Apple Working Their Own CPUs Now

Apple will purchase some of the assets and IP of Dialog Semiconductor, a European chip manufacturing company, in a deal worth $600 million in total. Through this deal, Apple hopes to better control the efficiency of its mobile chips, such as the recently announced Bionic A12 CPU. Dialog announced today that 300 people, or 16 percent of its workforce, will be joining Apple.

Last year, Apple also announced plans to build its own GPU technology and no longer purchase it from Imagination Technologies. This was another major step towards Apple controlling the mobile SoC more completely, and, therefore, its performance and energy efficiency. Apple has already shown impressive progress on the performance of its mobile chips over the past few years, and it seems the company would now like to focus more on optimizing the energy efficiency of the chip too.

Dialog Chief Executive Jalal Bagherli told Reuters that Apple viewed the main power management integrated circuit (PMIC) of its SoC as a strategic component that it wanted to control directly. If Apple was willing to pay a few hundred million dollars for a PMIC business, it’s possible it has some big ideas on how to improve the efficiency of its future mobile chips that it didn’t want to share with a third-party supplier. – Ultra Gamerz