Apple buys chip designer PA Semi for $278 million

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Comments

  • Reply 61 of 90
    davegeedavegee Posts: 2,765member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cwoloszynski View Post


    This device makes it really a slam-dunk to offer a new laptop/pad machine using a PPC. The apps are all already Universal for MacOS (well, ok there are some holdouts, but the VAST majority of apps are universal.



    ICK ICK ICK ICK oh and did I say ICK!?!?! WTF is with all the PPC love I've been reading in the mac discussion forums?!?



    I'm sorry but doesn't anyone remember what is was really like to be a supporter of the PPC!?!



    For a very brief moment the PPC topped (truly topped) the offerings from Intel/AMD but after that it was a LONG LONG LONG downhill journey after that... We even resorted to quoting GIGAFLOPS for gosh sakes!! Like WTH do I care for GIGAFLOPS when I know in my heart that Photoshop, Quake ?? and Unreal et al all run dog slow when compared to even a marginal 'PeeCee'.



    ICK!



    Good ridden to bad rubbish I say!



    Come I can't be the only one who thinks its nice to be where we are today... No more hardware envy... no more trying to talk our way into believing the CPU in our machine is 'honestly much better'.



    The Mac survived DESPITE the fact that it had an inferior CPU simply due to the fact that it had an INSANELY GOOD OS to fall back on.



    Oh, and adding PPC back into the mix is not as simply as you say... for a device like the iPhone and iTouch where Apple can set very specific rules about how applications are developed... LIKE not being able to utilize existing 3rd party libraries (unless you have the source I guess). Then yea being able to drop and swap one cpu over another might not be 'that big a deal' but even then all those apps would STILL need to be recompiled before they could run on a new CPU.. unless the cpu is some kinda hybrid where it can mimic the old cpu.



    In the computer realm things are not so cut and dry... developers write applications yes... but they don't always write the ENTIRE application using just the OS X libraries that Apple provides. Sometimes (quite often I'd imagine) they also make use of binary libraries that their software makes calls to. These are often licensed from developers who specifically write tools for other developers. Those libraries are then packaged WITH (inside) the program and everything is just fine. The kicker is the developer who buys/licenses 3rd party libraries doesn't usually get the source for them but instead they just get a binary library that is included with their application. That binary is CPU SPECIFIC!!



    So even if Apple did a CPU change where this time it truly was a 'just pick zzz cpu' and recompile (no other changes AT ALL!!) Most developers apps would still fail to recompile because the library their application relies on is CPU specific.



    I hope that makes some sense... in short (too late) dropping a CPU change into the Apple Computers would be an ENORMOUS ENORMOUS ENORMOUS mistake.



    Dave
  • Reply 62 of 90
    olternautolternaut Posts: 1,376member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveGee View Post


    ICK ICK ICK ICK oh and did I say ICK!?!?! WTF is with all the PPC love I've been reading in the mac discussion forums?!?



    I'm sorry but doesn't anyone remember what is was really like to be a supporter of the PPC!?!



    For a very brief moment the PPC topped (truly topped) the offerings from Intel/AMD but after that it was a LONG LONG LONG downhill journey after that... We even resorted to quoting GIGAFLOPS for gosh sakes!! Like WTH do I care for GIGAFLOPS when I know in my heart that Photoshop, Quake ?? and Unreal et al all run dog slow when compared to even a marginal 'PeeCee'.



    ICK!



    Good ridden to bad rubbish I say!



    Come I can't be the only one who thinks its nice to be where we are today... No more hardware envy... no more trying to talk our way into believing the CPU in our machine is 'honestly much better'.



    The Mac survived DESPITE the fact that it had an inferior CPU simply due to the fact that it had an INSANELY GOOD OS to fall back on.



    Oh, and adding PPC back into the mix is not as simply as you say... for a device like the iPhone and iTouch where Apple can set very specific rules about how applications are developed... LIKE not being able to utilize existing 3rd party libraries (unless you have the source I guess). Then yea being able to drop and swap one cpu over another might not be 'that big a deal' but even then all those apps would STILL need to be recompiled before they could run on a new CPU.. unless the cpu is some kinda hybrid where it can mimic the old cpu.



    In the computer realm things are not so cut and dry... developers write applications yes... but they don't always write the ENTIRE application using just the OS X libraries that Apple provides. Sometimes (quite often I'd imagine) they also make use of binary libraries that their software makes calls to. These are often licensed from developers who specifically write tools for other developers. Those libraries are then packaged WITH (inside) the program and everything is just fine. The kicker is the developer who buys/licenses 3rd party libraries doesn't usually get the source for them but instead they just get a binary library that is included with their application. That binary is CPU SPECIFIC!!



