Apple Hires AMD's Trinity Engineer John Bruno

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Apple has made another high profile hire as the company convinced John Bruno to move from Canada to California.

Until recently, Bruno was system architect at AMD and responsible for "all aspects of the definition and delivery of the 2012 Comal platform that includes the Trinity Fusion APU," according to his LinkedIn profile.

The profile reveals that he joined Apple as a system architect, but there is no further information about his new responsibilities. His expertise is in the integration of the Trinity APU and covers a range of graphics chipset projects at AMD, including the 690G, 780G and 880G. According to Slashgear, Bruno was part of AMD's 10 percent job cut last November, that led some of them to take on SoC design roles at companies such as Samsung.

The Internet rumor mill is full of ideas what Bruno could be doing at Apple. One example could be that Apple would leverage him on the road to ditch Intel processors in its notebook and/or desktop computers. Bruno did not reply to our request for comment on his new job.

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Douglas Perry
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • uglynerdman
    I dont know what to say about the last part. that would require amd to make mobile parts that are at least on par with entry level i7, so i dont believe that speculation to be true. i just think apple reaallly doesnt like samsung that much. Though I can see AMD in the Tablet market and he could help with that greatly. Meanwhile its sad to see that amd is cutting valuable resources from the crappy failed ideas of cory read from loss of profits. At this rate AMD will never pay a dividend.
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    Not sure whats the point of this, but AMD are lack of cash now, Apple can make use of its cash to give AMD some resource "help" at the same time demanding AMD to design "special" x86 APU for apple/mac alone, completely dropping hackintosh. After all Radeons are far better than crappy Intel GPU anyway.

    I see this as a gain from both sides if they ever wanna go for it. suck to kill hackintosh but hey.... if the cash does help AMD to stay more competitive to Intel, Why not.
    Reply
  • ubercake
    As long as Apple can continue to place two year old hardware in a pretty white package, people will buy up whatever they are selling. It doesn't matter who's working there or what technology is in the Apple machines.

    Kudos to the employees of the Apple marketing engine. They are the best on the planet.

    Reply
  • andy_newton
    Trinity is overpriced for a desktop CPU with that performance but to run iOS, it's crazy fast.

    Then again, why not go Intel?
    Reply
  • ojas
    TomfreakNot sure whats the point of this, but AMD are lack of cash now, Apple can make use of its cash to give AMD some resource "help" at the same time demanding AMD to design "special" x86 APU for apple/mac alone, completely dropping hackintosh. After all Radeons are far better than crappy Intel GPU anyway. I see this as a gain from both sides if they ever wanna go for it. suck to kill hackintosh but hey.... if the cash does help AMD to stay more competitive to Intel, Why not.This isn't an AMD-Apple partnership, at least not from the article. It's simply ex-AMD exec goes to Apple.
    Reply
  • DRosencraft
    Based on the rules that are usually attached to these people as they move between companies, he wouldn't be allowed to give Apple any specific info on what AMD is working on without an actual deal with AMD, otherwise he and Apple would face a lawsuit over whatever it is Apple gained from his info. What he can and probably will do is offer Apple guidance in how to leverage existing products/products as they come to market, and possibly (what I think the writer may be getting at there at the end) design architectures that work better for them than Intel currently offers and try to market them to actual chip makers.
    Reply
  • internetlad
    DRosencraftBased on the rules
    Yeah, because history has shown us just how much apple execs, and large corporations in general, care about laws and rules.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    ojasThis isn't an AMD-Apple partnership, at least not from the article. It's simply ex-AMD exec goes to Apple.True, that's not what the words of the article say. But what's interesting is considering the fact that Apple approached AMD for using their llano/APUs in the macbook air (and I would assume other laptops in their lineup), but AMD couldn't commit to the volume Apple was requesting. I wonder if AMD has more confidence in their trinity production (questionable, given recent literature on AMD), and Apple has approached them again.

    Using the APU makes slight sense given Apple's "end-to-end" unification theme, and the fact that not all of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors will get the competent HD4000 gpu.

    I would like it for AMD if this hiring of an ex-engineer at Apple meant that Apple wanted the competency in their company for integrating AMD processors. But as it stands, there's nothing to support that idea just yet.

    Interesting news regardless.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    andy_newtonTrinity is overpriced for a desktop CPU with that performance but to run iOS, it's crazy fast.Then again, why not go Intel?This makes no sense. Why would Apple look to use AMD's APUs in portable devices? AMD hasn't even engineered any of their APUs to function outside of the desktop/laptop application. The CPU footprint is giant compared to the current (overpowered for iOS) ARM processors used, and is entirely outside of the pricepoint for mobile device processors. In addition, the entire iOS ecosystem is designed to run on Apple's ARM processors--a re-work of the hardware platform would essentially cause the ecosystem to go back to page 1. Plus Apple has a huge dedicated engineering group for ARM processor development for their iOS devices. While they currently sub-contract/purchase desktop/laptop processors from vendors.

    If (IF) Apple is interested in working with AMD, it's almost certainly for their Air and regular Macbook lineup.
    Reply
  • lorfa
    Vusssshawwppppp!
    Reply