Apple has bought chip designer Intrisity for $121 million. Given the rapidity and speed of the Apple A4 chipset debuted alongside the iPad, rumors have persisted that Intrisity was behind the new system-on-chip (SoC), but confirmation took a while to arrive.

Intrisity was able to take the standard ARM Cortex A8 found in 650MHz flavor in the iPhone 3GS and competing smartphones and speed it up to 1GHz.

That’s an advantage Apple reportedly wants to keep to itself.

It follows on the heels of Apple’s previous acquisition of low-power fabless chip maker PA Semi, though a number of employees from that talent pool have reportedly left. (Some to be snapped up again by rival Google).

Where this leaves the upcoming iPhone HD/iPhone 4G is uncertain, those ARM itself has announced a successor, the multicore Cortex A9, and we’d certainly love to see what Intrisity’s talent pool could do with that. (Also uncertain is what part, if any, this played in recent rumors concerning a potential Apple buyout of ARM itself).

Either way, Apple is continuing to expand their ability to integrate and differentiate down to the chipset level, something non-integrated competitors like Google and Microsoft might have trouble matching.

[New York Times]

Following up on the crazy that was yesterday’s iPhone G4 (iPhone HD/iPhone 4G) hardware leaks, Daring Fireball looked into the glass-like backing of the device, and brings up an old Apple patent for fancy, futuristic ceramics:

Multiple sources familiar with the next iPhone have confirmed to me that the back is made out of some sort of fancy glass — and looks pretty much exactly like what’s pictured at Engadget. [...] reader Antoine Hebert emailed with this 2006 Apple patent, for high-durability ceramic enclosures. Glass-like appearance and feel but far stronger and more scratch resistant. And: radio transparent.

We know the current, hi-tech plastic back on the iPhone 3GS (and iPhone 3G before it) is so durable it will not blend, so will glass-like ceramics be equally tough? Tough enough to survive a fall?

Meanwhile, 9to5Mac points us to a Korea Times where Samsung seems to confirm Apple will be using their own system-on-a-chip (SoC) for the 4th generation iPhone, like it does with the Apple A4 for the iPad.

If that chip is as blazing fast as we hope it will be, maybe ceramics is a better choice for the backing anyway. What do you think?

AnandTech has put the iPad’s new Apple A4 chip-to-chip against the Windows Phone- and Google Android Superphone-powering Snapdragon from Qualcomm in a clash of the 1Ghz titans. And the results?

To quote Steve Jobs – boom!

If we take the network out of the equation, the A4 in the iPad has a 37.6% performance advantage over the Qualcomm QSD8250. This actually supports some of the larger performance differences we saw earlier. If Apple can manage to deliver this sort of performance in its smartphone version of the A4, we’re in for a treat.

Indeed! They’re not sure why the difference is what it is, but possible reasons could include iPhone OS being better optimized than Android, or higher IPC based on better core architecture, larger caches, or faster memory bus.

They, like TiPb, want that bad boy in the 4th generation iPhone (which still won’t be called iPhone 4G!). Qualcomm and other chipsets like Tegra won’t sit still, however, so Apple has to keep pushing that bar as well — if they want the cachet that comes with spinning premiere, custom silicon.

[AnandTech via Engaget]

Something seriously smoking be going on round Apple way if the latest story from The Inquirer (via MacRumors) is to be believed:

We’ve just heard from sources deep inside 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California that [Raja Koduri, AMD/ATI Chief Technology Officer, Graphics Product Group] is heading there.

So for those keeping score at home, this adds to:

• PA Semi lower-power PPC chipset designer: bought
• ARM cpu: licensed
• PowerVR GPU graphics core: licensed
• Mark Papermaster, IBM chip guru: hired
• Bob Drebin, AMD/ATI graphics guru: hired

Steve Jobs has said Apple is working on their own systems-on-chip for future iPhones and iPod touches. Looks like that work has got some serious hardware, and talent behind it.

Our only question is, what’s going to melt the universe first, the Hadron Collider, or whatever Apple’s got cooking up in their basement?