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Apple buying P.A. Semi for engineering talent, not products or roadmap. U.S. Military could block.

According to EETimes,

On Monday (April 21), P.A. Semi informed its customers it was being acquired and it could no longer guarantee supplies of its chips. The startup did not identify the acquiring company but said that company may be willing to supply the chip on an end-of-life basis, if it could successfully transfer a third-party license to the technology.


That license in question is probably a PowerPC architectural license that P.A. Semi has with IBM Corp. that allowed the startup to design its own PowerPC chip from scratch. IBM was not immediately available for comment on the issue.Apple has not publically detailed its plans for the acquisition, but may speak on the issue during an earnings cal scheduled for today (April 23). P.A. Semi customers were told the acquiring company was not interested in the startup’s products or road map, but is buying the company for its intellectual property and engineering talent.
P.A. Semi reportedly has about 150 employees and is being acquired by Apple for $278 million.

P.A. Semi’s customer base was largely military and there is even some concern that the U.S. government may not let the buyout happen unless the parts get delivered.

So the question: What is Apple going to do with all of this engineering talent – for which it paid almost $2 million a head for? (including support staff?!)

 

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