply licenses the Power architecture from IBM, and then makes manufacturing/design changes to make the chips more energy efficient. They make a dual-core 2GHz power chip with 2MB of cache, and integrated DDR2 controller with DMA controller... burning just 5-13W. AFAIK, no one else is making anything similar. Atom seems similar on the x86 side, but is larger and does not have the same features.

If Apple gained the ability to produce a product that others cannot match, then the move was not stupid. If Apple bought a commodity chip maker, then the move was stupid. They can always spin it back off if the product becomes a commodity.

Re:Obvious ERROR by Apple

This was stupid.

Unless they have something really, really specific in mind that the market can't provide.

Remember, macs had SCSI despite the expense because the market had nothing that did anything similar available at the time. They had SCSI until peripheral busses like Firewire and USB arrived, at which point they dumped it like a dead rat. See also their long string of proprietary monitor connectors - the 25-pin mac standard, Applevision, ACD - the latter two of which provide essentially the same functionality for two different generations of technology.

In my experience, Apple's the kind of company who's willing to let other companies make the bits (including software), if the bits do what they need. If they can't get anything useful from third parties, they will make it themselves. The best example there (after the Mac itself) would be software - MP3 players on MacOS were unstable, crash-prone winamp clones until Apple bought an audio software company and then iTunes came along.... and entry level through prosumer (and even pro, depending on who you talk to) video editing on the mac SUCKED ASS until Apple bought a chunk of video editing software and twisted it into the awesome that is Final Cut Pro.

A blow to ARM?

Maybe, but the PA Semi guys have already shown that they can produce good designs for two ISAs, adding a third wouldn't be beyond their abilities. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing their PowerPC chips in things like the AppleTV and ARM cores designed by the same team in handheld devices.

Re:A blow to ARM?

And, looking at Dan Dobberpuhl's biography, he was also a design leader on the StrongARM project, so it's not like he doesn't have experience designing ARM cores...

PPC R0X0RZ T3H K1L1MANJARO!

G5 LAPTOP WOOOHOOO!!!!!!!

odd.

I'm very curious where Apple is going with this. P.A. Semi so far has only put information about one design up on their website and it's been there at least since the rumor that Apple was going to buy them (shortly before they went to Intel). That chip, being somewhere between Atom & Core2 I suppose, doesn't seem to me to good fit to any of Apple's existing products.

The idea that hidden up their sleeves P.A. Semi has an ultra efficient SOC design for a next generation iPhone/iPod/Tablet is sort of interesting but I'd be really surprised if a dark horse came out nowhere and outdid the various upcoming Intel offerings or even the existing ARM SOC designs. Intel is very, very proud of their Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage parts but surely that added cost doesn't make it worth Apple's while to go out a buy a company.

The idea that P.A. Semi has a next generation chip suitable workstation or home computer applications for me is even more unlikely. I think it would have to some chip to really motivate Apple to go away from Intel for their Mac lines.

If It Cuts the Price of an iPhone...

They can buy Enron for all I care.

Expertise

Ultra-low power chips are enormously important for several key Apple areas. They're buying technology; but also expertise.

There are all sorts of things that Apple could be looking at this for Apple TV, iPhone, Tablet's, Apple EEPC/Macbook Air, Newton, iPod or even something different.

But at the same time they like to work with Intel on chip designs. They had one specially made for the Macbook Air. Besides the implied threat of an ability to go their own way they might find that collaborating with Intel on design may give them a massive say in the ultra-low power chips end up.

Without directly using PA Semi chips they could use PA semi to improve their own power consumption. Ultimately, $278m isn't actually that much money given the importance of low power performance to Apple across most of their product line.

Apple and chips does not mix

I've never been a big fan of Apple chips. I prefer sea salt and vinegar. Preferably kettle cooked.

PowerPC Makes Sense for Apple

I've always wondered why Steve Jobs didn't announce a dual-architecture strategy from the get-go. But perhaps that was the plan all along, and Apple simply needed to announce "Intel only" to get all their developers moved as quickly as possible to universal binaries. Now that Microsoft and Adobe, the last holdouts, have complied, Apple can go back to a dual (or even tri, with iPhone's ARM) architecture approach, choosing the right processor core for the right device and maximizing its flexibility and distinctiveness.

