Apple poaches ATI/AMD Graphics CTO... what's going on inside?

[Porter]

Saw this article on Apple poaching Bob Drebin from ATI/AMD... he was CTO of the Graphics Products Group.

What's going on, ATI folk? Is this a blow to development, or a good thing for you guys internally? Was Drebin a helper or a hindrance for the group?


Link to article on Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...h-new-hire.ars


Drebin has technically been "gone" from ATI for about a year now... which appears to be a standard 1-year non-compete wait period. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

[bridgman]

Bob and Raja were both good. That said, if you design the same thing for enough years you're likely to get bored and want to do something different.

The flip side is that other good people get bored where they are and come here, so it all works out over time.

[rbmorse]

Which raises the question of wot in 'ell is Apple up to, now?

[curaga]

Well, they are designing their own chips from now on, that's what

[Porter]

The word on the grapevine is that they're going to release their own flavor of SoC (system on a chip), with integrated "discrete" quality graphics. With the whole package oriented specifically toward low power consumption for mobile devices. I'm sure it could have relevance for "always on" home media devices also, perhaps for a next generation iMac Mini type device.

[curaga]

The dark satanic rumor mill says that this might be related to a non-iphone iphone tablet device, which Apple is designing for another carrier to sell devices even while iphone is still exclusive to the other.

[deanjo]

There are a lot of rumors (it just wouldn't be apple if there were none).

Current speculation is:

a) designing their own chips. ( could be, but not to the extent where they will be replicating their own complete design in the computer line)

b) making their own game system ( limiting to gaming, I don't think so but I can see a future version of AppleTV having the abilty to game)

c) the tablet (this one has been around for years)

d) apple purchasing EA ( actually this would be one hell of a great move for them. Grab the largest gaming company and all of a sudden Apple's products become a viable gaming platform but don't count on just because OS X gets EA titles that linux will get the same treatment. Apple does sell 1 linux product and it's 10x the price of what they charge for the OS X port)

e) Acquiring 3G engineers for built in 3G funtionality on their portable products. (This one actually has some teeth to it)

Then there was also the top dog from MS's XBox division defecting. If things do point to anything I would say most (with the exception of 3G) point to a new version of AppleTV that has console abilities. Netbook / Tablets rumors will never die. A tablet is highly unlikely, a netbook, maybe, with 3G capabilities and based on the Ion platform.

[curaga]

Netbook / Tablets rumors will never die.

There's a reason for that, I wonder why Apple doesn't catch it and produce one