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May 16, 08 - 08:25 am Comment from: jtc

I dont see them going back to ppc chips. Though if they can keep the heat down in those and the speeds up who knows.

Apple is becoming a supporter/supplier/provider of war technologies... and slowly getting absorbed by the dark side of the force.

What missiles does for Karma?

Cause Steve Jobs wanted to modify the guidance software in a few of the missiles to target a large annoying complex in Redmonton?

What better way to destroy the evidence? oops my bad so sorry here's a few million for the clean up.

Apple is a war machine.

May 16, 08 - 08:30 am Comment from: El Guapo

Apple: Are you happy to see me or is that a missile in your pocket?

Uncle Sam: Shwing!

This makes me like Apple even more!
Go Apple!!

I'm happy to see Apple support the defense of this great country.

May 16, 08 - 08:38 am Comment from: Luke Skywalker

I wonder if all those missiles will have Apple emblems on them?

@ paragrin

Redmonton?

May 16, 08 - 08:39 am Comment from: El Guapo

Steve Jobs: I am Iron Man!

May 16, 08 - 08:41 am Comment from: s

Would be nice, if Apple use the PA semi chips to make the supercomputers. Isn't it about time for Virginia Tech to replace their Xserve based supercomputer with new computers or Army should upgrade Mach with few extra processors.

Apple Computer is now Apple Inc.! They need to start miniaturizing digital systems into just a few chips that are OS X computers. Smaller, lower power, devices on a chip (or two). Maybe a better G2, 3, 4, ... Chip with Wi-Fi and ...?

AND NO COMPETITION BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE THE CHIP SET!

May 16, 08 - 08:49 am Comment from: Think

One idea, toss a minor PPC chip on the mother board for a "Made By Apple" check and then boot.

Then it could possibly do other tasks too.

Well, it won't be the first time Apple have been involved in weapons of mass destraction:
August 31st, 1999: The iBook is pre-ordered over 140,000 times. Steve Jobs introduces the SuperComputer Power Macintosh G4 at Seybold conference in San Francisco. The G4 processor with 500 MHz is able to perform over 1 billion floatcomma calculations per second. Therefore it is classified as a weapon by the US government. The G4 processor allows PowerMac multiprocessor configurations. The PowerMac G4 is running at 400, 450 and 500 MHz and is up to three times faster than a Pentium III-PC with 600 MHz.

"What missiles does for Karma?"

Missiles does very good things for karma of peoples of Finland, Stops them having to learn Russian or convert to Islam.

May 16, 08 - 09:08 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

What little I understand about what goes on inside a cpu leads me to believe that PPC has still got a lot of things going for it that Intel doesn't.

Of course this article in no way implies that Apple itself is going to use PPC in it's desktop computing devices.

And something else that seems a little asynchronous: PA Semi specializes in low power PPC development? I didn't think that PPC and low power were ideas that existed at the same time and in the same space. Isn't that fundamentally why Apple dropped the technology, because it just wasn't going to work at the speeds they wanted it to, and subsequently in the portable devices that might have otherwise been developed around it? (Of course expanding their market share must have had no small part in Apple's decision to go with Intel.)

Apple has instantly joined the ranks of private military contractors.

Freakin' great....

May 16, 08 - 09:15 am Comment from: AlanAudio

This announcement isn't the least bit surprising. When the purchase of PA semi was made public, there were all sorts of unsubstantiated stories about how Apple would stop production of these chips. It was never a credible story for the simple reason that PA semi only designs chips, the chips are manufactured by others. Therefore most of the costs are born during the design process and it's not until they are manufactured that profits can be made. It simply doesn't make sense to pull the plug on a highly successful design and turn down millions of dollars of revenue that's simply there for the taking.

As for Apple's plans for PA semi. Steve Jobs has made it clear that it's the talent that he's after. Custom chips available exclusively to Apple would seem to be the most likely scenario. I'd go a little bit further and suggest that Apple may be considering that the time is nearing to allow licensing of OS X-compatible computer designs to carefully selected third party manufacturers. A design that completely uses off the shelf components could be copied, whereas a design that requires a custom chip only available from Apple can only be built with Apple's approval. It ensures that legitimate compatibles are available, but shuts out unauthorised copies.

Always knew Job's was a warmonger along with the rest of them.

MDN word: same

As in, same old story.

May 16, 08 - 09:31 am Comment from: Buster

Not too shabby for a so-called "gay friendly' or 'liberal" or "sandal wearing" bunch of hippies!

Go Steve!

May 16, 08 - 09:49 am Comment from: HMCIV

So they'll let the military keep making missiles while Apple goes and drops 'da bomb!

May 16, 08 - 09:52 am Comment from: HMCIV

Oh...and after the WWDC, those missiles DEFINITELY have multi-touch capability.

I am surprised that no one has speculated Apple purchasing Sun Microsystems as a follow-up to the PA Semi purchase. The type of chips that PA Semi designs would be more in line with the type of products that Sun produces. Sun would give them a serious foothold in the enterprise market. Sun's competitors are the same as Apple's , yet they do not compete directly with each other. So this would diversify Apple greatly.

It's all very simple. Intel has agreed to make x86 processors that optimize MIPS/watt for Apple, and do so quickly. Motorola and IBM just wouldn't.

But PowerPC is a more efficient design. Apple can design more efficient chips (in terms of MIPS/watt) than Intel. This will be useful for handhelds, and perhaps even desktops once Windows is no longer a competition.

In other words, PowerPC is snappy! And cool!

"Apple can design more efficient chips (in terms of MIPS/watt) than Intel."

That's not very likely. This PA semiconductor acquisition is probably just another mistake in Apple's long line of processor mistakes.

