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0 pointsChuckMcM9y ago0 comments

I don't believe PA Semi ever had a transferable license to Power. They had their own architecture which was very power efficient and they were a CPU design house with ARM experience (they did StrongARM at DEC). What it looks like from the outside looking in, is that Apple bought out a full architecture license (with derivative ownership) from ARM and bought PA Semi to be the core team to start building CPUs that they had 100% of the rights to.

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nickpsecurity9y ago

That's how I saw it. I did recently discover PA's PPC looking into various implementations of the architecture that might be salvageable. It was quite impressive. Still better specs on 65nm than the Rocket RISC-V that's on 45nm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PWRficient

EDIT: Funnier is it was used in a desktop for Amiga's (AmigaOne X1000) before acquired by Apple. Had to hurt what little ego the Amiga people had left.

ChuckMcMOP9y ago

Linked in there was the EE Times article (http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1168406) which refreshed my understanding of the licensing issue. It reads like the Power license they had would have to be re-negotiated with IBM as a transfer if they were to keep selling and making their parts.

nickpsecurity9y ago

Another source I had said they do sell EOL'd parts to legacy customers. License must have went through at least for that.

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0 pointsChuckMcM9y ago0 comments

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nickpsecurity9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PWRficient

EDIT: Funnier is it was used in a desktop for Amiga's (AmigaOne X1000) before acquired by Apple. Had to hurt what little ego the Amiga people had left.

ChuckMcMOP9y ago

nickpsecurity9y ago

Another source I had said they do sell EOL'd parts to legacy customers. License must have went through at least for that.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse