There is a rumor that Apple might be buying ARM...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21 ... ion_rumor/

They won't. Too heavy, too much problems with others licence holders,
Apple is about to become really evil if they do such a thing…

We think it is entirely possible. The key PA Semi folks left two months ago...

R&B :)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

The ability is there, and they would have a lot to gain, but I think both the United States antitrust law as well as European Union competition law would present a problem for this...

And the good news is: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News ... -by-Apple/

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

...to make lovely new chips for us PowerPC junkies?

Speaking about *that* subject, there is (was?) a company called Intrinsity, which among others develops (developed?) Power based cores (and ARM and MIPS).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsity

"Intrinsity's proprietary Fast14 technology is used to create FastCore embedded cores, which provide not only circuit speeds of up to and beyond 3 GHz"

Intrinsity apparently developed the Titan for AMCC:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release ... 733747.htm

A very interesting company!

There is a rumor however that Apple just bought Intrinsity three weeks ago:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/05/rumor-ap ... ntrinsity/

The http://www.intrinsity.com/ web page is not responding (at least not here), and the google cached one has the (in these contexts) notorious "Intrinsity's webserver is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance" message. You don't pull your website to do maintenance.

Oops! Another case of Apple buying (and "killing"/assimilating, most definitely) an interesting PPC company, in order to improve their own ARM developments...

Long Live PPC! :-P

The PAsemi page was also taken down for maintenance, so the rumor might be true :-(

About PPC: right now I don't see any PPC chips, which could compete with ARM on the smartbook / desktop front. But on the server / appliance line it could still build up a massive line of followers. All it needs is a simple and easy to reach product, like the Sheeva Plug. It made users / developers from some of my friends, who never touched "alternative" CPU systems before. The FreeScale QorIQ P2020 & Co. has this potential, just as some chips from AMCC.

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

Very, very clever chip. One of those claims that makes one think that everyone else doesn't know a bit about making processors: Three times more speed, half power required. And all that in a cheapo 90 nm process, wow.

Pity that the announcement was from three years ago, and yet the world hasn't been conquered yet.

Google snaps up Apple chip defectors for cloud servers

....and now they are with Google.

Google vs. Apple pretty much defines computing and communication for the next few years.

R&B :)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Now all I want is an ARM based server from Genesi :)

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

Dan Dobberpuhl! The PA Semi genius! I knew his name was going to pop up sooner or later as this "Apple buy ARM" stir began.

So Apple bought PA Semi, which forgot about POWER chips, and made for their new bosses the A4 CPU that powers the iPad. Next, Dan gets upset and quits...

Funny how this goes: First, it was Apple that was going to buy ARM, but instead, bought something better: A company build an ARM CPU for them, PA Semi. In turn, Google neither buys ARM, but the key people from the very PA Semi. This, and the iPhone 4 leak, must have made Apple think they are in the middle of a storm.

It's been a known desire that ARM themnselves wanted to make non power-constrained processors, to enter the server market. Let's see what happens, there are VERY big players there, much more than in mobile space.

If a couple of guys putting together a web page (that's how Google started) end up building a huge company, that inturn acquires hardware companies, then it's true the american dream does exist!