May 16, 08 - 10:35 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@Tiger,

Or maybe, Snappy! and not so Cool .

May 16, 08 - 10:35 am Comment from: Bitjockey

Chips can't be reverse engineered thus they are an excellent way to prevent cloning of a device. My guess is that Apple plans on using MANY such chips.

there is a great article by d.e. dilger on this one:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/24/why-did-apple-buy-pa-semi/

and as an apple stockholder i am not comfortable with apple now being in the defense industry.

Glad to see Apple is doing its share to support the military-industrial-complex so we can continue to rain hellfire on innocent peoples with extreme prejudice, in the name of the "war on terror."

Support Total War -- Vote McCain 2008

May 16, 08 - 11:04 am Comment from: feral

sigue sigue sputnik called they want their missile back...

RDF says: "...another mistake in Apple's long line of processor mistakes."

Hmmmmmmmm? You don't know much about computer architecture do you? When IBM made the bad mistake of choosing Intel chips with their fabulous addressing problems, Apple chose the Motorola 68000, a well-designed, more modern chip with NO addressing problems. Apple chose the Power PC chips because they are RISC and had more modern functional unit design. Apple HAD to choose Intel when IBM and Motorola just could not deliver consistently on their road map.

May 16, 08 - 11:23 am Comment from: The DataDude

Ampar, my man, how can you sit by let opportunities like this pass you by?? Come on, weigh in Dude! (hope your health is ok and you are out enjoying the real world)...

Apple didn't switch because there were inherent problems with PPC architecture, they did it because of scale. The unit numbers of PPC chips were simply not enough to allow Motorola or IBM keep cycling designs as fast as the x86 (Intel/AMD) family. By moving the hardware onto the commodity chipset, Apple didn't have to worry about keeping up with whatever was happening with x86 and depending upon 3rd parties to do it.

For karma, because the missiles keep missing, contrary to what you'd hear in the news.

May 16, 08 - 11:38 am Comment from: LinuxGuyAndMacProdigalSon

Apple is simply preventing the panicking government and defense industry from blocking the deal to buy PA Semi.

As for the custom and proprietary chips on the motherboard, they will only be accessible by OS X code and will have spectacular performance enhancements so that any clone machine, which will not be able to address the custom chips on future Macs, will be so hopelessly at a performance disadvantage as to have no market. The cloners are screwed.

He's taking a break. I'll pass along your good wishes.

New Headline:

SJ Grows Used To Dropping Bombs, Takes Next Step

@@Finland,

The Fins didn't need no stinking missiles to drive the Russians out last time. They can take care of themseleves on on their own, thank you very much.

I agree. Finns not only drive like a devil they can skin reindeer as fast as Kriiiist himself. — He crossed the border. So I shot him. And skinned him. That's all.

May 16, 08 - 03:47 pm Comment from: Maginary

Forget iTunes tagging, I want to launch missiles with my iPhone!!!!

iBomb, coming to an Apple Store near you LOL.

May 16, 08 - 04:16 pm Comment from: Spark

@Pete
Kudos to Finland. They did indeed stand up to defend their country from invasion.

As for ralph from BERLIN. There is now a unified BERLIN again due in part to all the U.S. missiles deployed in Europe in the last half of the 20th century. I'm not saying that they were the only factor, and thank God they never had to be launched, but they served a purpose of preventing the Russian Bear from gobbling up the rest of your fair city. I wish our Defense Department would use more Apple products because they are more secure than the Windows garbage that is predominately used.

Steve Jobs may now be in the weapons making business but he will set things right for the victums of his creations when the robo-suit is complete.

yea! remember what mom always said "an apple a day, keeps the terrorists away!" go apple

It's the people, not the products. Apple needed some major chip-design talent, and the PPC work they've done before is incidental.

Apple now employs the man who led the DEC Alpha design effort. The highest and best use of his time, is probably to develop an entirely new CPU architecture, so that Apple's not dependent on Intel, AMD, IBM or anyone else for such a critical part of their product line.

Apple is now big enough to be able to afford such a project. This kind of thing doesn't happen very often, and it's pretty exciting when it does.

-jcr

"Kudos to Finland. They did indeed stand up to defend their country from invasion."

In any given war the Fins have switched sides more times than Apple has changed processors in Macs.

In WWII I'd rather have a division of Germans in front of me than a division of Finns behind. At least with the Germans I'd know who I'd be fighting in the morning.

To quote LinuxGuy...

" the custom chips on future Macs, will be so hopelessly at a performance disadvantage as to have no market. "

Yep, the PPC and 68k debacles all over again.

Apple should stick to what it's good at. Predicting which company will have the best processor 2 years in the future hasn't been their strong suit. What makes anyone think they can actually design a world leading processor?

"Apple HAD to choose Intel when IBM and Motorola just could not deliver consistently on their road map."

It doesnt matter if you think a dodo bird was architecturally superior to an Eagle, or that with the right development or support it could have gone faster or been more successful. The fact is it didn't. Apple backed the wrong horse on processors twice before finally learning what everybody else already knew, that architectural elegance in a processor isn't worth a crap if you're not getting newer, faster versions every 6 months.

"The highest and best use of his time, is probably to develop an entirely new CPU architecture, so that Apple's not dependent on Intel, AMD, IBM or anyone else for such a critical part of their product line."

Sure, so Apple can switch processors AGAIN, fall behind the curve AGAIN, and switch to x86 architecture AGAIN. Great strategy.

At least you extract money from the fanboy base every few years as they are forced to replace hardware if they want to run new software at full speed.

"iBomb, coming to an Apple Store near you LOL."

Don't worry too much. It'll be overpriced, have a bunch of defects when first shipped and never be used by more than a few percent of the world's bomb using population. But it will have a pretty case and be available in a number of different colors.