Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Apple has hired Bob Drebin, a former chief technology officer of the graphics group at Advanced Micro Devices with deep experience in graphics chips for videogame consoles.
Bob Drebin helped develop the graphics chip used in the Nintendo GameCube while at startup ArtX, acquired by ATI Technologies in 2000. He remained with ATI through the acquisition by AMD in 2006 rising from engineering director to graphics unit CTO.
Drebin's hire comes at a time when at least one analyst said he has seen a prototype Apple device he called a media pad that looked similar to the Amazon Kindle2 but sported a color high definition screen and a touch-screen interface. Rumors have circulated for months that the company is working on its own version of a netbook, a mobile system in between a smart phone and notebook computer.
Drebin's hire highlights Apple's need to grow its expertise in "multi-stream visual computing on multicore processors," across everything from high-end professional workstations to pocket-sized consumer devices, said Richard Doherty, principal of Envisioneering (Seaford, NY).
Drebin brings Apple expertise in multicore graphics processors, skills that could help accelerate the time to market for such systems, Doherty said. Apple has long been a user of both AMD and Nvidia graphics chips, a trend that won't likely change with the new hire, he added.
By: DocMemory
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