Apple is in the process of switching its PCs to Arm-based SoCs, but the company might not be putting all its eggs into one basket, as it is also exploring the emerging open-source RISC-V architecture. This week the company posted a job alert for RISC-V high-performance programmer(s).

Apple is currently looking for experienced programmers with detailed knowledge of the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and Arm’s Neon vector ISA for its Vector and Numerics Group (VaNG) within its Core Operating Systems group. Apple’s VaNG is responsible for developing and improving various embedded subsystems running on iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Known for its secrecy, Apple’s listing doesn’t disclose exactly what it plans to do with RISC-V, but the job description indicates that the programmer will have to work with machine learning, computational vision, and natural language processing. Among other things, low-level high-performance programming experience is required. Furthermore, the job description also indicates that Apple is already working with RISC-V.

“You will work in a SW and HW cross functional team which is implementing innovative RISC-V solutions and state of the art routines,” the description reads [emphasis added]. “This is to support the necessary computation for such things as machine learning, vision algorithms, signal and video processing. Push the state of the art in low level computation and drive them towards energy efficient and high performance implementations by tightly integrating software and hardware.”

See this article in Tom’s Hardware for more details and the Apple job description here.