LinkedIn ad suggests Microsoft looking to design their own ARM chips

Qualcomm is under increasing pressure from OEMs, with Samsung, Google and Apple increasingly looking towards their own home-grown solutions for SoCs.

Now it looks like Microsoft may also be looking to defect, with the Surface division of the company advertising for a Director of SoC Architecture.

The posting reads:

We are seeking a director of SoC Architecture to lead our SoC Technologies Definition. This exciting opportunity requires strong technical knowledge and exceptional leadership. You will drive the Architecture in conjunction with Si Partners organizations of multiple technologies including but not limited to performance and power efficiency, thermal management, battery life, security, manageability, memory and storage, process integration and packaging to deliver exceptional product experiences across our entire portfolio.

Working collaboratively with a diverse team of business, engineering, and product design experts, you will define a multi-year technology roadmap and identify emerging technologies to innovate new product features and capabilities. ?You will build internal and external partnerships to define and enable the SoC technologies portfolio for future generations of products.  

Responsibilities

• Own the design and delivery of SoC requirements and architecture that delivers exceptional customer experiences.  
• Manage a technical team to drive the architecture to deliver the product.
• Collaborate with business, industrial design, user experience, hardware, software, test, and manufacturing teams to influence and define technology and product roadmaps.
• Identify applicable emerging technologies to drive new product features and capabilities.
• Define and deliver feature, schedule, quality, and cost commitments.
• Ensure robust system integration to hardware and effective design validation.

Microsoft has recently been rumoured to be working with AMD for GPUs for their Surface products and the job ad may simply be for an expansion of those plans.

Of course nothing is confirmed at this point, but even if Microsoft is not planning to make their own chips, I am sure the increasing defection from other vendors will inspire Qualcomm to do a whole lot better than before.

via HotHardware, PhoneArena