“The mystery Apple chip plot thickens today with the news that the company has poached the CTO of AMD’s Graphics Products Group, Bob Drebin. The million dollar question is, what will Drebin do for Apple as Senior Director,” Jon Stokes writes for Ars Technica.
“When Apple bought low-power processor maker PA Semi just over a year ago, it sparked a ton of speculation that the company would get into designing its own chips, most likely for its iPhone and iPod lines. I speculated that Apple would probably get into designing custom, ARM-based system-on-chip (SoC) parts for its handhelds, and then later in the year we got even more evidence that this is what Cupertino had in mind with the purchase,” Stokes writes.
“With Drebin’s hire, we still have no idea what GPU Apple will put on its forthcoming SoC, but at least we know the guy who will almost certainly make that call,” Stokes writes. “It was clear enough at this past year’s GDC that both Apple and developers are serious about the iPhone and iPod touch as mobile gaming platforms, so I expect that job one for Drebin will be to make Apple’s handhelds—both the models that exist and any that are still unannounced—into serious mobile gaming contenders.”
More in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We recommend that senior executives of mobile device makers who rely on off-the-shelf chips (that’d be basically everyone, but Apple) immediately stock up on Depends. Get the Boost Inserts. You’re gonna need all the capacity you can get.
