Following the breakup of U.K.-based Imagination Technologies, Apple seems to be ramping up its own GPU division as well as hiring a number of engineers within the London region.
Appearing on the United Kingdom version of Apple’s jobs board over the last month, the company has listed 12 “Hardware Engineering” job postings in London, located within Hanover Street. Spotted by The Telegraph, the listings are for Apple’s “UK Design Centre,” with 11 out of the 12 openings having some connection to GPU design.
A listing for an “Engineering Program Manager” position posted on March 29th mentions a “newly formed graphics design team” that would work on the “definition of the architecture, spec, design, and verification of graphics IP from concept through to silicon.”
Another posting for a Design Verification Lead description involves “RTL verification of blocks in graphics cores, requiring a “deep understanding of the micro-architectural details of designs, and how they work within the broader GPU.”
Other positions advertised include a Design Verification Engineer, a Graphics Content Engineer, and an Emulation Engineer who needs to have an understanding of “CPU and/or GPU architecture and micro architecture.”
The project was confirmed as part of a statement from Imagination Technologies, the UK firm that has provided Apple’s mobile graphics processing architecture used in iPhones, iPads, and other devices for a number of years.
Apple has yet to reveal why it’s moving away from its partnership with Imagination Technologies in lieu of its own designs. Through designing its own GPU cores, as it does for its A-series processors, Apple would now have finer control over the final product, eliminating potential limitations from work created by third-party companies.
It’s unknown as to when Apple will bring out products featuring its own GPU designs, but according to Imagination’s statement, Apple will stop using its intellectual property in its new products within 15 months to two years.
Through the same statement, Imagination advised that it believed it would be extremely challenging for Apple to design its own GPUs from scratch without infringing on Imagination’s intellectual property rights. Imagination requested evidence from Apple for its work, but was declined.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider and jobs.apple.com