Apple's PA Semi buyout motivated by assets, not products - Page 2

Because so many people took me to task over my comment I have to respond and the response is ...

Duh!

You guys are so hot to jump in and defend the War industry that you aren't thinking straight.

Did you all seriously think I was under the impression that the US Military uses only Windows and Linux? Or that anyone in the military should be actively prevented from buying a MacBook? That's absolutely asinine. That's why I said "War Industry" and not "the Armed Forces," or "a Marine."

There is however, a really big difference between supporting a company that makes computers that *may* be used by anyone (including military people), and supporting a company that makes chips that go directly into bombs and missiles.

If you work in the "War Industry" you are supporting, advocating, and enabling the deaths of other human beings. Period.

If a company is involved in making a product that enables some general to slaughter a few more brown skinned women and children somewhere, then I don't want to do business with that company. I think that's an entirely reasonable position.

When it comes to components used to build the machines of war, you're still being naive. The military uses the same components as the consumer industry, albeit often higher grade versions (which are also used by the aerospace and other industries). Consider, for examples, tire companies, engine component companies, optics companies, and virtually all electronics companies. The military has to use the same components in order to be able to benefit from lower production costs due to economies of scale.

Save your venom for the companies that build the actual war machines. And even then pause to consider that your country's military is also tasked with defending your way of life.

could be. i personally think good ol' steve wanted them to stop making killing machines with the that technology, and instead make beautiful products that will change the world.

I admit that I may not know as much about all the technicalities of all these articles, as I am just a college student majoring in art. I did not mean to assume that Apple is going to stop supplication altogether, and I know that the company probably researched these guys, as they've been in contact for about three or four years. I also did not mean to say that Apple is committing a crime here. I am just hoping that Apple plays it smart with the possibility that the U.S. Military might block this deal.

As amazing as this might seem to you, most people here know what war means. That is not the point. Even though there may be members of this forum who support war, none of them have said so in this thread. What we are saying is that there is no escaping industries that support the military.

If you eat food, wear clothes, or live in shelter, then you patronize industries that support the military. In my previous post, I told you that the military uses everything. I won't get into detail, but the only way that you are going to avoid some contact with military support is to jump off the nearest cliff. And even then, only afterwards.

Not only do I not see where that matters, but I don't care.

Wait, that's not true! I do care. I want companies to make parts for our military.

It's awfully naive to think that if companies didn't do this that we would be safer. That's nonsense!

I'm not a pacifist. Pacifists need to have their beliefs defended by those who are not pacifists. If you don't understand that, you aren't bringing anything useful to any debate on the subject.

It would be a lucky coincidence if one of the military electronic products knocked out of production by this is the new hand-held "lie detector". Unreliable polygraph technology made more unreliable with fewer biometrics and one week of user training instead of a college degree. Not something anyone should want to catch on.

Aren't those costing around $3,000? Personally, I think an investment in body armour would be a better for our troops.

Or a new president.

I can see them using POWER for applicances. Not Macs.


Compared to a PC PSU, that's small. In addition the XBox360 started life as two extremely fast 90nm chips, the CPU and GPU. Now they're both 65nm, and when they're 45nm the PSU will be a lot smaller (and probably integrated into the console's case).


Altivec applications were incredibly fast, but limited by a slow memory bus or the high latency G5 chipset. Intel took a long time to catch up to Altivec with the hacky SSE2/SSE3/SSE4 instruction sets, but they did have the memory bandwidth sorted out, and this will get even better later this year when the memory controllers move on-die.


The Nintendo Wii uses <20W at full pelt, the entire system - CPU, GPU, etc.
The XBox360's RROD issue is down to the GPU's heat.
The PS3 is a reasonable price for what you get, if you need all that. The PS3 version of GTA4 performs better than the XBox360 version, so people are getting the hang of it now, remember the 360 was out for a year, and it takes time for experience to develop.

None of these problems are POWER related issues however. None. Nada.


No. All rubbish. IBM make 5GHz POWER chips, and <$10 PowerPC SoCs. There just wasn't a CPU suitable for desktop use.


Rubbish. Fact is that Intel couldn't have provided a suitable CPU in 2005 for the XBox360 (certainly not a tri-core 3.2GHz SMT chip like Xenon). Console makers demand control over their components, the ability to own the design, so later on in life they can integrate and merge and cut costs drastically (often paying little more than fabrication cost for the CPUs).


