alt Hacker NewsAm I right in thinking that the old PA-Semi team was bought by Apple, and are substantially responsible for the success of the M-series parts?
Replies
sgerenser • today at 1:02 PM
PA Semi (Palo Alto Semiconductor) had no relation to HP’s PA-RISC (Precision Architecture RISC).
Acquiring P.A. Semi got them Dan Dobberpuhl and Jim Keller, which laid a good design foundation. However, IMO, I'd lean towards these as the decisive factors today:
1) Apple's financial firepower allowing them to book out SOTA process nodes
2) Apple being less cost-sensitive in their designs vs. Qualcomm or Intel. Since Apple sells devices, they can justify 'expensive' decisions like massive caches that require significantly more die area.