Apple said to be hiring TI engineers for Israel R&D centers
updated 01:22 am EST, Tue December 4, 2012
'Dozens' of former Texas Instruments workers recruited
After the announcement in September that Texas Instruments (TI) would be laying off up to 250 engineering jobs (out of a planned cut of more than 1,700 employees), Apple may be using the opportunity to recruit "dozens" of engineers and specialists for its research centers in Hertezliya and Haifa in Israel, according to reports. Many of the engineers came for TI's own Israel-based OMAP and other smartphone and mobile chips. TI is said to be shutting down all Israeli operations, creating a pool of available processor talent.
Sources contacted by TheNextWeb say that Apple has hired a number of TI engineers, and has been hiring for the Haifa center since the beginning of the year. It has previously advertised for "System on a Chip (SoC) backend Physical Design Engineers" with five or more years experience in large-scale SoC design.
The new TI hires will likely join a number of engineers brought in from Apple's purchase of Anobit, the former Herzliya-based flash memory specialists. The former co-founder of Anobit is now a Senior Director at an Apple office there, and is said to be working on "very large-scale initiatives" for Apple.
The wording of his mission echoes a phrase Apple slipped into its recent quarterly results, when it announced that Bob Mansfield would become VP of a new "Technologies" group. Mansfield, who would be the top manager of R&D related to processors and other chips, said the group has "ambitious plans for the future."
