It has been confirmed by The New York Times that Apple has acquired Austin, Texas based Intrinsity, a small chip design firm. Intrinsity is commonly known across the industry for speeding up existing ARM processors which are commonly used in mobile devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre.
According to industry analysts Apple was said to have made the purchase of Intrinsity for $121 million a figure that Apple naturally wouldn't comment on.
Since the announcement and release of the iPad, speculation has been focused on Apple's A4 microprocessor which powers the iPad at 1GHz and is incredibly energy efficient. With Intrinsity now under Apple's control it is suspected that the Samsung based A4 processor was the work of Intrinsy.
According to The New York Times after Apple's purchase of P.A. Semi another chip design firm in 2008 many of the employees that transferred to Apple have left over compensation quarrels.