It’s no secret that Apple Inc. has ambitions to build its own hardware as it tries to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers. The iPhone maker has already taken a number of steps in that direction, designing its A-series chips for its smartphones for example, and it’s also said to want to build its own ARM-based processors for its Mac notebooks too.

Those ambitions would seem to explain the company’s recent hire of Mike Filippo, an experienced architect of central processing units who most recently headed up chip design operations at British firm Arm Ltd.

Filippo reportedly joined Apple in May, and is said to be working out of the company’s Austin, Texas office. The first indication of his move came via a post on Reddit, and his hire was confirmed by Arm in a statement to Bloomberg today.

Filippo is a big hire for Apple because he’s believed to be the main man behind the development of Arm’s Cortex-A76, Cortex-A72 and Cortex-A57 chips, as well as its future processors based on seven-nanometer and five-nanometer processes.

Before that, Filippo worked at Intel Corp. from 2004 to 2009 as its lead CPU and system architect. He began his career at longtime Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., where he worked as a CPU designer from 1996 to 2004.

Apple is said to want to build its own Arm chips for its Mac computers so it can stop relying on Intel’s processors. The company is reportedly upset that Intel’s latest chips have been subject to numerous delays, and recent reports from elsewhere suggest it could transition to its own processors as early as next year.

Bloomberg reported last year that Apple’s transition isn’t just about cutting ties with Intel though. Another motivation is that it wants to integrate the chips it uses in its products more closely with its software. That report said Apple’s goal is to make it so that application developers will only need to write the code for their apps once, and run them across its iPhone, iPad and Mac devices. The initiative is said to be known as “Project Catalyst.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said it was reasonable for Apple to want to explore building its own ARM-based architectures, and not only for the Mac.

“With Apple’s ambitions to build its own chips, it needs more skills and expertise, and the hiring of ARM experts is an indicator that it is looking seriously at developing its own ARM based architecture,” Mueller said.

Bloomberg said today that Filippo was hired to help fill the void left by the departure of Gerard Williams III, who was the lead designer of Apple’s customized A-series iPhone and iPad chips.

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