AMD today announced that Charles Matar and Wayne Meretsky have joined the company to assume critical new engineering leadership roles driving hardware and software intellectual property (IP) development for AMD's system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. Matar will draw upon his expertise in SoC and processor design to lead AMD's SoC methodology and client SoC execution. Meretsky will lead the company's software development, ensuring tools will be in place that will enable developers to take advantage of the compute power in AMD's SoC designs.

"Charles and Wayne will serve as key members of our engineering brain trust, bringing with them years of expertise in SoC design and developing 64-bit software ecosystems, respectively," said Mark Papermaster, AMD Chief Technology Officer. "The fact that these computing experts have returned to the company underscores AMD's unique position and opportunity, based on differentiated IP, to take a leadership position in low-power clients and dense cloud servers."

Probably the story of the day, Apple is taking a big step in the IC business by purchasing the microprocessor design company P.A. Semi for $278 million in cash. P.A. Semi is a fabless semiconductor company that was founded in 2003 by Dan Dobberpuhl, the former lead designer of the Alpha and StrongARM microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment in the 1990s. Currently the company has 150 employees and delivers PWRficient 64-bit multicore processors for the high-performance embedded-computing markets. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. That leaves us with almost no information to share. First reports speculate that Apple will target the chip maker's product for the iPhone or other systems like Apple TV.