Apple Hiring Chip Expert for Future iPhone / Mac Processors

A job posting on Apple’s website indicates that Tim Cook & Co. want to take the reins of SoC (system on a chip) development by going with a solution developed entirely in-house.

The SoC Modeling Architect – Manager / Lead "will be at the center of a chip design effort interfacing with all disciplines, with a critical impact on getting functional products to millions of customers quickly,” Apple’s ad states.

The new recruit will be assigned as a member of the SOC Micro-Architecture team, and “the ideal candidate will be responsible for all aspects of performance and power modeling of SOC designs.”

This includes tasks such as “leading a team of performance modelers/architects in modeling and exploring performance and power aspects of SOCs; “working with SOC design teams, software, systems and physical design in optimizing performance and power; [and] definition and maintenance of key usage scenarios that drive performance and power optimization.”

The chip architect will also be required to make “end2end correlation of models through RTL and silicon/systems using defined performance and power profiles,” the posting says.

Apple wants someone with over a decade of experience in SOC design “with focus on performance modeling including management or lead experience.”

This person will also need to present Apple with some authorship of SOC level performance models. As far as education is concerned, EE/CS Masters or PHD is required.

With the introduction of the A6 SoC in the iPhone 5, it was revealed that Apple now handles the entire chip development in-house.

This effort is not only here to stay, but Apple seems poised to bolster its initiative with more people who know their chips.

It has also been speculated (for a while now) that Apple could be attempting to break away from Intel, ultimately pursuing a proprietary chip architecture for its Macs.