[7] Jim Keller, Silicon Wizard 🧙‍♂️

Ian Cutress interviews legendary chip architect Jim Keller about his work at AMD and Intel, CPU design philosophies, and the future of RISC-V.

Was Jim Keller really 'the father of Zen'? In this wide-reaching interview, Jim talks to Ian about his time at AMD, Intel, and others, along with a variety of management technique advice, how to approach design, the future of Moore's Law, which instruction set matters (x86 vs Arm), but also the intersection between maturity and experience. Written version of the interview is on AnandTech anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-kel… Jim Keller is currently CTO of Tenstorrent, a 2016 AI startup that recently secured $200m of Series C funding to go build their 4th/5th generation processors. I recently interviewed CTO Jim and CEO Ljubisa about Tenstorrent as well as the relationship between the two, which comes back to their time at AMD together. youtube.com/watch?v=sMvudTBBQNw 0:00 Interview Part 2 0:32 Q1: What Jim Did at AMD 5:16 Q2: Father of Zen? 7:16 Q3: Everything from AMD is out? 8:41 Q4: Zen 3 a rewrite? 9:52 Q5: Is Tenstorrent a Forever Home? 13:21 Q6: What Jim Did at Intel 15:57 Q7: Would Jim Go Back to Intel? 16:38 Q8: Has it ever got boring? 18:24 Q9: Do Engineers Need People Skills? 19:44 Q10: Arm vs x86 vs RISC-V Pt 1 23:42 Q11: The right compute point for AI 25:47 Q12: Adding Vectors to AI 26:48 Q13: Arm vs x86 vs RISC-V Pt 2 29:11 Q14: Too much bloat? 30:24 Q15: Would x86 ever die? 32:33 Q16: Abstraction Layers in Life 37:49 Q17: Is Jim Worried about Moore's Law? 41:55 Q18: Beyond EUV Lithography 44:00 Q19: How to build a team 47:45 Q20: Teams and Company Culture 49:37 Q21: Recommendation for Early Career 50:22 Q22: Jim's Mentors 54:37 Q23: Understanding People 56:05 Q24: Reading more than others 58:33 Q25: Passive Jim Keller bookclub 59:22 Q26: Making sure you absorb information 1:01:43 Q27: Managing time 1:03:44 Q28: Doing interviews, marketing, 'talk' 1:06:12 Q29: Jim's Superpower? Nature vs Nurture? 1:08:52 Q30: How To Mentor People 1:13:03 Q31: Proudest Moments 1:17:21 Q32: Silent Heroes and Self-Promotion 1:19:48 Q33: Intel vs AMD, Intel vs Apple 1:21:40 Q34: AI Enabling Chip Design 1:26:14 Q35: Proactive or Reactive Security 1:29:09 Q36: Ethics of Chips Built 1:31:27 Q37: Elon, Neuralink, Cryptocurrency 1:33:47 Q38: Going Beyond Silicon 1:37:00 Cat Tax Welcome to the TechTechPotato (c) Dr. Ian Cutress Ramblings about things related to Technology from an analyst Patreon helps support this channel: patreon.com/TechTechPotato Also available through Patreon is special 1-on-1 consulting for the financial services industry! Many thanks to our CPU CEO Patrons Support the channel by hitting that subscribe button, or using our Amazon affiliate link. Please note that TTP may receive a commission if you purchase anything through these links Intel Core i7-11700K (8C/16T): geni.us/SreZM Intel Core i5-11600K (6C/12T): geni.us/T4WG Intel Core i5-11400F (6C/12T): geni.us/6UISblx AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16C/32T): geni.us/5950X