Apple admits it bought Intrinsity

MAKER OF SHINY TOYS Apple has announced that it bought the small Texas chip design firm Intrinsity to make what it calls a superfast chip for its mobile operations.

According to the Apple PR people who work for the New York Times, Apple wants the "fastest chip for its mobile devices and has bought another chip maker to gain an edge over its competitors."

Intrinsity, enthuses the New York Times, is known for making zippy versions of an ARM-based chip used in mobile devices.

Of course Apple didn't give the New York Times any scoop for its shameless free publicity, the deal was inked late last month and Jobs Mob did not tell anyone.

Intrinsity would have been worth $121 million when it was sold, which is nothing to Jobs' Mob with its $41 billion cash hoard.

However it has been thought that Apple's A4 chip relied on technology from Intrinsity. That would explain how the Ipad got to "1000 megahertz speed", as the New York Times tells us, probably trying to make 1GHz sound super fast to the naive, which is an old PR trick.

Intrinsity works with Samsung, which happened to build the A4 chip for Apple.

The New York Times claims that by acquiring Intrinsity, Apple will be able to keep a 350MHz edge to itself.

However it did not point out that Apple is desperate to get new blood into its chip design shop after many of the staff it hired when it bought PA Semi left Apple.

Most of them were miffed at what Apple was paying them and the paranoid, compartmented corporate culture of the cappuccino company. µ