IBM have been steadily increasing the performance of their server CPUs over the past umpteen years. Sadly you clearly haven't seen this. Neither has much of this technology filtered down into consumer-grade CPUs. Things like virtualisation, dual-core, L3 caches, etc, were on POWER long before x86.

We are straying into PO territory with this anti-war crap. Let's try to stay technical in the main forums.

Your not the only one that called this yesterday.

Not for macs, I agree. But most of their embedded devices already run ARMs, not x86. iPhone runs OS X on ARM.



Microsoft evaluated Intel and IBM when designing the 360, and we know who won. PPCs are better for high performance embedded use -- this, and server use, is their intended market.


What's your point? These companies could have used Intel, and they didn't. A coin toss was not the method they used to decide, either.


This is a manifesto, not a reasoned argument. You have no facts. The only facts we have established:
1. The the PPC core is much smaller than x86, which lends itself well to multi-coring.
2. The PPC has a great FPU.
3. The three game industry giants picked PPC.

I'm all for using the best tool for the job. For macs, the Intel Core2 seems to be the best tool for the job. For high performance embedded use, the PPC is the champ. For future iPhones & Tablets (or whatever), I think the strengths of the PPC as a flexible core become evident. For example, if you are releasing a 4G smartphone and need a gutsy 2-core CPU with an equally gutsy bank of ALUs, the guys from P.A. Semi can go into a room for a few weeks and come out with a design suited for that, based on the PPC.

Intel doesn't do that sort of stuff, and 3rd party x86 designs have never worked very well. Intel has never understood embedded, and I don't see it happening anytime soon. In the age of SoC's, the Atom is a sleek but ultimately undesirable solution.

Yes, and the DoD purchases, directly, many components from many different vendors. Furthermore, there are generic PCs and software actively used to develop weapons. Where do you draw the line?


Weapons tend to use normal parts. I guess you'll have to make sure you never buy a product that contains parts from at least the following semiconductor giants:
Intel, IBM, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, STMicro, Freescale, Qualcomm ...

Basically, go live in a farming commune with no electricity.



The general mission of the modern military is a peacekeeping role. Some people don't like the current Iraq conflict, but, regardless of how you feel, the use of high-tech weapons has minimized casualties. We could end this overnight by nuking the area into oblivion, but that's not the mission. Mines and such laid by Iraqi partisans have killed many times more civilians and servicemen than have the high-tech US/allied forces.

I'll be blunt: A Dual-Core PPC 64 Bit Processor running at 2Ghz that uses between 5-15 Watts is never going to run HOT.

That's true, but it doesn't exlain why Apple bought this.

If it's also true, as we keep reading, that Apple doesn't want the products, and might discontinue them, what expertise did they buy this company for?

Apple isn't suddenly going back into the chip design business.

I remember a few years back that Apple bought a gpu design firm. But nothing came from that either. People here were predicting great new gpu's from Apple as other companies weren't making boards for Apple (other than ATI). What happened? Nothing!

I work for the defense industry and I don't mind making weapons. Actually, I wouldn't mind if our weapons kill you either. Go hug a tree.

With the trend of contract fabrication and licensable cores, going back into the chip business is a good idea for a company of apple's size.

I don't see that anymore. Once it made sense. In fact, with the PPC alliance, it did make sense.

But with Apple on x86 for its Macs and ATv, it makes more sense to move to x86 all 'round.

Why should Apple support, real time, two chip architectures?

I can see them doing it on the back burner, so to speak, but not full time.

I can't find a reason for this. The word is out that they don't want the products, so what else is left? Expertise? That's what the word is. But for what?

My Question is:
What are the engineers that they just paid tons of money for gonna put out...
do they already have something in mind
im gonna go look up the patents under PA's name

All this war talk that got injected into this thread is unnecessary and irrelevant. This is not the proper time nor place for this type of discussion. That being said, your comment was totally out of line, and pissed me off.

My personal view is that you are exactly the type of crass, insolent troglodyte
that retards the evolution of society and humanity itself. The military-industrial complex, the "private security contractors" (mercenaries), and their war-starting co-conspirators in power represent great stains on our flag... and have brought immeasurable shame to this country. Much more tragic than these abstract concepts, however, was the very real pain, suffering, and death that was brought to an unfathomable amount of people through their belligerent actions.

