iPhone, iPod touch, rumored netbook / media pad – Apple surely has one of the widest presence in the mobile computing market. With media hungry apps and large touchscreens the GPU/CPU plays an important role in these handhelds / computers.
Realizing this Apple bought low power Chip maker PA Semi around a year back (for its handhelds?). This was followed by rumors that Apple would be designing its own chips. And here we have some more reports indicating the same.
According to WSJ over 100 chip engineers from Intel, Samsung and other tech cos are now listing themselves as Apple employees on Linkedin. While most large manufacturers are busy with layoffs, it seems Apple is picking up quality brains for its expansion plans. [Source]
With Apple’s ambitions to double up the iPhone / iPod touch as a gaming handheld, there have been reports in the past of multicore chips being used on these devices. Certainly Apple is looking to be a step ahead of the global competition and what better way then to design its own chips instead on relying on third party chips that would be available to all its competitors aswell.
Apple acquired PA Semi in April 2008. PA Semi had last announced a 64-bit dual core processor was 300% more efficient than the nearest competition, consuming 5 to 13 watts at 2GHz. While Apple certainly wasnt interested in entering the B2B space by supplying chips to other manufacturers, no real usage of these chips in Apple products has been witnessed.
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