Apple made a surprising move by purchasing PA Semi, a little-known microprocessor design firm, that is specialised in low power, high performance chips, raising the apparent prospects of Apple shunning Intel and taking iPhone hardware design in house.
Apple declined to say why it has purchased the company but the $278 million acquisition suggests that it is not something done light-heartedly and this could send a strong message to Intel whose latest Atom range of processors is not considered low-powered enough to be incorporated into the forthcoming iPhone designs.
PA Semi though has been closely followed by Apple in the recent years before Apple made the move from PowerPC to Intel x86 micrprocessor family; PA Semi's team is headed by the lead designer of StrongARM, a Digital Equipment Company product, which was acquired by Intel and subsequently sold.
Last year, the team then designed a line of microprocessors called PWRficient from scratch which has won a number of awards; the processor is a 64-bit dual core processor which can run at up to 2GHz and is said to be four times more efficient than a Core 2 Duo, consuming between 5w and 25w.
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