For example, the PowerPC core would be perfect for AppleTV and possibly a new Mac nano, where the cost of an Intel chip simply doesn't make sense. Apple is probably losing money on every AppleTV box right now. Every universal binary already runs on PowerPC, so all the applications and development ecosystem are already in place. The fact VMware and Parallels don't run on PowerPC is a feature, not a bug: Apple can wean some more users away from Microsoft Windows as certain devices hit the market and get some better market segmentation. Users who want Intel can buy Intel, and users who want alternative form factors, alternative power consumption profiles, lower cost, and/or new device categories can get PowerPC under the hood and still run the full Mac OS X portfolio of software. And having their own chip company helps keep Intel honest. Apple probably didn't like Intel's forced march from Santa Rosa to Penryn. That was inconsistent with Apple's longer product cycles. And all the game consoles are PowerPC-based, so that could be appealing if Apple ever wants to entice some game developers over to some of their devices. (Games do tend to work down on the iron.) IBM continues to underwrite PowerPC for its own server lines and has cranked up POWER6 to 5.0 GHz in its servers, way beyond Intel's best, so it's still an architecture with a lot of interesting advantages.

Two Words

Universal Binary.

Hey, you never know.

Before you say "Apple will never do that", let me remind you of some things we all heard before:
- Apple will never release a low-cost computer
- Apple will never make a music player
- Apple will never enter the cellphone market
- Apple will never dump support for Mac OS classic
- Apple will never switch to Intel

Re:Apple will ditch intel

I doubt that at this point in time. This chip company specialises in low power chips for small devices, not desktop chips. Though introducing a super efficient desktop processor would be nice. We need to move away from x86 to a modern design, rather than one that has gradually been modified beyond all recognition and hacked to gain 32 bit then 64 bit compatibility, etc. As an Amiga/Mac user for most of my early life, I've always thought of x86 as an inferior and inefficient chip design. Apple has demonstrated twice now how well they can adapt their OS for any architecture. Would be nice if Microsoft took up the challenge..

One bright little commenter on El Reg suggested that another reason for Apple buying this company could be for a console release, as Apple recently acquired a patent which could be for console gaming. [reghardware.co.uk]

Re:Apple will ditch intel

This chip company specialises in low power chips for small devices, not desktop chips.

I don't think that is quite right. If you go to their website and have a look at the documents for their reference design, it's all about high performance embedded applications. I'd expect to see these in comms applications... or purpose built high speed data handling. But not phones or PDAs or things like that.

Re:Apple will ditch intel

if you think the core2 (or any of the x86-64 implementations) aren't modern processor designs, you need to learn something about microprocessors. and what pray-tell is wrong w/ keeping x86 compatibility through hardware emulation? do you know how cheap decode operations are on modern transistor budgets?

Apple "locked in" to x86

We need to move away from x86 to a modern design, rather than one that has gradually been modified beyond all recognition and hacked to gain 32 bit then 64 bit compatibility, etc. As an Amiga/Mac user for most of my early life, I've always thought of x86 as an inferior and inefficient chip design. Apple has demonstrated twice now how well they can adapt their OS for any architecture.

Apple is no longer free to change their CPU architecture. They are "locked in" to x86 due to their dependence on running Windows. Mac market share jumped significantly when they switched to Intel and jumped significantly again when they offered Windows compatibility. While Windows emulation has been available since at least G3 PowerPC Macs, it suffered greatly because it had to emulate the x86 CPU instruction set. The switch to Intel made that unnecessary and made emulation viable. The decades old question, should I go Mac or PC, largely ended. You could have both on a single machine. When dual boot became an option then the last barrier fell, those who needed absolute performance, gamers for example, could now have both on a single machine. Switching to a non-x86 Mac architecture would probably destroy the 50% increase in market share, 4% to 6%, that Intel brought them.

You are echoing the same argument that the PowerPC consortium made in the very early 90s. The flaw in their logic and yours is that Intel can overcome x86 inefficiency and difficulty of working with it by spending more money. PowerPC was more efficient and a modern design that could more easily be enhanced, but Intel could throw 10x the resources at x86. PowerPC did not really fail because it failed to improve, it failed because no one ever imagined that Intel could get the x86 to the levels of performance that they did. The PowerPC folks expected Intel to try to move x86 users to a new CPU, Itanium as it turned out, and that would break the x86 lock and allow buyers to consider other non-x86 alternatives. I believe you are making the same mistake. Consider that the x86 architecture is really a facade, that underneath this facade Intel is free to change from one modern RISC design to another, or to whatever is next, allowing them to increase performance without breaking compatibility. On the fly translation of x86 operations into RISC micro-ops combined with reordering and other technologies is going to be far harder to overcome than you suggest.

Re:Apple will ditch intel

Well, they do have the iPod and the iPhone, that's a good base for starting a handheld games console at least. Maybe they'll turn the iPod into a more gaming capable device *shrug*

Re:Apple will ditch intel

NT is very portable. MS originally wrote NT for the MIPS and i860 architectures and only began the i386 work when they were nearing release. There was even a (unreleased) Sparc port.
 
