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Jim Keller, the designer of "Zen" architecture, is now working for Intel... https://web.archive.org/web/20180426124248/https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/ma

Jim Keller, the designer of "Zen" architecture, is now working for Intel... https://web.archive.org/web/20180426124248/https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/zen-architecture-lead-jim-keller-heads-to-intel/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180426124248/https://www.kitgu...

kick 7y ago
It's kind of his "thing" to bounce around to different, interesting projects. He wrote the x86_64 spec while working at AMD (and was responsible for the K8s ala Athlon 64s), he played a big part in Apple getting their SoCs to best-in-class, and that's not nearly all he's done. Incredibly accomplished man, I don't think he's going to stay in one place for very long. He'll probably come back to AMD at some point or another.
- Roritharr 7y ago
  I wish I knew what his secret is. He can't be a genius of THAT magnitude, that would be a miracle.
  - kick 7y ago
    If you ask most people who have familiarity with x86_64, I'm certain they would use a different term than "genius." Though the first step for you would be to work on projects you're more passionate about, and that are more technically challenging. A billing site (judging by your HN about section) won't challenge you in a way that will make you get better.
    - mzarate06 7y ago
      > If you ask most people who have familiarity with x86_64, I'm certain they would use a different term than "genius." What term do you think they'd use, and why?
      - amluto 7y ago
        Mostly backwards compatible hack.
        zaarn 7y ago
        For a backwards compatible hack it works good enough. And "good enough" usually beats "better".
      - kick 7y ago
        "The reason we're stuck with this shitty fifty year old architecture that's steadily gotten worse through every iteration," "Satan," "Evil Computational War Criminal," a few less nice terms. If you ask a Sun employee: "Enemy #1." Less sarcastically: "slightly above average." x86_64 is a nightmare, and we're a decade behind where we could be because it was what the industry settled for.
        tux1968 7y ago
        Where could I read more about this analysis? Genuinely interested to understand how x86_64 is such an albatross and more details about what could be accomplished in its absence.
        kick 7y ago
        Previous HN thread on (some of) the failures of x86 itself (it notes that most of this is not solved with x86_64): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276418 There's plenty of criticism of CISC in general, but that gets into flamewar status. A lot of modern abstraction, vulnerabilities and inefficiency can be summed up with "x86_64 sucks to write for, so let's build a new (or recreate an old) abstract machine!" In its quest to maintain fifty years of (near) compatibility with an architecture originally used in a calculator, the industry created a monster. There's a reason Apple (and Sun and MIPS before it) was able to get competitive with Intel's chips despite only getting a silicon team like half a decade ago and using an architecture generally seen as low-performance: they ruthlessly removed cruft, cutting ties with backwards compatibility in the process. Backwards compatibility is a scourge unto innovation and ease of use, as even Intel saw (IA64, for all of its faults, was better than x86_64 in virtually every way). I have a lot more criticism of x86_64, and can get a lot more technical in that criticism, but this comment is already getting a bit on the heavy side.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      But the funny thing is he leaves behind a string of industry defining successes in his wake. You can't argue that he's not tremendously influential and successful in the traditional sense. He's the Kelly Johnson of silicon.
  - goldcd 7y ago
    The total of the investment in a new architecture/chip is significantly higher than one guys salary (although I presume he's compensated very well). Maybe it's just once the corporate gears of a company have aligned to invest in something new/interesting - he's interested and they're paying.
  - ownagefool 7y ago
    There probably isn't a secret so much as he's a guy that likes to deliver and companies let him. I go to company to company consultanting, and the companies almost always have very competent staff they just don't listen to.
    - S_A_P 7y ago
      This! I also consult and have been to quite a few companies. Often I find that the most assertive person is who gets the ideas/perspectives pushed through, not necessarily the most competent. Sometimes the confidence comes from experience and usually that leads to ok decision making. Other times not so much.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    Just lots of experience. Normally, people don't hang out in semi as much as in software engineering, and that itself is extremely short. Semiconductor engineering was hurt badly when it tried to borrow work culture from the dotcom world, and treating engineers as disposables. I myself know of other man of equal magnitude in the analog world. He worked in electronics for 24 years, most of it in China. He worked for one of my employer, where he was deservingly fired for failing a potentially multi-million buck project. Apple hired him, literally, next week. I have suspicion he had his hands on Apple's Air Pods. It was tough to work with him, he has a reputation of "Shenzhen's Rob Widlar." Very few companies can make a working environment for him.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  I'm seriously hoping he gets on board a big RISC-V project eventually, and contributes to pull this baby off to the races.
  - kick 7y ago
    RISC-V already has more accomplished people than Keller working on it, and I don't think his presence is required for it to continue to get better. What RISC-V needs at this point is marketing and a company with a dedicated sales team, not technical competency.
    - K0SM0S 7y ago
