Apple’s planned acquisition of chip-design firm P.A. Semi may run into trouble from an unlikely source — the Department of Defense.

According to EETimes, P.A. Semi informed several current customers Monday that it was about to acquired by an unnamed company and that it could not guarantee supplies of its chips going forward. Meanwhile, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal that his company acquired P.A. Semi for its design engineering talent, not the product line.

But P.A. Semi’s chips are widely used in every major branch of the armed services. If Apple stops production of the chips and no other manufacturer steps up, Defense may object to the purchase, EETimes said.

Rapid Adoption

P.A. Semi’s high-performance, low-cost PWRficient CPU is used in at least 10 Defense systems, including one that forecast using 70,000 of the chips over the next 10 years, the magazine said.

“We’ve had customers saying they are going to the DoD on this one,” said a source who works with one of the companies that makes embedded computer boards with the processor.

“I’ve never seen such fast adoption of a product in the mil/aero world,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “Typically users in this area take a wait-and-see approach on new products, but that didn’t happen this time.”

Many Years Needed

EETimes reported that P.A. Semi told customers that Apple “may be willing to supply the chip on an end-of-life basis, if it could successfully transfer a third-party license to the technology.” That is probably a reference to the PowerPC architecture license from IBM.

“I don’t know how a Lockheed Martin or a Raytheon would take the news that the part might not be available after a few months or perhaps two years,” said the source. “Typically, these military programs last for many years.”

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