By Eric Savitz
There are rumors bouncing around the Web suggesting that Apple (AAPL) has acquired an Austin-based chip company called Intrinsity, which as TUAW.com notes, makes “some of the fastest mobile processors out there.” EDN.com reported last week that Intrinsity might have been a provider of the CPU core technology in the A4 processor in the iPad. EDN also asserted that “solid rumor has it that Intrinsity has been sold, and that the buyer’s identity will become public in the next day or two.”
Interestingly, Intrinsity’s web site is currently down for “scheduled maintenance.”
Wikipedia notes that Intrinsity started life in 1997 as EVSX, and was created out of “the remnants” of a defunct chip company called Exponential Technology. That company, founded in 1993, had intended to produce processors for Apple - which had invested in the company - but ended up selling parts to Mac clone makers Power Computing and UMAX. Exponential shut down when Apple basically shuttered the Mac clone companies after Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs returned; as Fast Company noted in a long 1999 article about Exponential, one the first things Jobs did on his return to Apple was kill off the clones.
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