Google has confirmed that it has purchased chipmaker Agnilux, a little known company comprised of former PA Semi employees who left that company following its acquisition by Apple in 2008. The company would only confirm the acquisition but declined to give any more details.
What exactly Agnilux does is unknown. A February investigation by the New York Times’ Ashlee Vance came up with little answers, only finding out through a former PA Semi employee that the company could be working on “some kind of server.”
Many of the PA Semi expatriates now working for Agnilux are responsible for the innards some of Apple’s most recent and upcoming products, including the chip in the iPad and the processor in the iPhone 4G as well. No one really knows what else the company may be doing.
That said, what does Google want with Agnilux? Could be a few things. First, if the tiny company is working on some type of server chip, of course Google would be interested. The company operates hundreds of servers to power its searches, and anything to give a competitive edge is obviously a bonus.
Another possibility is it may tap the group to provide it with chips for its Android devices to put them on equal footing with Apple in terms of mobile computing power. Whatever it is, we probably won’t be finding out for awhile.
“We want to make a splash. We don’t want our manufacturer to take our intellectual property before we’re ready,” Agnilux’s chief operating officer Mark Hayter told the NYT.