“Apple has a secret in Washington County [Oregon],” Mike Rogoway reports for The Oregonian. “The Silicon Valley company has hired close to two-dozen people in a hardware engineering lab there, raiding Intel and other Oregon tech employers for a variety of roles, according to job postings, social media profiles and an individual familiar with Apple’s recruiting efforts.”
“A person familiar with Apple’s hiring says the lab is in Washington County near the border between Beaverton and Hillsboro,” Rogoway reports. “That’s closer to the core of Oregon’s hardware ecosystem than the software and web services companies clustered in downtown Portland.”
“LinkedIn profiles indicate Apple has been hiring for its Washington County site since November and that a number of its new employees previously held senior research or engineering roles at Intel,” Rogoway reports. “Apple isn’t new to the region. It has had a software development team in Vancouver since the early 1990s and operates a massive campus of data centers in Prineville.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Imagine, after being stuck toiling on x86 for umpteen years, finally being able to work on something powerful, modern, and efficient. That sentiment goes for the former Intel employees nearly as much as for portable Mac users.
SEE ALSO:
How Apple might approach an ARM-based Mac – May 30, 2018
Pegatron said to assemble Apple’s upcoming ‘ARM-based MacBook’ codenamed ‘Star’ – May 29, 2018
Intel 10nm Cannon Lake delays push MacBook Pro with potential 32GB RAM into 2019 – April 27, 2018
Why the next Mac processor transition won’t be like the last two – April 4, 2018
Apple’s ‘Kalamata’ project will move Macs from Intel to Apple A-series processors – April 2, 2018
Apple plans on dumping Intel for its own chips in Macs as early as 2020 – April 2, 2018
Apple is working to unite iOS and macOS; will they standardize their chip platform next? – December 21, 2017
Why Apple would want to unify iOS and Mac apps in 2018 – December 20, 2017
Apple to provide tool for developers build cross-platform apps that run on iOS and macOS in 2018 – December 20, 2017
The once and future OS for Apple – December 8, 2017
Apple ships more microprocessors than Intel – October 2, 2017
Apple embarrasses Intel – June 14, 2017
Apple developing new chip for Macintosh in test of Intel independence – February 1, 2017
Apple’s A10 Fusion chip ‘blows away the competition,’ could easily power MacBook Air – Linley Group – October 21, 2016
This is great news, Apple is serious about processors and this is a move in the right direction to enhancing the Arm processors to other non mobile applications
I would expect that an exciting aspect of working for Apple’s chip designs is collaborating on designs for future cutting-edge devices.
It’s one thing to work on making the best CPU possible, but it’s an entirely different and much more exciting challenge to work on chip designs where you need to efficiently exploit new technologies which won’t be generally known about for a couple of years.
Apple’s approach of designing the chips, the hardware and the software holistically means that trade offs can be optimised for the exact purpose for those chips, hardware and software. The traditional approach of designing chips in one company, hardware in another and software elsewhere means that you’re mostly working in watertight compartments without being aware of what others are doing, understanding what they are hoping to get from you, or being able to suggest ways of better capitalising on that technology.
Imagine, after being stuck toiling on a 2012 MacPro for umpteen years, finally being able to work on something powerful, modern, and efficient. That sentiment goes for the former Intel employees nearly as much as for portable Mac users. And the Mac Pro users.