      I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. My point was more that economies of scale happen with killer products (e.g. how CISC won over RISC back in the 90's, it wasn't about tech but about product, and as you say it falls down to sales and marketing). Somehow a guy like Jim got involved in some of the best scalers out there (AMD's x64, Apple's A chips, Tesla's self-driving AI, AMD's Zen, now something at Intel with 3D stacking most likely, and next...?) Here's to RISC-V, anyhow!
      - kick 7y ago
        I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. Look at the SiFive team for starters. Anyway, here's to RISC-V!
      - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
        To me, David Patterson is the most obvious person who might qualify for that description. He (co-)wrote the book on computer architecture and how it relates to performance (Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach) and led development of RISC-I and RISC-II ("RISC-V" is a reference to this lineage; I believe other projects not officially bearing the "RISC" name were counted as III and IV).
        7y ago
- sufiyan 7y ago
  You really need to look a little more at Jim and his style. He has been around from the time of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). And has been a great engineer. But what sets him apart is not his technical competence, but his ability to organise great teams around him and get the work done. And he has always been the person who has been given the reins of companies in crisis. It is a marvel how he manages to get the product back up.
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    Connections. I bet he has a hoard of people willing to work for him. Even if pay would be low. They know it will succeed. So he can assamble an avangers team (pun intended)
- Razengan 7y ago
  That is admirable and pleasantly envious. Smart people like that being able to work on what they want at any organization they want makes everything better for everyone: the corporations, the users and the world in general.
gok 7y ago
Jim is a legend. Led the AMD A8 which was the first real "oh shit" moment for Intel, and co-authored the x86-64 ISA. Bootstrapped the silicon teams for both Apple and Tesla.
- abledon 7y ago
  it's like he's a demi-god in a neil gaiman novel, having fun playing games in the mortal realm. He creates the "oh shit" moment at company A regarding company B, then goes and works at company B, to create an "Oh shit" moment for company A.
- Itsdijital 7y ago
  In no way trying to bring politics or anything into this. Just a neat fact. Jim's brother-in-law is Jordan Peterson. Yup, that Jordan Peterson. Small worldish thing I guess?
  - tosser199 7y ago
    They all grew up in the same small canadian town. Peterson nanaged to marry his high school sweetheart. (Now these 2 posts look like s tabloid, speaking about perdonal lives)
sliken 7y ago
Indeed, after working at Tesla for awhile. While the core is great, I think the biggest contributors to the success are a few decisions outside of the design of the Zen core. One is an investment back in the Opteron days for an efficient, scalable, low power, low latency, high performance serial interconnect. This is a key enabler for the new chiplet strategy that has paid off so handsomely for AMD. Now a single piece of silicon can scale from low end Ryzen through the highest end servers without having to divide their limited R&D budget across numerous different designs. Additionally selling off global foundries enables them to pick the best fab per generation, something that Intel can't, or at least hasn't done. So Intel had a set back on the fab where the difficulty (chip yield) is increased by their larger chips. While AMD can switch fabs (they switched from global foundries to TMSC at 7nm) and make much smaller chips. The top of the line Epyc chip has 9 chips inside (I/O + 8 CPU chiplets). This positions AMD Particularly well for the future, they could now rev the I/O chip for DDR5, more memory channels, or any other performance tweak without having to re-engineer the CPU chiplets. It also doesn't require all the chip related technologies to move in sync. The I/O chiplet is actually made on an older process than the CPU chiplets. If the PCI-e 4 I/O chip was late, AMD could have shipped a PCI-e 3 I/O chiplet. If mid cycle PCI-e 5 becomes a must have AMD would have much less engineering to fix it.
- snuxoll 7y ago
  PCIe generations are the ONE thing AMD cannot easily rollback or advance out of cycle, since it’s used as the interconnect between everything on the die.
  - sliken 7y ago
    Really? The Infinity Fabric (current generation that evolved from hypertransport) is a cache coherent serial network that can also do PCI-e (non-cache coherently). This can be swapped on a per serial connection basis as needed. Seems like they could rev the PCI-e side without changing the IF side. The I/O chip has separate connections for off chip, so they could use PCI-5 there and not change the connections to any of the CPU chipets. At least it seems that way... corrections?
zokula 7y ago
Jim Keller is not the person behind Zen Mike Clark is! Mike Clark is the person who designed Ryzen . He is the guy who came up with the name Zen as well. https://www.statesman.com/business/20160904/amid-challenges-chipmaker-amd-sees-a-way-forward https://www.statesman.com/business/20160904/amid-challenges-...
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  www.statesman.com - Access Denied Error code 16 This request was blocked by the security rules
  - gimmedanger 7y ago
    > username checks out
  - sliken 7y ago
    https://outline.com/zBTCPG https://outline.com/zBTCPG
NotCamelCase 7y ago
I like how some people pin the recent success of AMD on that one person, even if he doesn't claim it himself. Is it because of not truly knowing what it takes to do VLSI nowadays or just hoping that if one man did it, it can be done again?
- afiori 7y ago
  > even if he doesn't claim it himself. To be fair many people that are the single reason for success of a company do not claim it themselves.
WillPostForFood 7y ago
Jim Keller recently spoke at UC, on the topic of Moore's law not being dead. Very impressive guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc

