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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/04/teversham/

Apple hooks Microsoft Xbox tactician

The funnest iPod ever

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Hardware, 4th May 2009 18:21 GMT

Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V

Apple continues to add to its stable of hardware heavyweights with the addition of Richard Teversham of Microsoft's European Xbox division.

The hiring of marketing tactician Teversham [1] adds to speculation that Cupertino is building its own dream team [2] of chip designers and strategists, with the goal of creating its own SoCs (systems-on-chip) for the iPhone and iPod touch - and any other media machines [3] it's cooking up in its well-guarded labs.

Apple's senior HR folks have been busy lately, last week snagging both Bob Drebin [4] and Raja Koduri [5] from AMD's Graphics Products Group. The company also lured chipmeister Mark Papermaster away from IBM in a messy public tug-of-war [6] last year.

These hires put muscle behind Steve Jobs's statement [7] to The New York Times after Apple's acquisition [8] last year of chipmaker PA Semi that "PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods."

Well, not PA Semi per se, but PA Semi engineers along with Drebin, Koduri, and now - possibly - Teversham.

Or perhaps Teversham will instead be using his Xbox experience to beef up Apple's increasingly successful game support for its handhelds. After all, the iPod touch is "The funnest iPod ever [9]."

In addition to these high-level hires, Apple is also hunting for average-Joe (or, more likely, average-Amit) engineers in a number of areas relating to its handheld efforts. If you're looking for work, check out the company's postings for a SoC-related "Mobile Silicon IP Program Manager [10]" and a "High Perform/Low Level ARM Programmer [11]." There are also openings for associated positions such as a "2D/3D Embedded Graphics Engineer [12]" and an "OpenCL Drivers Engineer [13]." ®