14 DAY TRIAL // Wei-han Lien, the senior manager of Apple’s chip team and Linkedin user, has accidentally revealed that Apple is busy working on its own iPhone processor, believed to be incorporated in a new handset model.
The (obvious) advantage of having its own-developed processor soldered inside iPhone is that Apple can keep more aspects surrounding its elusive device under wraps, Ashlee Vance reports for the New York Times. Lien’s statement, revealing his position as the manager of the “ARM CPU architecture team for iPhone” confirms many rumors regarding Apple's acquisition of low-power chip designer P.A. Semiconductor in April.
P.A. Semi is a fabless semiconductor company delivering the world-class PWRficient processors for the 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.
Earlier reports revealed that Apple had agreed to do business (to some extent) with chip designer P.A. Semi. An Apple spokesman later confirmed that the company decided to buy P.A. Semi for its sophisticated designs for low-power chips. Naturally, secrecy isn't the only reason Apple has to start making its own iPhone chips. At the time, the same spokesman confirmed to the press that such chips could potentially enhance the iPhone and the iPod's functionality even more.
Another Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, declined to give specifics on the value of the deal, but stated that "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans.” However, a person "familiar with the deal" and cited by a Forbes report suggested it was done for $278 million in cash.
In an interview with The Times, Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, confirmed that the P.A. Semi team would work on brand-new processors for future iPhones and iPods. According to the NY Times report, “the only question was which kind of processors.” Well, according to numerous analysts, the company already uses ARM processors made by Samsung in the iPhone. The thing is, they'd rather have their own ARM processors built inside the iPhone, to best fit the particularities of the device, which is probably what's being confirmed here.
Thumbnail image credits: mobilecomputermag