P. A. Semi (originally Palo Alto Semiconductor) was an American

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

founded in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

in 2003 by Daniel W. Dobberpuhl, who was previously the lead designer for the DEC

Alpha 21064 The Alpha 21064 is a microprocessor developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corporation that implemented the Alpha (introduced as the Alpha AXP) instruction set architecture (ISA). It was introduced as the DECchip 21064 before it was renam ...

and

StrongARM The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in 1997 from DEC's o ...

processors. The company employed a 150-person engineering team which included people who had previously worked on processors like

Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computin ...

Opteron Opteron is AMD's x86 former server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64 or AMD64). It was released on April 22, 2003, with the ''SledgeHa ...

and

UltraSPARC The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems and fabricated by Texas Instruments, introduced in mid-1995. It is the first microprocessor from Sun to implement the 64-bit SPARC V9 instruction set architecture (ISA). Marc Tr ...

Apple Inc Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

acquired P.A. Semi for $278 million in April 2008.

History

P. A. Semi concentrated on making powerful and power-efficient

Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...

processors called

PWRficient PWRficient is a microprocessor series by P.A. Semi where the PA6T-1682M was the only one that became an actual product. PWRficient processors comply with the 64-bit Power ISA, and are designed for high performance and extreme power efficiency. T ...

, based on the PA6T processor core. The PA6T was the first Power ISA core to be designed from scratch outside the

AIM alliance The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the POWER instruction set architecture. It ...

(i.e. not by

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

, IBM, or

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

Freescale Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embed ...

) in ten years.

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

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. PWRficient processors were shipping to select customers, and were set to be released for worldwide sale in Q4 2007. There were rumors that P. A. Semi had a relationship with

that suggested Apple would be the premier user of the PWRficient processors. That relationship supposedly ended with the

Mac transition to Intel processors Apple transitioned the CPUs of their Mac and Xserve computers from PowerPC to the x86 architecture from Intel. The change was announced at the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) by then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who said Apple would gr ...

when Apple switched from the PowerPC to

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber * Core, the centra ...

processors for their entire line of computers.

Acquisition by Apple

On 23 April 2008, Apple announced that they had acquired P. A. Semi for $278 million. The acquisition came with P.A. Semi's 150-person engineering team. 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 Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

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 The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

, iPhone, and other future mobile devices such as the

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

. 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.

References

External links

*
PA Semi attacks performance/Watt
{{Apple Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Manufacturing companies based in California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Palo Alto, California American companies established in 2003 Electronics companies established in 2003 2003 establishments in California Apple Inc. acquisitions 2008 mergers and acquisitions