Another AMD Graphics Executive Headed to Apple?

The Inquirer reports that Raja Koduri, currently Chief Technology Officer of the Graphics Product Group at AMD, will be joining Apple. The rumor comes on the heels of the discovery just two days ago that Bob Drebin, Koduri's predecessor in the position at AMD, has already joined Apple.

Between PASemi, Bob Drebin and other things we can't talk about yet, Apple is building up some serious hardware talent. All they need now is a good reliability person and a fire chief, and things will get really interesting on the hardware front in Cupertino.

Apple's acquisition of P.A. Semi in April 2008 generated speculation that Apple is developing its own system-on-chip solutions for the iPhone and iPod touch. The subsequent recruitment of Mark Papermaster from IBM and now Drebin and Koduri from ATI/AMD demonstrate significant enhancement of its expertise in chip and system design.

With the iPhone/iPod touch being touted as a gaming platform and the upcoming deployment of OpenCL in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to harness the power of graphics processors for general-purpose computing, Apple's interest in acquiring expertise in this area is unsurprising, although the extent of its recruitment of significant players in the industry suggests that Apple has made a significant commitment to expanding its efforts.