Apple hiring former Texas Instruments chip designers for Israeli R&D center

Texas Instruments' loss is looking to be Apple's gain. In its efforts to shrink its global workforce by some 1,700 jobs, TI recently let go 250 of its employees in Israel previously tasked with designing chips for mobile devices. According to The Next Web, Apple has snapped up "dozens" of them to staff its R&D facilities in Hertezliya and Haifa, Israel.

The new hires were previously working on TI's OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) hardware and wireless chips used for WiFi and Bluetooth purposes. At Apple the new hires will work under the auspices of the recently formed Technologies group, which is overseen by Bob Mansfield. It's the component of Apple that will be responsible for semiconductor design going forward and is comprised of the folks responsible for silicon including the A6 and A6X used in the iPhone 5 and fourth-generation iPad, respectively.