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Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, and First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #70

Lex Fridman

5M subscribers • 39 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 10 people: 8 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 in engineering communities.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2023.
  • Presented by Jim Keller, microprocessor engineer

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

742K views6 years ago10 recommendations

Systems programmingHardwareCPUs and computer architectureThe tech industry

Jim Keller discusses microprocessor design, instruction sets, transistor budgets, and first-principles engineering with Lex Fridman.

Jim Keller is a legendary microprocessor engineer, having worked at AMD, Apple, Tesla, and now Intel. He's known for his work on the AMD K7, K8, K12 and Zen microarchitectures, Apple A4, A5 processors, and co-author of the specifications for the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect. This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it & use code "LexPodcast": Cash App (App Store): apple.co/2sPrUHe Cash App (Google Play): bit.ly/2MlvP5w PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7abOA4DzI8irWZcDxKtnDC RSS: lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 OUTLINE: - Introduction - Difference between a computer and a human brain - Computer abstraction layers and parallelism - If you run a program multiple times, do you always get the same answer? - Building computers and teams of people - Start from scratch every 5 years - Moore's law is not dead - Is superintelligence the next layer of abstraction? - Is the universe a computer? - Ray Kurzweil and exponential improvement in technology - Elon Musk and Tesla Autopilot - Lessons from working with Elon Musk - Existential threats from AI - Happiness and the meaning of life CONNECT: - Subscribe to this YouTube channel - Twitter: twitter.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: facebook.com/LexFridmanPage - Instagram: instagram.com/lexfridman - Medium: medium.com/@lexfridman - Support on Patreon: patreon.com/lexfridman

Why it's here

10 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a deep and insightful conversation with legendary chip architect Jim Keller on computer architecture.

GeorgeTirebiteron Hacker News • Recommends

On “How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?”

I highly suggest viewing one of the Alpha's original designers, Jim Keller, recent chat with MIT Prof Lex Fridman link to this video I was stunned by Jim's total command of Computer Architecture, and his deep insights about the subject. I will never again utter the phrase 'modern computer' without requisite awe.
View on Hacker News

Pandabobon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2020?”

Loved the episodes with Jim Keller 0 and Brian Kernighan 1 as well. Lex really does a great show and has amazing guests. 0: link to this video 1: link
View on Hacker News

robocaton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Korean nuclear fusion reactor achieves 100M°C for 30 seconds”

Jim Keller talks about his impression working with Elon - skip to 1:20:50 of this (effing amazing) interview: link to this video Edit: Also Jim talks about Elon’s engineering skills at 50 minutes into this interview: link Disclaimer: I’m not an Elon fan at all.
View on Hacker News

WestCoastJustinon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Second IC – Homemade 1000 transistor array chip”

I didn't make the connection until now, but Jim Keller was on the Lex Fridman podcast twice 1, 2 and it was awesome. In terms of founders this is pretty great team. 1 link to this video 2 link
View on Hacker News

u/CultistHeadpiecein r/compsci • Recommends

Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, Abstractions, and First Principles | AI Podcast
3View on Reddit

spectramaxon Hacker News • Recommends

On “New AMD side channel attacks discovered, impacts Zen architecture”

…narily complex task and that requires brilliant people all working together? I'll defer this fascinating topic, which most software engineers and tech enthusiasts are completely and utterly unaware of, to this talk by the legendary chip designer (x86 spec coauthor, A4/A5/Zen/Tesla AI ASIC architect) - Jim Keller and his interview with Lex Fridman: link to this video Designing & manufacturing computer chips is hard af, having worked in semiconductor manufacturing for over 12 years (primarily on the backend side of the Fab). Edit: Redacting some specifics…
View on Hacker News

bob1029on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Apple Silicon: The Passing of Wintel”

I found this to be an excellent explanation for what is going on in these x86 CPUs that makes them so powerful: link to this video (Starting from ~6:30)
View on Hacker News

empiricuson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Huang’s Law Is the New Moore’s Law, and Explains Why Nvidia Wants Arm”

Carmack was actually mentioning he asked Jim Keller about Moore's Law. For more details about Jim's thoughts I recommend this interview link to this video
View on Hacker News

est31on Hacker News • Recommends

On “ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name”

…ustomers happier one by one by adding special, mostly cold, silicon targeted for special workflows, like in this instance. Ultimately, the instruction set isn't that relevant anyways, what's more relevant is how the microcode can handle speculative execution for common workflows. There's a great podcast/interview from the x86 specification author: link to this video…
View on Hacker News

pstefon Lobsters • Recommends

Moore's Law, Microprocessors, Abstractions, and First Principles
2View on Lobsters

u/CultistHeadpiecein r/compsci • Recommends

Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, Abstractions, and First Principles | AI Podcast
1View on Reddit

u/sewagesellerin r/emacs • Mentions

…or/OS So. There had been a lot of discussion lately around improving Emacs. And after the excellent talk (it's actually poorly delivered, but very thoughtful and interesting) about the future of text editors by Justin M. Keyes, the author of Neovim, YouTube suggested me this talk between Jim Keller (x86-64 architecture co-author) and Lex Fridman link to this video And at around minute 22, Jim Kelley says something that stuck me: "if you really want to make progress on computer architecture every 5 years you should do one from scratch." At the same time lately I've been playing with Linux From Scratch, which made me realize how many good things can come (have come) from trying to solve an old proble…
10View on Reddit

reggiebandon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected”

I've been watching Lex Fridman's youtube podcast and there is a recent interview with Jim Keller 1. Keller is a chip designer famous for his involvement in multiple chips at Intel, AMD, Apple and he was co-author of the x86-64 instruction set. He also worked for Tesla. There is a point in the conversation where Lex and Jim clearly disagree about how "easy" self-driving AI should be. Lex is clearly pessimistic and Jim is clearly optimistic. I have to admit I was more swayed by Lex's points than by Jim's, but it is hard to discount someone so clearly (extraordinarily) expert and working directly in the field. 1. link to this video
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fermienricoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Slack was down”

…ts from some fancy_new framework that is developed by people who are entirely unqualified for it. Throw away all the work that's done by OS developers and designers that are getting paid as professionals to develop guidelines like this: link The modern tech stack needs to be refactored just like they refactor silicon architecture every 10 years: link to this video Edit: People talking about would native app handle this better? Sure. I argue that it wouldn't just get rid of all UI elements and drop the entire DOM on the page, the UI just crashed. And everytime I open slack it seems like its doing something else entirely. There is a massive difference in quality of native UI libraries and Bulma for exa…
View on Hacker News

pflanzeon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips”

My understanding is that architectural improvements (i.e. new approaches to detect more parts in code that can be evaluated at the same time, and then do so) need more transistors, ergo a smaller process. (Jim Keller explains in this interview how CPU designers are making use of the transistor budget: link to this video )
View on Hacker News

abetuskon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Bitter Lesson (2019)”

Moore's law might be dead but the deeper law is still alive. Moore's law is technically "the number of transistors per unit area doubles every 24 months" 1. The more important law is that the cost of transistors halves every 18-24 months. That is, Moore's law talks about how many transistors we can pack into a unit area. The deeper issue is how much it costs . If we can only pack in a certain amount transistors per area but the cost drops exponentially, we still see massive gains. There's also Wright's law that comes into play 3 that talks about dropping exponential costs just from institutional knowledge (2x in production leads to (.75-.9)x in cost). 1 link 2 link to this video 3 link
View on Hacker News