The HR Acquisition

From the link in the OP: "Despite speculation that Apple's acquisition of PA Semiconductor was motivated by the chip maker's specific products, a new report reveals that the iPhone designer is interested more in the buyout for its promises of intellectual property and development expertise -- and may be causing a crisis for the US Department of Defense in the process." (my emphasis).

While Apple isn't a startup, PA Semi was a startup. More importantly, and exactly on topic, Apple acquired PA Semi for the people, not for their technology. PA Semi was making a PowerPC architecture CPU that was low power and fast. When Apple bought the company they stopped development on their PowerPC architecture CPUs, dead-pooling their CPU technology (the physical representation of their IP). Apple actually tried to stop building the CPUs, but the government (military is a heavy user of the PowerPC architecture) stepped in and "persuaded" them to continue to manufacture their CPUs.

What Apple bought was a team consisting of some of the brightest minds in the low power, fast, CPU (and more?) hardware design field. I assume that Apple has them working on new, fast, low power (probably ARM-based) CPUs for their iPhone/iPod (and laptop?) product line.