Neil Hughes
Apple's silicon development operations in Central Florida continue to grow, with the company advertising even more positions now available as part of its graphics processing team in Orlando.
A new set of job listings were posted on Apple's official site on Sunday and Monday and were discovered by AppleInsider. The six new Orlando-based positions are all in Apple's Hardware Engineering department, and are related to development of graphics chips that power devices like the iPhone and iPad.
Most significantly, Apple is seeking a site manager for its Central Florida-based operations that will oversee what is referred to as the company's "Orlando GPU team." Another position seeks a program manager for "Apple SoC Embedded Silicon design."
Apple describes its Orlando operations as a "world-class" graphics intellectual property development team.
AppleInsider was first to report in April that Apple has been building a custom chip development team in the Orlando area. It was later revealed that its local operations were established with former engineers recruited from chipmaker AMD, as well as employees who were acquired through Apple's purchase of Intrinsity.
The company has been designing its own custom mobile processors since 2010, when the A4 chip debuted with the first-generation iPad. Taking a step further into chip creation, Apple last year unveiled its first in-house designed CPU core with the A6 SoC found in the iPhone 5. This year's A7 chip designed by Apple is the first 64-bit processor in a mass-market smartphone, while the iPhone 5s also includes the M7 motion coprocessor.
Graphics performance in the A7 chip has been doubled over its predecessor, as gaming has become an increasingly important part of Apple's iOS platform. At the iPhone 5s unveiling earlier this month, Epic Games was on-hand to show off Infinity Blade III, which leverages the graphics processing power of the A7.
Apple's Orlando operations are joined by a team nearby in Melbourne, Fla., where the company acquired fingerprint sensor maker AuthenTec. That company's technology recently appeared in the new iPhone 5s, which sports the "Touch ID" fingerprint scanner beneath the device's home button.
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29 Comments
I'm really surprised to see that Apple wants to do custom GPUs. It's too bad they give the iPod Touch a two year old SoC. If gaming is an important part of the iOS platform why not update the SoC every year for the iPod Touch, instead of every TWO years? At the current rate the iPod Touch won't see the A7 until 2016.
Go Florida! :D
Come on apple, you know you want to move from orlando to mlb.
At the current rate the iPod Touch won't see the A7 until 2016.
Apple is taking bet that there will be people in 2016.
How about putting desktop GPUs in iMacs? I'm not thrilled about the prospect of buying a Windows PC for games, but I'm tired of dealing with mobile GPUs. Good call updating Open GL in OS X though. Bout time.