Apple Grabbed PA Semi for Its IP and Engineers

Apple's acquisition of "fables" semiconductor company PA Semi has drawn the attention of tech-based websites and Industry experts, who have recently dug up more information on why the Cupertino, California-based corporation has actually moved in to acquire the chip designers.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling, just before Apple announced its quarterly earnings earlier this week. He also declined to give specifics on the value of the deal. However, a person "familiar with the deal" suggested it was closed for $278 million in cash, according to Forbes.

More recently, Daniel Eran Dilger, writing for RoughlyDrafted, notes that an EETimes report "flatly reiterated that 'PA Semi customers were told the acquiring company was not interested in the startup's products or road map, but is buying the company for its intellectual property and engineering talent'." Dilger goes on to mention that "Apple's acquisition target isn't a chip manufacturer. As a 'fabless' chip designer, PA Semi (short for Palo Alto Semiconductor) only develops chip designs that are actually built by other companies," he explains.

Jobs and Senior Vice President Tony Fadell led the small group of executives who spearheaded the acquisition which included talks that even took place at Jobs' place, according to a source "affiliated with the chip company," via a Forbes post this week.

P.A. Semi delivers the world-class PWRficient processors for the multibillion-dollar high-performance embedded-computing markets. Led by chip-industry luminary Dan Dobberpuhl, the company has one of the most respected microprocessor design and architecture teams ever assembled. PWRficient 64-bit multicore processors, based on the Power Architecture, redefine power, cost, and throughput efficiency in high-performance processing.

PA Semi is a rather small chip company counting 150 employees. It was founded in 2003 by the above-mentioned Dan Dobberpuhl. He was a lead designer for Alpha and StrongARM microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment in the 1990s.