Apple has 1,000 engineers work on chips for post-PC era

Before he died, Apple Inc. co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs had disclosed up to 1,000 Apple engineers are working on designing the company's chips. The work on the chips aim to make the devices that run them faster while consuming less power, tech site TechCrunch reported. "Steve Jobs told me he has 1,000 engineers working on chips... Getting low power and smaller is the key to everything," TechCrunch quoted a veteran Silicon Valley CEO who knew Jobs as saying. According to the veteran CEO, Jobs made the claim before he resigned as Apple CEO earlier this year. TechCrunch noted Apple started building its own chip design team in 2009, to make chips that are powerful enough but can use low power. "Battery life is one of the most important features of a mobile device. Apple’s latest A5 processor, which first appeared in the iPad 2, will now power the iPhone 4S as well," it noted. It said the A5 is not only twice as fast as the A4 in the current iPhone 4, but it slightly improves the battery life with eight hours of talk time versus the A4's seven hours. Removing hard drives On the other hand, TechCrunch also noted Apple is removing mechanical hard drives from its products and replacing them with flash memory chips. "All of Apple’s products are moving in this direction. When you combine these two fundamental changes at the silicon level, “form factor no longer becomes an issue," the Silicon Valley CEO said. Also, TechCrunch cited sources who said in recent months that the things Apple is working on right now "are the best things the company has ever done." It cited the sources who said these are "things that will blow your mind." — LBG, GMA News