Compaq killed off the Alpha machines right before Windows 2000 shipped. Microsoft reportedly continued to update the Alpha port simply to ensure portability was still achieved until the Itanium hardware was ready.
 
Early Xbox 360 development kits were PPC hardware (rumor had it they were based on the Power Mac G4) running Windows NT 4. In fact, the Xbox 360 OS is derived from that of the Xbox, which was derived from Windows 2000.
 
The real reason the ports were never updated was that there was no real demand. i386 managed to achieve dominance by the time NT 4 was released (for i386, MIPS, PPC, and Alpha). Otherwise we might all be using Alpha workstations.

Re:Apple will ditch intel

If you look at the approach MS took to support Itanium (IA64) and PC x86 (IA32), it really highlights why the company's cross platform efforts are so terrible.

IA64 uses EFI, but MS won't adopt EFI for IA32 until PCs are all EFI, probably Windows 7 in 2010 (if it's on time, hehe). That's another three years of core compatibility failure between the two platforms.

Also, 64bit x86 and 32bit x86 are similarly binary incompatible because of MS' engineering decisions.

Mac OS X is not only 64bit and EFI savvy, but there's no problem running the same software on 32/64 bit hardware, and there's even a smooth ramp between the PPC/Intel platforms. Apple even has their OS running on ARM, rather than a seperate "mobile version" that uses an entirely different kernel design, as MS did with WinCE.

So despite MS' mid 90s efforts to make NT cross platform, it was never really accomplished in a workable way (no equivalent to the late 80s NeXTSTEP running on all those platforms, nor the modern Universal Binary Apple is using), and that's why MS couldn't sustain it.

Saying there was "no real demand" for cross platform support is a bit silly. You could also say Bob was excellent, and just lacked "enough demand." There was "no real demand" for NT's cross platform features because IT WASN'T VERY GOOD.

Windows Vista, 7, and Singularity: The New Copland, Gershwin, Taligent [roughlydrafted.com]

Re:Apple will ditch intel

Don't have the resources? What are you daft? They've got like $18 billion in cash, an already in place retail network of Apple Stores and Best Buy Apple Stores, an extremely successful online store and an existing developer network.

How the hell do they not have the resources?

Re:Apple will ditch intel

Apple did not not like PPC processors. They loved PPC processors.

Steve Jobs just felt let down by the guys at IBM and Freescale when he wanted a chip that did this in this power envelope and they gave him THAT, 6 months or a year late.

There is no way you will find a PowerPC processor in an Apple mobile device like iPod or iPhone. It just doesn't make any sense to try and shoehorn PPC into a market where it's never gained a foothold. It's true that the only reason PPC isn't there right now is because nobody wants to throw away billions of lines of ARM code, ARM binaries and ARM support with ARM operating systems after 10 years of using ARM, but that just makes it harder to change. Apple don't have that "legacy" (after all they run MacOS X on the iPhone, and MacOS X is already done for PPC..) but I still think it would be a wasteful thing to buy a company like PASemi and roll them into doing in-house iPhone chips. iPhone is about as cheap and power-friendly as it's going to get for a long time, so there is no point expending all these resources on a PPC iPhone.

Of course if they bought one out I'd be first in line; just I think it's unlikely.

PASemi's big markets are currently in the server storage market. I think this is more likely to be a play for the next XServe RAID, SAN software and even to bop IBM on the head given the release of POWER6. If you can't afford or justify a POWER6 system, you could probably buy an Apple PASemi rack with 16-64 cores per 1U for a fraction of the price (and greater aggregate performance).

What is missing here is some sense on the part of the news reporters, who obviously don't understand the difference between highly embedded portable devices and a low power consumption network processor. PASemi certainly do NOT specialise in low power chips for "small devices", they specialise in low power chips for *communications infrastructure* like storage, advanced image processing, cryptography and the like. I am finding it hard to imagine that a chip with capability to support 10Gbe ports and a huge amount of comms bandwidth, transitions to "it's the next iPod processor".

Re:Thank God

There comes a point where designing/making your own chips is more profitable (or less costly) than having someone else design/make them.

Jobs is a control freak, so maybe cost has nothing to do with it, but as a business move, it has the chance to work for you.

As for being a good value for the purchase, Apple seems to think so.

Re:Efficiency

I'd imagine that they're talking about between idle and 100% - it's more like saying a car will do 20MPG in gridlock and 52MPH on an open highway, which are usefull figures to know.