kick 7y ago

It's kind of his "thing" to bounce around to different, interesting projects. He wrote the x86_64 spec while working at AMD (and was responsible for the K8s ala Athlon 64s), he played a big part in Apple getting their SoCs to best-in-class, and that's not nearly all he's done. Incredibly accomplished man, I don't think he's going to stay in one place for very long. He'll probably come back to AMD at some point or another.

Roritharr 7y ago
I wish I knew what his secret is. He can't be a genius of THAT magnitude, that would be a miracle.
- kick 7y ago
  If you ask most people who have familiarity with x86_64, I'm certain they would use a different term than "genius." Though the first step for you would be to work on projects you're more passionate about, and that are more technically challenging. A billing site (judging by your HN about section) won't challenge you in a way that will make you get better.
  - mzarate06 7y ago
    > If you ask most people who have familiarity with x86_64, I'm certain they would use a different term than "genius." What term do you think they'd use, and why?
    - amluto 7y ago
      Mostly backwards compatible hack.
      - zaarn 7y ago
        For a backwards compatible hack it works good enough. And "good enough" usually beats "better".
    - kick 7y ago
      "The reason we're stuck with this shitty fifty year old architecture that's steadily gotten worse through every iteration," "Satan," "Evil Computational War Criminal," a few less nice terms. If you ask a Sun employee: "Enemy #1." Less sarcastically: "slightly above average." x86_64 is a nightmare, and we're a decade behind where we could be because it was what the industry settled for.
      - tux1968 7y ago
        Where could I read more about this analysis? Genuinely interested to understand how x86_64 is such an albatross and more details about what could be accomplished in its absence.
        kick 7y ago
        Previous HN thread on (some of) the failures of x86 itself (it notes that most of this is not solved with x86_64): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276418 There's plenty of criticism of CISC in general, but that gets into flamewar status. A lot of modern abstraction, vulnerabilities and inefficiency can be summed up with "x86_64 sucks to write for, so let's build a new (or recreate an old) abstract machine!" In its quest to maintain fifty years of (near) compatibility with an architecture originally used in a calculator, the industry created a monster. There's a reason Apple (and Sun and MIPS before it) was able to get competitive with Intel's chips despite only getting a silicon team like half a decade ago and using an architecture generally seen as low-performance: they ruthlessly removed cruft, cutting ties with backwards compatibility in the process. Backwards compatibility is a scourge unto innovation and ease of use, as even Intel saw (IA64, for all of its faults, was better than x86_64 in virtually every way). I have a lot more criticism of x86_64, and can get a lot more technical in that criticism, but this comment is already getting a bit on the heavy side.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    But the funny thing is he leaves behind a string of industry defining successes in his wake. You can't argue that he's not tremendously influential and successful in the traditional sense. He's the Kelly Johnson of silicon.
- goldcd 7y ago
  The total of the investment in a new architecture/chip is significantly higher than one guys salary (although I presume he's compensated very well). Maybe it's just once the corporate gears of a company have aligned to invest in something new/interesting - he's interested and they're paying.
- ownagefool 7y ago
  There probably isn't a secret so much as he's a guy that likes to deliver and companies let him. I go to company to company consultanting, and the companies almost always have very competent staff they just don't listen to.
  - S_A_P 7y ago
