Apple today said that it had acquired Israel's flash storage technology company Anobit, its first acquisition of an Israeli company.

Israel's Hebrew-language financial daily, the Calcalist had last month reported that the potential deal would be for around $500 million and would be one of the largest acquisitions by the Cupertino,California-based company.

Although Apple did not put out a press release, Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, today confirmed the acquisition to Bloomberg.

Based in Herzliya, known as the Silicon Valley of Israel, and founded in 2006 by its current CEO Ehud Weinstein and president Ariel Maislos, Anobit provides flash storage solutions for enterprise and mobile markets, based on its proprietary Memory Signal Processing technology.

The company holds or has applied for more than 60 patents which would be applicable to future technologies.

Its solutions are designed to improve the speed, endurance and performance of flash systems while driving down the cost. Anobit's technology is comprised of signal processing algorithms that compensate for physical limitations of flash memory chips.

Anobit's chip that speeds up flash drive performance without needing more RAM, is already being used by Apple in its iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air. Anobit also supplies the same chip to Apple's rivals, Samsung and Hynix, which are built in into their flash drives.

The chip may as much as double the memory volume in Apple's new iPads and MacBooks.

Anobit, which has raised $76 million in venture funding, from Battery Ventures, Intel Capital and Pitango Venture Capital, will become Apple's research and development centre in Israel.

Apple, which will have its first research centre outside the US, will join Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft in having their operations in Israel.