Remember the Apple acquisition of P.A. Semi from a few months back? Many wondered what Apple was going to do with the company since it was clear that Apple wasn’t interested in the products but the engineers. Well, in a New York Times interview, Steve Jobs mentions in a brief sentence that “PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods.”.

That’s pretty big stuff folks. System-on-Chip designs have been making the waves recently – especially with recent introduction by the NVIDIA Tegra system. Even vendors like VIA and Intel are interested in this architecture with their respective Nano and Atom processor lineups (although they’re not quite there yet).

The advantages of System-on-Chip (or Computer-on-Chip) is pretty clear. You get to costs, shrink resulting form factors, and conceptualize many more design and product possibilities into the mix.

Now what’s interesting is the fact that Apple intends on designing their own chips instead of dealing with a processor vendor like Samsung or Intel. A custom designed processor makes a lot of sense for Apple since they get to control all aspects of processor development. They get to say what they need or what they don’t need in a processor for devices like the iPhone or the iPod.

It also makes sense from a financial standpoint for Apple. They effectively become a processor design shop. Instead of buying general purpose processors, they can design their own and simply outsource the fabbing of these processors to third party companies. Plus – the more they fit into a single piece of silicon, the lower the overall cost of the device over time.

Pretty smart move Apple.

[Check it out via News.com]

Technorati Tags: Apple, P.A. Semi, iPhone, iPod