Former AMD chip architect John Bruno, who was heavily involved in designing the x86-based Trinity Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), is now a system architect at Apple.
Originally an employee of ATI, Bruno joined AMD when the company acquired the graphics card manufacturer in 2006.
As AppleInsider points out, Bruno’s new position at Cupertino highlights Infinite Loop’s ongoing efforts to refine the design of high-performance, energy-sipping mobile processors for use in its ARM-based mobile devices.
“Bruno’s management of AMD’s second-gen APU project, dubbed Trinity, is well known and it is speculated that he may take a similar role at [Cupertino],” noted AppleInsider.
“[Remember], Apple was rumored to be using the original AMD Fusion APU in its TV in 2010, but the final product [ultimately] leveraged the proprietary ARM-based A4 processor.”
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley tech guru Charlie Demerjian said he believes losing Bruno is one of the “dumbest” things AMD ever did.
“Remember when we were rather critical about the mass AMD knifings a few months ago? [Well], today, there is one more story to add to the happy endings pile. The short story is that several seriously talented high level engineers went bye-bye on that sad day, along with many other very capable talents,” Demerjian explained in a post on SemiAccurate.
“Some were pushed, others given no real choice but to jump, and some simply left when they saw what was going on. The result was ugly, really ugly, and some of the long term effects are only now becoming obvious. [Now], why Intel didn’t hire [Bruno] is beyond us, but who are we to question the arcane logic of Fortune 500 HR?”
