NVIDIA’s Director of Deep Learning, Jonathan Cohen, joins Apple

It has been discovered that Apple has hired Jonathan Cohen, persuading him to leave his position at Nvidia as director of deep learning, or artificial intelligence (AI).

The rumors and speculation around Apple’s involvement in developing a auto continue to rise and subside, just like the ocean’s tide. In 2007, his team won an Academy Award for technical achievement for its work in fluid simulation, which lets filmmakers create realistic-looking animation of fluid systems such as gases and liquids.

Cohen helped develop CUDA Platform libraries as well as GPU-acceleration software technology targeted to specific application domains including bioinformatics and machine learning. While many only associate Nvidia with phone and computer chips, the company has recently been entering the auto market, specifically in the form of autonomous vehicles.

Nvidia has been flogging its technology to automakers for use in self-driving cars and Apple desperately needs those sorts of smarts.

Cohen’s change of employment can be seen in his page on professional social network LinkedIn, where his employment in Apple that started this month is simply stated as under Software.

Interestingly, the poaching of Cohen comes at a time when Apple is building up a sizeable internal operation around cars. Over the past year or so, Apple has shown other signs indicating that it’s aiming to grow its talent pool in the area of autonomous vehicles.

The company’s chips are sold to carmakers, which power various systems involved in motoring autonomy.

Apple did not respond to our request for information about Cohen’s new role at the company.