Reports from Israel appear to confirm, despite silence from both parties, that Apple has acquired Israel chip-design company, Anobit, for $500m. The question is, why?
Anobit, like Apple’s other recent hardware acquisition, PA Semi, doesn’t make chips. It designs, among other things, controllers for flash storage. While solid state storage has many advantages over spinning platters, it’s a young technology and far from perfect. This is particularly true of higher capacity SSDs, where stability and reliability can be a problem. Anobit, in the words of ZD Net’s storage expert, Robin Harris, ‘designs controller chips that make flash behave.’
Apple, says Harris, is already using these controllers in its iOS devices in order to improve the reliability, endurance, performance, and power management of the flash storage in the iPhone and iPad. Until this week, it licensed the design of the controller and contracted a third party to manufacturer it. It was just another Anobit customer. By acquiring the company outright, it takes ownership of the designs and their patents. That allows Apple, if it chooses, to licence the designs to others. Much more likely though, is that it will keep the designs to itself and use them to gain a competitive advantage for its products.
Those products aren’t limited to iOS devices. The MacBook Air ships with flash storage as standard, and the MacBOok Pro has it as a build-to-order option. As the technology improves and capacities increase, it’s a fairly safe bet that flash storage will become standard in the Mac mini and the iMac too.
Apple already has a huge advantage when it comes to flash storage, in that it can negotiate huge supply contracts and effectively lock out competitors. Now it has control over another piece of the jigsaw.
The deal also gives Apple access to an R&D facility in Israel, something that will, according to Ars Technica, ‘will put Apple among other top tech giants that have located research centers near “Technion,” or Israel’s Institute of Technology. That will also put Apple’s silicon design team in close proximity to partners like Intel and Qualcomm.’
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Here’s why Apple just spent $500m on Anobit
by Kenny Hemphill on December 22, 2011
Reports from Israel appear to confirm, despite silence from both parties, that Apple has acquired Israel chip-design company, Anobit, for $500m. The question is, why?
Anobit, like Apple’s other recent hardware acquisition, PA Semi, doesn’t make chips. It designs, among other things, controllers for flash storage. While solid state storage has many advantages over spinning platters, it’s a young technology and far from perfect. This is particularly true of higher capacity SSDs, where stability and reliability can be a problem. Anobit, in the words of ZD Net’s storage expert, Robin Harris, ‘designs controller chips that make flash behave.’
Apple, says Harris, is already using these controllers in its iOS devices in order to improve the reliability, endurance, performance, and power management of the flash storage in the iPhone and iPad. Until this week, it licensed the design of the controller and contracted a third party to manufacturer it. It was just another Anobit customer. By acquiring the company outright, it takes ownership of the designs and their patents. That allows Apple, if it chooses, to licence the designs to others. Much more likely though, is that it will keep the designs to itself and use them to gain a competitive advantage for its products.
Those products aren’t limited to iOS devices. The MacBook Air ships with flash storage as standard, and the MacBOok Pro has it as a build-to-order option. As the technology improves and capacities increase, it’s a fairly safe bet that flash storage will become standard in the Mac mini and the iMac too.
Apple already has a huge advantage when it comes to flash storage, in that it can negotiate huge supply contracts and effectively lock out competitors. Now it has control over another piece of the jigsaw.
The deal also gives Apple access to an R&D facility in Israel, something that will, according to Ars Technica, ‘will put Apple among other top tech giants that have located research centers near “Technion,” or Israel’s Institute of Technology. That will also put Apple’s silicon design team in close proximity to partners like Intel and Qualcomm.’