Google Hires Apple Chip Engineer John Bruno, Likely to Build Its Own Custom SoC: Report

Google has hired John Bruno, a well-known chip designer from Apple, as seen by his LinkedIn profile. Bruno served at Apple for five years before joining Google this month.

According to a report by The Information, Bruno has run the silicon competitive analysis group at the Cupertino-based iPhone maker. The group was responsible for making sure Apple stayed ahead of its rivals, 9to5Google reports. He has worked on a series of iPhone chips since 2012.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Bruno started at graphics firm ATI and became a chief engineer at chip manufacturer AMD before joining Apple. The LinkedIn profile gives his designation as Systems Architect, the same title he held at Apple - and it isn't immediately clear what he'd be doing at Google.

With this hiring, Google will probably aim to develop full-fledged specialised chips for its phones, the report notes. "It's likely that Google will take some of that in-house experience in building AI chips to assist in the development of a consumer chipset, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst and founder of Tirias Research," the report reads.

Google currently has only one piece of custom silicon in its hardware, and that's the Pixel Visual Core imaging chip inside Pixel 2 smartphones. With the hire, Google could come one step closer to offering devices where it builds its own hardware and software, just like Apple, ensuring a similar level of optimisation.

The Mountain View, California-based company has hired several experienced chip engineers from Apple in the recent past, the report notes, including Manu Gulati, Wonjae (Gregory) Choi, and Tayo Fadelu, as well as Qualcomm engineers. Gulati was instrumental in developing Apple's A-Series of custom mobile SoCs.

Written with inputs from IANS