Apple is reportedly planning to expand the use of its Thunderbolt port technology to other devices besides the Macbook.
According to a series of job postings spotted by AppleInsider, Cupertino is seeking two, full-time employees for the role of “Thunderbolt Software Quality Engineer.”
Potential recruits are required to have at least five years of software QA experience, as they will be participating in testing new hardware and software that takes advantage of Thunderbolt’s I/O tech.
Candidates are also expected to boast expertise in testing high-speed buses, as well as PCI-express devices.
As AppleInsider’s Neil Hughes points out, Apple is most likely working to rapidly expand the use of its high-speed port co-developed with Intel.
Indeed, in addition to a second software quality engineer, Cupertino is looking to hire a Thunderbolt firmware/software engineer, who will be tasked with developing and maintaining embedded controllers for Thunderbolt products.
The engineer will also code firmware for Thunderbolt devices, as well as “corresponding Mac OS X tool and utility applications such as updaters and exercisers.”
Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the candidate is also required to have experience with ARM processors, which means Apple likely has plans to include the technology in future iterations of the iPhone/iPad to facilitate speedy syncing with a Mac.
As TG Daily previously reported, Thunderbolt – aka LightPeak – is capable of delivering 10 gigabits per second, while supporting “every important” I/O standard.
The advanced protocol offers two bi-directional channels with transfer speeds up to 10Gbps each and delivers PCI Express directly to external high performance peripherals such as RAID arrays.
Thunderbolt I/O also supports FireWire, USB consumer devices, Gigabit Ethernet networks via adapters and DisplayPort for high resolution displays.
In addition, the new protocol works with existing adapters for HDMI, DVI and VGA displays.
