Google is getting serious about the chips it uses in its smartphones as it has poached John Bruno, a key mobile chip designer from Apple.

The company has lately gotten serious about its smartphones efforts as evident from the Pixel 2 and the hidden Pixel Visual Core inside it. While Google has been teaming up with various OEMs for its Nexus devices for years now, it was the first time with the Pixel 2 that the company designed and used a custom chip of its own in one of its devices.

John Bruno has been working on the design of chips used inside the iPhone at Apple since 2012. Before Apple, Bruno used to work at AMD where he has the head of the design of ATI Technologies.

Over the last year, Google has managed to poach some noteworthy chip designers from Apple and Qualcomm, including Manu Gulati, Tayo Fadelu, Mainak Biswas, Shamik Ganguly, and more.

The hirings show how Google is getting more serious about its smartphone efforts and its hardware division overall. The Pixel Visual Core found in the Pixel 2 was designed by Intel and is used by Google for HDR+ processing in third-party apps. Interestingly, Google did not make any mention of the Pixel Visual Core when it first unveiled the chip. Instead, it made a separate announcement about it almost a month after unveiling the handset and only activated it with the Android 8.1 Oreo update which dropped earlier this month.

By designing its own chips, Google would have better control over the hardware and software integration that would allow the company to extract the best of both worlds: performance and efficiency. Apple has been designing its chips used inside the iPhone and iPad since 2012. Its A-series chips not only lead in terms of performance but also in terms of power efficiency. Samsung and Huawei also use their own chips in their smartphones but their chips are not as customised as Apple.