I interviewed with their ASIC design team last year (they made me an offer, which I did not take).
the 1000 number might be large, but definitely in the ball park. Designing a microprocessor is not that easy. Besides the ARM core(s), you have the graphics cores, custom DSPs (I heard they have Siri-specific cores in the A5), power control logic, various IO macros and other random stuff. You need an architecture team to figure out what needs to go there and how things interact, a micro architecture team to develop the RTL, a test team to make sure the RTL behaves as planned, a physical implementation team to transform all this mess into polygons that run at desired speeds, various tool/methodology support teams to develop internal flows, evaluate tools and make sure everybody is following the rules and nobody forgot anything, plus various levels of management.
note that most probably they are working on a couple of different designs at the same time.
the 1000 number might be large, but definitely in the ball park. Designing a microprocessor is not that easy. Besides the ARM core(s), you have the graphics cores, custom DSPs (I heard they have Siri-specific cores in the A5), power control logic, various IO macros and other random stuff. You need an architecture team to figure out what needs to go there and how things interact, a micro architecture team to develop the RTL, a test team to make sure the RTL behaves as planned, a physical implementation team to transform all this mess into polygons that run at desired speeds, various tool/methodology support teams to develop internal flows, evaluate tools and make sure everybody is following the rules and nobody forgot anything, plus various levels of management.
note that most probably they are working on a couple of different designs at the same time.