British behind iPad technology
A moderately unheard-of Cambridge company has flickered conjecture that British brains may be behind the hi-tech chip powering Apple’s new iPad.
ARM Holdings, which designs microprocessors and vends the knowledgeable property to designers, saw its share price make an first rise the morning after Apple boss Steve Jobs revealed the novel touch-screen tablet.
‘It appears that (the processor) has been designed by the PA Semi team which Apple acquired and it is extremely likely it is ARM based, like the processor in the iPhone,’ supposed analyst Nick James of stockbroker Panmure Gordan.
His view was reverberated by numerous technology bloggers who speculated that the iPad’s features ’say ARM all over’.
ARM, though, whispered they were not able to sanction whether their designs were involved in the long-awaited Apple product.
‘I think that’s really up to Apple to disclose,’ Ian Drew, ARM’s executive VP of marketing, told Sky News Online.
‘We’ve seen the speculation as well, but we don’t know any more. We licence our intellectual property to a number of people.
‘How chips get designed is really up to them. That does not mean Apple licence our intellectual property. We have no contact with Apple and no comment on who we licence to.’
Apple is using its own processor in the iPad – designated as a 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip – but it would not remark on the designs behind the constituent.
