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."

Comments

Re:Apple will ditch intel

[deander2]

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?