Sky’s the limit
While advanced designs from ARM and manufacturing help from the likes of GlobalFoundries seem to be making it easier to enter the SoC game, it's still an expensive business. While Apple already has several devices it could put its A4 chip into, it's unlikely its plans for the chip end there.
This would appear to be confirmed by a recent job posting on Apple's website, in which it's looking for an engineering manager to lead a team tasked with bringing the iPhone OS to new platforms. Since it's the iPhone OS, rather than Mac OS, that runs on the A4, we extrapolate this to the chip too. Here's the full ad:
Requisition Number: 4929592
Job title: Engineering Manager (Platform Bring-Up)
Location: Santa Clara Valley
Country: United States
City: Cupertino
State/Province: California
Job type: Full Time
Job description: The Core Platform team within Apple's Core OS organization is looking for a talented and inspired manager to lead a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms. The team is responsible for low level platform architecture, firmware, core drivers and bring-up of new hardware platforms. The team consists of talented engineers with experience in hardware, firmware, IOKit drivers, security and platform architecture.
This position requires a very technical and hands-on leader, experience in working closely with hardware team and a deep understanding of bare metal software. You must be a highly self-motivated individual who seeks to create a dynamic and creative team environment in which old problems are solved in new and innovative ways.
Job responsibilities include:
- Leadership and management of a team of talented software engineers in a fast-paced and demanding software development environment
- Working closely with the hardware and custom silicon teams to bring-up new platforms and prototype systems
- Defining the software roadmap to support a range of hardware platforms, including iPhone & iPod
- Lead the team's assistance in requirements for future hardware and custom silicon
Required Skills and Experience
- Minimum of 5 years experience managing a software development team
- Experience on working on drivers, kernel and firmware software technologies and direct experience developing on and for the Unix operating system
- Understanding of SoC level design
- Evidence of driving technical innovation
- Strong communication skills
- Bachelor's or Masters degree in computer science or related field
Additional Success Factors
- Experience with Mac OS X or iPhone development
- Previous bring-up of mobile platforms running Unix like operating systems
- Experience with ARM based SoC's
We've read speculation that one of the applications of this project could be Apple TV, which hasn't been the customary Apple success. This is perfectly feasible as many SoCs - both ARM and Intel based - are being used both in set-top boxes and embedded in TVs. In fact, why stop there? There's no reason why Apple can't launch its own TV, and we're not the first to suggest it.
If they do, we'd rather they didn't call it the iTV as that could get confusing over here. We'd go for the iScreen, and you can have that one for free Steve. What do you think Apple would have to do with a TV to set the world on fire - as its corporate ego requires it to do? Let us know in the HEXUS.community discussion forums.
