Apple keeps the missiles coming, will support PA Semi’s chip
By Danny Mendez
Apple recently bought PA Semi, a company which designed a PowerPC-based processor often used in various military applications including weapons. Is the Mac maker hoarding all of the little company’s tech for itself? Not quite…
Apple killed all efforts to further develop PA Semi’s architecture, but it’s not killing off the company’s ties to the military. Apple has assigned a set of the PA Semi staff to support chip in the long term, says the Register, which reasoned, “[the government] hates to design new missiles only to have the guts ripped out by some dude in a mock turtleneck.”
With Apple abandoning PA Semi’s chip, its unlikely Jobs will use the technology in any of its products anytime soon. So we’re unsure why Apple bought PA Semi, but it obviously isn’t because of the PowerPC-based chip, which happens to be highly valued by the government and other related organizations. Or maybe it was…
What we are sure about is this: anything that results from the relationship between PA Semi and Apple will not result in anything we can buy anytime soon. Though we can’t help but wonder why Apple really bought the company, but we speculate it might have something to do with PA Semi’s expertise in low-power processor design.
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