Deja Vu: Apple’s Anobit Acquisition
January 17, 2012
To say I have read a few articles on Apple’s, first rumoured and then confirmed, acquisition of Anobit is an understatement. Of course not all of the articles were created equal. Without dwelling on the negative Anandtech provided the most compelling article. There were numerous interesting points raised.
They differentiated the iOS product line from the OSX line. While in many ways this seems like a natural demarcation you would certainly not guess it from much of the coverage. There were some articles stating Apple used Anobit controllers for the MacBook Air while showing an ifixit photo of an Air Flash memory board. In this iFixit photo one clearly sees Toshiba Flash and a Toshiba controller. Oh well, but I digress.
It is almost certain an Anobit controller IP block is included in the A5. The iOS devices fit right into the end use space that might include lower grade Flash. As noted in the article I co-authored last April there was certainly more than enough real-estate to accommodate such a block. Further, there was no stand alone controller found on the iPad 2 logic board (step 13). iOS is covered.
What about OSX devices? Let’s think about them a bit more as it leads down an interesting path. We know OSX devices, currently represented by the Air, use stand-alone Flash controllers, evidenced by the above iFixit photo. It is less clear whether Apple will fabricate a stand-alone flash controller for the OSX line. It could be argued the numbers are less compelling for OSX devices as for iOS devices. At the moment it is only the, albeit well selling, Air that needs such a controller. On the flip side this acquisition may foreshadow the expansion of SSD’s in OSX laptops. Additionally, if forthcoming iterations of Anobit technology are as good as one might guess from the acquisition price, Apple may find it compelling to expand their semiconductor efforts in this direction.
Now comes the deja vu. This all seems a lot like the Intrinsity acquisition. In both cases Apple likely non-exclusively used or had access to the technology and liked it. It is however probably forthcoming iterations for which Apple wants exclusively, possibly even the controller block in the forthcoming A6. In the end we can look back to Steve’s “further differentiate our products” comment at the time of the PA Semi acquisition when thinking where Apple will take Anobit.