Having many relatives that are public servants or in the service, I was incredibly proud of this nation after 9/11 and was in awe at how not only Americans, but people from all over the world came together afterwards. It is incredibly sad and dispiriting to see how all that good will and trust was so taken advantage of and recklessly abused by a few wretched individuals.

but you are just trying to make a buck, right?

</rant>

You joined AppleInsider to make this your first post?

You were way ahead at this point, but then your comments went downhill real fast.

As you said his, (and your comments) were"unnecessary and irrelevant".

You both owe an apology.

Bam! There it is, the naked, ugly truth.

I think these two quotes from Orwell say it best:

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I think Jack NIcholson as Col. Jessep in A Few Good Men said it best.

You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You?! You, [Virgil-TB2]?! I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for [peace] and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that [computer parts used for the military], while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall! You need me on that wall! We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said, "Thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

You are looking at this as though Apple will eventually move ever product to x86. Perhaps they won't. This acquisition makes sense if Apple were aiming for more differentiation in hardware.

The acquisition of PA Semi was spearheaded by Apple Senior Vice President Tony Fadell. Who is the head of Apple's iPod division. Apple's iPod division makes about half of the company's revenues. All of the products in the iPod division use embedded processors.

PA Semi engineers likely have the skill to design more specialized and energy efficient chips than the off the shelf system on a chip from Samsung. A customized chip would also make it impossible for competitors to crack open an Apple product and basically design a similar device with the exact same hardware.


That could have been some idea that Apple later decided not to pursue. Apple is so frugal on acquisitions right now it seems unlikely they would make one for no reason. It is true though we may never really know what that reason is.

A lot of what's being written in this thread is ignoring the reality of the deal. Much has already been written about the direct situation. Go here:

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/s...leID=207401605

Notice the statement put out by PA Semi several days BEFORE the announced acquisition. This and a couple of other statements are the cause of the concern, and the reason for what I'm saying.

So far its only speculation that the DoD would actually attempt to do anything to disrupt the deal. I don't think this is necessarily something to ring alarm bells about. Since Apple has no intention of using the chips that the military needs. It should be no problem for them to sell that IP to another chip maker.

Jobs confirms the point of the acquisition:

"Jobs said Apple acquired P.A. Semi mainly for its chip designers and suggested it will rely on P.A. Semi’s expertise primarily for portable electronics devices like the iPod and iPhone for which Intel doesn’t currently supply chips (though they would like to). Jobs says Apple has long been involved in custom designing chips for iPhones and iPods and P.A. Semi will help enhance its capacity to do so."

That's not the point for my argument. Mine is that the chips aren't wanted by Apple, so as none of their products are wanted, then what expertise is Apple wanting from them?
Apple isn't about to design a whole new cpu and system. That would be insane!

I would like to see an actual quote, as this doesn't say anything other than boilerplate.

PA Semi engineers likely already have the chips designed. Apple will partner with a manufacturer to make them. That's pretty much the way Apple makes all of their products.


I doubt the Wall Street Journal would fabricate such a specific statement from Steve Jobs. But you are free to believe what you want.

I read that quote, but it still says nothing. It's a generalized quote. They have to say something about the purchase. Designing chips could mean anything.

If Jobs said that they were going to make their own chip designs for their phones etc, then I would think it means something. But this is just too mushy to tell what is going to happen.

Well of course if Apple has some exciting surprise they are going to wait and showcase it. He isn't going to spill it in a blurb.

What we do know is Apple has acquired 150 person in-house embedded CPU design team for the iPhone and iPod. We know they will have to partner with someone to actually fab the designs. PA Semi has design expertise with PPC and ARM. We know Apple is not going to use PPC.

I think that amount of information does not leave a great deal of ambiguity.

I just got some insider information. Apple bought P.A. Semi mainly for their staff, but not for their chip design knowledge and experience. It turns out that they have really good soft ball players and Apple didn't want to lose again to Google at the annual picnic party.

Those are assumptions. They may be correct, but we don't yet know.

one word:
Dongle

homebrewing a chip allows Apple to have a 100% control about 'Frankenmacs' and 'Jailbreaks' ..
that simple ..-

That's true, but I think that aspect of it might be more pointed to keep Mobile OS X from being hacked on other capacitance touch devices which are coming out now.

Exactly what part of that statement is assumption that cannot be backed up with information from the sources?

MacWorld Came to the same conclusion I did, only MW does it days later.