Not waiting on Santa, Cupertino-based Apple Inc. simply went on to give itself a holiday present worth, according to reports, about $500 million. This self-made gift is Anobit, a company based in Israel which is known for developing the MSP (Memory Signal Processing) technology.

According to Anobit, MSP enables SLC (one bit-per-cell) endurance and performance with MLC (two bits-per-cell) NAND Flash memory, and MLC endurance and performance with TLC (three bits-per-cell) NAND. Given Apple's high reliance on NAND Flash (it's used for the iPhones, iPad and MacBook Air) it's not surprising that the company decided to snatch up Anobit and its technology. Just don't expect Apple to come forward and actually say what they'll do with Anobit, they are secretive like that.