    So even if Apple did a CPU change where this time it truly was a 'just pick zzz cpu' and recompile (no other changes AT ALL!!) Most developers apps would still fail to recompile because the library their application relies on is CPU specific.



    I hope that makes some sense... in short (too late) dropping a CPU change into the Apple Computers would be an ENORMOUS ENORMOUS ENORMOUS mistake.



    Dave



    As been stated before on this forum and surely the rest of the planet.....Apple won't be using this company to make CPUs for their mac line. The theories so far is that this move by Apple is for leverage in negotiations with other chip companies. Or that apple is buying PA Semi's company to use their tech in upcoming handhelds that are not iphones because PA Semi's current tech does not meet the needs for the iphone.

    There is also another possibility that PA Semi will have down the road a chip suitable for iphone.

    Plus, this is not your father's PPC that is for sure.
  • Reply 63 of 90
    A few points:



    1) Perhaps this is a defensive move. With the new Intel Atom chips coming out soon, I find it hard to believe that PA Semi could have competed with them on a performance per watt basis at all. It may be that Apple is planning on purchasing the majority of the upcoming Atom processors for use in iPhones, iPods, and perhaps a new device. Intel likes Apple just enough to give them a sizable share of the new Atom chips (which won't enter large-scale production for a while), I would wager. Maybe this acquisition is to keep the PA Semi chips from falling into competing devices, amidst a shortage of Intel processors within the rest of the market. Similar to what they did with the NAND flash market.



    2) It is possible that PA Semi may not have wanted to collaborate with Intel on their designs if they were private. Now that they're part of Apple, I bet there would be no problem finding points of collaboration between the PA Semi designs and Intel's upcoming breakthrough low-power chipsets. And guess what! These "collaboration" chips between PA Semi and Intel (which we assume would be superior) could be available ONLY in Apple devices. They could still be branded as Intel chips.



    3) A totally different processor like a full-scale graphics chip has interesting implications as well. I'm not exactly sure where other companies are in developing native HD H.264 hardware decoders/encoders, but if Apple/PA Semi could develop something like this, Apple could just put these on their boards in Macs and iPhones and iPods. Imagine Macs that encode 1080P HD H.264 in real time or faster and you can see the potential something like this has to be an explosive force in the market.



    In reality, I have no idea what PA Semi is actually working on, or where their specialty lies. However, I do NOT think that this move is in the interest of getting rid of Intel. Apple would be dumb to even consider that, as the Intel chips they're using now are the fastest, coolest, and most efficient processors in the world, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, and probably beyond.



    Comments, questions, concerns?



    --mAc
  • Reply 64 of 90
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Interesting read here.



    Money quote:

    "Semi customers were told the acquiring company was not interested in the startup's products or road map, but is buying the company for its intellectual property and engineering talent."
  • Reply 65 of 90
    aegisdesignaegisdesign Posts: 2,914member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveGee View Post


    Oh, and adding PPC back into the mix is not as simply as you say... for a device like the iPhone and iTouch where Apple can set very specific rules about how applications are developed... LIKE not being able to utilize existing 3rd party libraries (unless you have the source I guess). Then yea being able to drop and swap one cpu over another might not be 'that big a deal' but even then all those apps would STILL need to be recompiled before they could run on a new CPU.. unless the cpu is some kinda hybrid where it can mimic the old cpu.



    In the computer realm things are not so cut and dry... developers write applications yes... but they don't always write the ENTIRE application using just the OS X libraries that Apple provides. Sometimes (quite often I'd imagine) they also make use of binary libraries that their software makes calls to. These are often licensed from developers who specifically write tools for other developers. Those libraries are then packaged WITH (inside) the program and everything is just fine. The kicker is the developer who buys/licenses 3rd party libraries doesn't usually get the source for them but instead they just get a binary library that is included with their application. That binary is CPU SPECIFIC!!



    So even if Apple did a CPU change where this time it truly was a 'just pick zzz cpu' and recompile (no other changes AT ALL!!) Most developers apps would still fail to recompile because the library their application relies on is CPU specific.



    I hope that makes some sense... in short (too late) dropping a CPU change into the Apple Computers would be an ENORMOUS ENORMOUS ENORMOUS mistake.



    No that makes no sense whatsoever. No developer worth their salt on the Mac is developing Intel only applications. That would be insane with still half the market on PowerPC.
  • Reply 66 of 90
    Apple Simply wants the talent.
  • Reply 67 of 90
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Envying View Post


    As you can see this company is based on Power architecture license from IBM...



