Apple may be picking up alternatives to the Arm processor architecture

No sooner had the buzz subsided after Apple stabbed its longtime partner, Intel, in the back by abandoning its processors in favor of its own development on the Arm architecture, than the Internet is abuzz again.

According to a recent job posting , Apple is looking for an engineer specializing in RISC-V, an open-source architecture instruction set that allows device makers to build their own chips without having to pay a license or royalty.

Apple is currently known to use the Arm architecture, and pays royalties to the company for using its instruction set in M1 processors.

Apple's job description states that the engineer will implement "RISC-V innovations and state-of-the-art procedures" into Apple products. Specifically, Apple hopes that future engineers will be able to work with the RISC-V instruction set as well as understand Arm. 

The job announcement is a confirmation that Apple is exploring the use of RISC-V, but whether the company will decide to adopt this open-source technology is not yet known. All we can say with certainty is that Apple's reliance on Arm has increased markedly over the past year, and Tim Cook clearly doesn't like any type of reliance.

Source: tomshardware

Illustration: macrumors