Peter Clarke, EE Times
(02/04/2010 8:44 AM EST)
LONDON — Amid the excitement over the A4 microprocessor designed in-house at Apple Inc. and used to power the iPad, it has emerged that a number of the internal design team have already left to form a startup.
Apple made a splash and posted a clear intent when it acquired P.A.Semiconductor Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) in April 2008 for $278 million in cash (see Apple buys P.A.Semi). P.A. Semi, established in 2003 by industry veterans, was co-founded and led by Dan Dobberpuhl, the acclaimed lead designer of the DEC Alpha series of microprocessors, the StrongARM microprocessor, and a pioneering multicore system-on-chip at SiByte Inc.