    And people actually wondered how come Apple is still a principle member of Hypertransport.org?



    I expect the new devices to be Power based using Hypertransport 3.0.
    • Replacements to XRaid products

    • Possible levels of new Switch Products

    • Expanded inroads leveraging OS X Server and XSan

  • Reply 68 of 90
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by roehlstation View Post


    Apple Simply wants the talent.



    It's much more than that.
  • Reply 69 of 90
    tinktink Posts: 395member
    Maybe PA Semi tech is in that bad ass, revolutionary gizmo their working on at the mamma ship.......



    Or....

    Apple wants to bring more to the table with their relationship with Intel, which at least from the outside, looks solid.

    Apple and Intel did collaborate the Core 2 Duo to build the MacBook Air.



    Apple does have a strong history with in-house chip design collaberation.

    PowerPC: Apple, IBM, Motorola collaberation.

    ARM: Apple, Acorn Computers and VLSI technology.



    Apple also bought Raycer a microprocessor design company founded by one of the key minds behind the ARM chip design, and now Apple Buys P.A. Semi, founded Dan Dobberpuhl, a lead designers for the Alpha and StrongARM microprocessors.
  • Reply 70 of 90
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:

    I wouldn't think so unless PA Semi have been developing ARM architecture chips instead of PowerPC in secret. The ARM chips would have to be something special to beat the new 45nm ARM11 chips too. Or are you expecting Apple to start using FAT binaries on the iPhone too - supporting both ARM and PPC architectures? That would be stupid.



    Of course its difficult to say with 100% certainty what Apple will do. Yes its very likely they could have been developing in secret. Apple does that all the time.



    Its highly unlikely Apple will be using Power PC.

    Its unlikely Apple would need to buy PA Semi for a possible MacTouch. Intel has several processors that fit such a device.



    The engineers who started PA Semi have ARM development experience. I find it more likely Apple would use PA Semi for embedded processors than PC processors.



    I'm surprised people wouldn't think PA Semi engineers have more ideas than only the processors on their website.
  • Reply 71 of 90
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post


    Of course its difficult to say with 100% certainty what Apple will do. Yes its very likely they could have been developing in secret. Apple does that all the time.



    Its highly unlikely Apple will be using Power PC.

    Its unlikely Apple would need to buy PA Semi for a possible MacTouch. Intel has several processors that fit such a device.



    The engineers who started PA Semi have ARM development experience. I find it more likely Apple would use PA Semi for embedded processors than PC processors.



    I'm surprised people wouldn't think PA Semi engineers have more ideas than only the processors on their website.



    Apple has two platforms. One that relies on Intel and the other that does not.



    By having control over their embedded platform they don't can manage their future product lines.
  • Reply 72 of 90
    Ignoring the speed-per-watt stuff,

    Can anyone compare the speeds (& then wattage) of



    the PA Semi design

    vs

    the C2D in MacBookAir

    vs

    the upcoming Intel Atom.



    ie: Is it even plausible to release a new MBA on this chip and get the same speed at reduced power?

    (ignoring practicalities and other problems - just wondering about the chip speed).





    And now onto the practicalities...

    There are 2 reasons Apple (unlike Dell or HP) could use this kind of chip relatively easily

    1) They already have dual PPC/Intel binaries running. It's not much extra work.

    2) If they are heading towards something more powerful than iPod Touch but less powerful than a MacBook - they might not be worried about 3rd party support in the slightest... they can produce the whole device.



    I mean for example... if Apple wanted an AppleTV using this chip they could simply make it, nobody would be aversely impacted. Assuming the chip is cheaper and at least as fast, of course.



    But there'd have to be some big gain for Apple to actually bother!
  • Reply 73 of 90
    Thanks whoever posted the link

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



    The fact that PA Semi has told customers it has been bought and is ceasing development of their chip and wanting to sell the design rights to someone else is rather important eh?
  • Reply 74 of 90
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:

    The theories so far is that this move by Apple is for leverage in negotiations with other chip companies.



    This theory doesn't make much sense. PA Semi isn't much threat to Intel.

    Quote:

    Or that apple is buying PA Semi's company to use their tech in upcoming handhelds that are not iphones because PA Semi's current tech does not meet the needs for the iphone.

    There is also another possibility that PA Semi will have down the road a chip suitable for iphone.



