Apple acquires low-power chip designer PA Semi
Apple has reportedly made a rare acquisition, snapping up low-power chip company PA Semi one day before reporting its quarterly earnings.
Forbes reported late Tuesday that Apple has agreed to purchase the company for a middling $278 million, quoting Apple spokesman Steve Dowling as confirming the deal. PA Semi made its debut a few years back designing low-power chips based on Apple's old friend, the Power architecture.
It's not clear what Apple might have in mind for PA Semi. I'd doubt Apple plans to get into the chip design game anytime soon, although having low-power chip experts on board would only help any company eyeing the next generation of mobile computing as clearly as Apple is doing at the moment. Forbes intimates that Apple is planning to put PA Semi's chips in the iPhone, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever at first glance.
PA Semi's chips are based on IBM's Power architecture. The iPhone uses a Samsung chip based on ARM's instruction set. It would seem quite a stretch that after just a year, Apple would find it necessary to port the iPhone's OS X operating system over to Power based on some supposed failing with ARM's low-power road map. If Apple was going to make any kind of porting move, it would have been much more logical--if not a slam dunk--for the company to embrace Intel's low-power Atom processors based on the same x86 instruction set used by the Mac, given its existing relationship with Intel.
Still, Forbes says the negotiations were led by Apple CEO Steve Jobs with the aim of putting PA Semi's PWRficient processors at the heart of the iPhone and future iPods, citing a source close to PA Semi. If that's true, Forbes is correct in noting this is a huge blow for Intel's Atom project, but I'm skeptical in these early hours as to Apple's eventual plans for the company and its employees.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
