Coming on the heels of job postings for chip engineers at Apple's Orlando Design Center, it was discovered that the Cupertino company recently picked up at least 12 former AMD graphics specialists for its "Orlando GPU team," suggesting research and development into custom SoCs is being accelerated.

According to the new employees' LinkedIn profiles, as reported by MacRumors, a number of the 12 known engineers were actually hired in January, some two months before a handful of Orlando-based job listings were posted to Apple's website.

Among those hired were a graphics architect and a hardware engineer, hinting at Apple's ongoing custom in-house mobile chip design, though the new employees' exact duties remain unclear.

It appears Apple still has positions to fill in Florida, as the company's corporate hiring site today posted a listing for a "Site Manager," who will be leading the Orlando GPU team. While the position looks to be mostly managerial, it does require applicants to have over ten years of experience in leading "high performance GFX (or equivalent complexity) IP development teams."

In addition, Apple is also looking for identical candidates in its home base of Cupertino, suggesting the company is ramping up research and development of its custom-designed mobile chips.