“Apple will indeed support PA Semi’s line of PowerPC-based processors,” Ashlee Vance reports for The Register.
“PA Semi’s staff has started notifying a limited set of customers that the company’s existing dual-core processor will enjoy long-term support,” Vance reports. “Apple will employ a number of old PA Semi staffers just for this task, which is good news for folks making missiles, mine-sweeping gear and storage boxes… Uncle Sam hates to design new missiles only to have the guts ripped out by some dude in a mock turtleneck.”
“Apple has abandoned any efforts to push the PA Semi architecture forward,” Vance reports. “PA Semi was snatched up last month by Apple for close to $300m. Apple has yet to say why it bought the company…”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: MDN Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son,” who sent us this link, believes that “PA Semi is critical to Apple’s future plans for both mobile devices and specialized Mac motherboard chips that will defeat the would be cloners who install OS X on PCs.” That’s as good a guess as any and probably better than most. Why do you think Apple acquired PA Semi?
I dont see them going back to ppc chips. Though if they can keep the heat down in those and the speeds up who knows.
Apple is becoming a supporter/supplier/provider of war technologies… and slowly getting absorbed by the dark side of the force.
What missiles does for Karma?
Cause Steve Jobs wanted to modify the guidance software in a few of the missiles to target a large annoying complex in Redmonton?
What better way to destroy the evidence? oops my bad so sorry here’s a few million for the clean up.
Apple is a war machine.
Apple: Are you happy to see me or is that a missile in your pocket?
Uncle Sam: Shwing!
This makes me like Apple even more!
Go Apple!!
I’m happy to see Apple support the defense of this great country.
I wonder if all those missiles will have Apple emblems on them?
@ paragrin
Redmonton?
Steve Jobs: I am Iron Man!
Would be nice, if Apple use the PA semi chips to make the supercomputers. Isn’t it about time for Virginia Tech to replace their Xserve based supercomputer with new computers or Army should upgrade Mach with few extra processors.
Apple Computer is now Apple Inc.! They need to start miniaturizing digital systems into just a few chips that are OS X computers. Smaller, lower power, devices on a chip (or two). Maybe a better G2, 3, 4, … Chip with Wi-Fi and …?
AND NO COMPETITION BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THE CHIP SET!
One idea, toss a minor PPC chip on the mother board for a “Made By Apple” check and then boot.
Then it could possibly do other tasks too.
Well, it won’t be the first time Apple have been involved in weapons of mass destraction:
August 31st, 1999: The iBook is pre-ordered over 140,000 times. Steve Jobs introduces the SuperComputer Power Macintosh G4 at Seybold conference in San Francisco. The G4 processor with 500 MHz is able to perform over 1 billion floatcomma calculations per second. Therefore it is classified as a weapon by the US government. The G4 processor allows PowerMac multiprocessor configurations. The PowerMac G4 is running at 400, 450 and 500 MHz and is up to three times faster than a Pentium III-PC with 600 MHz.
“What missiles does for Karma?”
Missiles does very good things for karma of peoples of Finland, Stops them having to learn Russian or convert to Islam.
What little I understand about what goes on inside a cpu leads me to believe that PPC has still got a lot of things going for it that Intel doesn’t.
Of course this article in no way implies that Apple itself is going to use PPC in it’s desktop computing devices.
And something else that seems a little asynchronous: PA Semi specializes in low power PPC development? I didn’t think that PPC and low power were ideas that existed at the same time and in the same space. Isn’t that fundamentally why Apple dropped the technology, because it just wasn’t going to work at the speeds they wanted it to, and subsequently in the portable devices that might have otherwise been developed around it? (Of course expanding their market share must have had no small part in Apple’s decision to go with Intel.)
Apple has instantly joined the ranks of private military contractors.
Freakin’ great….
This announcement isn’t the least bit surprising. When the purchase of PA semi was made public, there were all sorts of unsubstantiated stories about how Apple would stop production of these chips. It was never a credible story for the simple reason that PA semi only designs chips, the chips are manufactured by others. Therefore most of the costs are born during the design process and it’s not until they are manufactured that profits can be made. It simply doesn’t make sense to pull the plug on a highly successful design and turn down millions of dollars of revenue that’s simply there for the taking.
As for Apple’s plans for PA semi. Steve Jobs has made it clear that it’s the talent that he’s after. Custom chips available exclusively to Apple would seem to be the most likely scenario. I’d go a little bit further and suggest that Apple may be considering that the time is nearing to allow licensing of OS X-compatible computer designs to carefully selected third party manufacturers. A design that completely uses off the shelf components could be copied, whereas a design that requires a custom chip only available from Apple can only be built with Apple’s approval. It ensures that legitimate compatibles are available, but shuts out unauthorised copies.
Always knew Job’s was a warmonger along with the rest of them.
MDN word: same
As in, same old story.
Not too shabby for a so-called “gay friendly’ or ‘liberal” or “sandal wearing” bunch of hippies!
Go Steve!
So they’ll let the military keep making missiles while Apple goes and drops ‘da bomb!
Oh…and after the WWDC, those missiles DEFINITELY have multi-touch capability.
I am surprised that no one has speculated Apple purchasing Sun Microsystems as a follow-up to the PA Semi purchase. The type of chips that PA Semi designs would be more in line with the type of products that Sun produces. Sun would give them a serious foothold in the enterprise market. Sun’s competitors are the same as Apple’s , yet they do not compete directly with each other. So this would diversify Apple greatly.
It’s all very simple. Intel has agreed to make x86 processors that optimize MIPS/watt for Apple, and do so quickly. Motorola and IBM just wouldn’t.
But PowerPC is a more efficient design. Apple can design more efficient chips (in terms of MIPS/watt) than Intel. This will be useful for handhelds, and perhaps even desktops once Windows is no longer a competition.
In other words, PowerPC is snappy! And cool!