This article needs to be updated.(December 2013) |
Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Fabless semiconductor company |
Founded | 2003 |
Founder | Daniel W. Dobberpuhl |
Fate | Acquired by Apple in 2008. |
Headquarters | , |
Products | PWRficient processor |
Number of employees | 150 person engineering team |
Parent | Apple Inc. |
P. A. Semi (originally Palo Alto Semiconductor [1] ) was an American fabless semiconductor company founded in Santa Clara, California in 2003 by Daniel W. Dobberpuhl, [2] [3] who was previously the lead designer for the DEC Alpha 21064 and StrongARM processors. The company employed a 150-person engineering team which included people who had previously worked on processors like Itanium, Opteron and UltraSPARC. [4] Apple Inc acquired P.A. Semi for $278 million in April 2008. [5]
P.A. Semi developed the PWRficient PA6T-1682M CPU, which was used in the AmigaOne X1000.
P. A. Semi concentrated on making powerful and power-efficient Power ISA processors called PWRficient, based on the PA6T processor core. [6] The PA6T was the first Power ISA core to be designed from scratch outside the AIM alliance (i.e. not by Apple, IBM, or Motorola/Freescale) in ten years. Texas Instruments was one of the investors in P.A. Semi and it was suggested that their fabrication plants would be used to manufacture the PWRficient processors. [7]
PWRficient processors were shipping to select customers, and were set to be released for worldwide sale in Q4 2007. [8]
There were rumors that P. A. Semi had a relationship with Apple that suggested Apple would be the premier user of the PWRficient processors. That relationship supposedly ended with the Mac transition to Intel processors when Apple switched from the PowerPC to Intel's Core processors for their entire line of computers. [9] Therefore, when P. A. Semi first publicly disclosed PWRficient, the company instead targeted embedded systems, such as networking equipment. [10]
On 23 April 2008, Apple announced that they had acquired P. A. Semi for $278 million. [11] [5] [12] The acquisition came with P.A. Semi's 150-person engineering team. [12] While Apple's previous relationship with P. A. Semi would indicate that Apple could use their processors, P. A. Semi manufactures only Power ISA processors, which Apple did not use at the time.
On 11 June 2008, during the annual Worldwide Developer's Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the acquisition was meant to add the talent of P. A. Semi's engineers to Apple's workforce and help them build custom chips for the iPod, iPhone, and other future mobile devices [13] such as the iPad. [14] P.A. Semi has said that they were willing to supply their PWRficient PA6T-1682M chip on an end-of-life basis, if the Power ISA license that P.A. Semi holds from IBM could be transferred to the acquiring company. [15]
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PWRficient is a microprocessor series by P.A. Semi where the PA6T-1682M was the only one that became an actual product.
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Random-access memory is a form of electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the physical location of data inside the memory, in contrast with other direct-access data storage media, where the time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement.
AmigaOne X1000 is a PowerPC-based personal computer intended as a high-end platform for AmigaOS 4. It was announced by A-Eon Technology CVBA in partnership with Hyperion Entertainment and released in 2011. Its name pays homage to the Amiga 1000 released by Commodore in 1985. It is, however, not hardware-compatible with the original Commodore Amiga system.
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Daniel "Dan" William Dobberpuhl was an electrical engineer in the United States who led several teams of microprocessor designers.
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