    I seriously doubt PA Semi's abilities are limited to the chips on their web site.
  • Reply 75 of 90
    I don't know what this is about, but it's certainly not about desktop and laptop CPUs. If you look at benchmarks comparing POWER-architecture Macs to Intel Macs, the G4 and G5 get eaten alive. Apple is certainly not going back to PPC for computers, especially since they'd lose almost all of the "switchers" of the last two years.



    For that matter, PA Semi doesn't have any products that would be useful for mobile devices like the iPhone. Or anything other current Apple products.



    So if I had to guess, I'd say Apple bought them to get some smart people and valuable IP, not for any of their current products (as others have pointed out, PA Semi is a fabless design company, they don't actually make anything).
  • Reply 76 of 90
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    Ignoring the speed-per-watt stuff,

    Can anyone compare the speeds (& then wattage) of



    the PA Semi design

    vs

    the C2D in MacBookAir

    vs

    the upcoming Intel Atom.



    That's not really possible to answer because the ultimate speed depends upon so many factors.



    The reason that PPC failed in the mainstream computer market wasn't a problem with the architecture, it was a problem with manufacturing and the platform as a whole. Cross-platform coders didn't bother to optimise their code for PPC properly when they ported from x86, so even though the PPC architecture per se was superior, the overall result was slower code on the PPC platform.



    Returning to your original question, in addition to the code optimisation problem outlined above, you can't just look at architecture and clock speed to figure out a processor's raw computational power. You need to know things like: how many execution units there are, how many instructions can be fetched & decoded per clock, how many instructions can be issued per clock, whether the issuer is sequential or out-of-order, and if out-of-order, how good is the out-of-order algorithm, whether there is an SIMD unit, how long the individual execution-unit pipelines are, how good the branch prediction is, how large the caches are, what are the memory latencies like, etc. etc.



    From the information available, P.A. Semi's chip looks like the best implementation of the Power architecture for mainstream computing that has ever existed. I dare say in terms of raw computational power, it could hold its own against a similarly-clocked Core 2 Duo. However, poor code optimisation would mean that OS X and, more significantly, third-party apps, would be much faster on the Intel chip.



    Anyway, all of that is a moot point as I'm confident that Apple bought these guys for their talent and not this PPC-alike chip.
  • Reply 77 of 90
    davegeedavegee Posts: 2,765member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aegisdesign View Post


    No that makes no sense whatsoever. No developer worth their salt on the Mac is developing Intel only applications. That would be insane with still half the market on PowerPC.



    Parallels

    VMWare
  • Reply 78 of 90
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    I mean for example... if Apple wanted an AppleTV using this chip they could simply make it, nobody would be aversely impacted. Assuming the chip is cheaper and at least as fast, of course.



    But there'd have to be some big gain for Apple to actually bother!



    What advantage would such a chip have in the ATV? Does it need a more powerful CPU? Is the current ATV to noisy from fan use or get too hot?



    Unless Apple is considering turning the ATV into a game console I don't see the advantage of a PA semi chip in it.
  • Reply 79 of 90
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    What advantage would such a chip have in the ATV? Does it need a more powerful CPU? Is the current ATV to noisy from fan use or get too hot?



    Unless Apple is considering turning the ATV into a game console I don't see the advantage of a PA semi chip in it.



    While it does get hot, it is quite as I don't think it has a fan. There is really no reason to change out the ATV CPU inl;ess it's deemed to be faulty. It's plenty fast for what it needs to do and cheap. Anything from P.A. Semi right now would probably be considerably more expensive than Intel's offering so what is needed is a chip that x86 and ARM currently don't offer which gives considerable weight that Apple bought from for their staff, not their products.
  • Reply 80 of 90
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    What advantage would such a chip have in the ATV? Does it need a more powerful CPU? Is the current ATV to noisy from fan use or get too hot?



    As I said, Apple could easily stick a chip in the AppleTV, 3rd parties and users wouldn't even notice the difference.



    BUT there'd have to be a significant advantage, and I'm not at all confident there would be. If AppleTV needed more speed they could also use a faster Intel chip.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    Unless Apple is considering turning the ATV into a game console I don't see the advantage of a PA semi chip in it.



    Ignoring PA Semi - AppleTV will be beefed up before long.

    The most obvious reason would be to decode video >5Mbps

    And to decode video at 1080p30 (or even 720p30) instead of the 720p25 limitation now.



    The other processor intensive application might be transcoding a PVR recording of a 1080i MPEG2 HD transmission into a much smaller 1080p MPEG4 HD recording.



    Again - I don't know if the chip PA Semi has would do the above better than an Intel offering (though it seems clear that's not what Apple is buying them for). I wonder what other cool stuff this company is doing.
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