Papermaster starts work, Apple hiring new chipmaking talent

CNet reports today on the state of Apple’s chip business.  Mark Papermaster finally started work after a few months of legal wrangling between Apple and IBM.  He still doesn’t have a press bio photo yet but is on the executive big board.  It isn’t known whether his late arrival has slowed the in-house chip development at Apple or if Apple would have even been ready for their own chips on upcoming iPhones, iPods and rumored tablets even with him.

Separately, the Inquirer is reporting that Bob Drebin, another big chip guy is now on the Apple payroll.  Drebing, a GPU guy, has been around the chip making world with recent stops at AMD and ATI (bought by AMD).  Before ATI, Mr. Drebin managed the architecture and design unit of ArtX, where he was instrumental in development of the graphics component for the Nintendo Game Cube. Prior to joining ArtX, Mr. Drebin was a chief engineer in Silicon Graphics’ Advanced Graphics Division, where he spent nine years developing high performance graphics systems.

Games.  Yay.