    This! I also consult and have been to quite a few companies. Often I find that the most assertive person is who gets the ideas/perspectives pushed through, not necessarily the most competent. Sometimes the confidence comes from experience and usually that leads to ok decision making. Other times not so much.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Just lots of experience. Normally, people don't hang out in semi as much as in software engineering, and that itself is extremely short. Semiconductor engineering was hurt badly when it tried to borrow work culture from the dotcom world, and treating engineers as disposables. I myself know of other man of equal magnitude in the analog world. He worked in electronics for 24 years, most of it in China. He worked for one of my employer, where he was deservingly fired for failing a potentially multi-million buck project. Apple hired him, literally, next week. I have suspicion he had his hands on Apple's Air Pods. It was tough to work with him, he has a reputation of "Shenzhen's Rob Widlar." Very few companies can make a working environment for him.
K0SM0S 7y ago
I'm seriously hoping he gets on board a big RISC-V project eventually, and contributes to pull this baby off to the races.
- kick 7y ago
  RISC-V already has more accomplished people than Keller working on it, and I don't think his presence is required for it to continue to get better. What RISC-V needs at this point is marketing and a company with a dedicated sales team, not technical competency.
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. My point was more that economies of scale happen with killer products (e.g. how CISC won over RISC back in the 90's, it wasn't about tech but about product, and as you say it falls down to sales and marketing). Somehow a guy like Jim got involved in some of the best scalers out there (AMD's x64, Apple's A chips, Tesla's self-driving AI, AMD's Zen, now something at Intel with 3D stacking most likely, and next...?) Here's to RISC-V, anyhow!
    - kick 7y ago
      I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. Look at the SiFive team for starters. Anyway, here's to RISC-V!
    - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
      To me, David Patterson is the most obvious person who might qualify for that description. He (co-)wrote the book on computer architecture and how it relates to performance (Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach) and led development of RISC-I and RISC-II ("RISC-V" is a reference to this lineage; I believe other projects not officially bearing the "RISC" name were counted as III and IV).
      - 7y ago
sufiyan 7y ago
You really need to look a little more at Jim and his style. He has been around from the time of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). And has been a great engineer. But what sets him apart is not his technical competence, but his ability to organise great teams around him and get the work done. And he has always been the person who has been given the reins of companies in crisis. It is a marvel how he manages to get the product back up.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Connections. I bet he has a hoard of people willing to work for him. Even if pay would be low. They know it will succeed. So he can assamble an avangers team (pun intended)
Razengan 7y ago
That is admirable and pleasantly envious. Smart people like that being able to work on what they want at any organization they want makes everything better for everyone: the corporations, the users and the world in general.

gok 7y ago

Jim is a legend. Led the AMD A8 which was the first real "oh shit" moment for Intel, and co-authored the x86-64 ISA. Bootstrapped the silicon teams for both Apple and Tesla.

abledon 7y ago
it's like he's a demi-god in a neil gaiman novel, having fun playing games in the mortal realm. He creates the "oh shit" moment at company A regarding company B, then goes and works at company B, to create an "Oh shit" moment for company A.
Itsdijital 7y ago
In no way trying to bring politics or anything into this. Just a neat fact. Jim's brother-in-law is Jordan Peterson. Yup, that Jordan Peterson. Small worldish thing I guess?
- tosser199 7y ago
  They all grew up in the same small canadian town. Peterson nanaged to marry his high school sweetheart. (Now these 2 posts look like s tabloid, speaking about perdonal lives)

sliken 7y ago

Indeed, after working at Tesla for awhile. While the core is great, I think the biggest contributors to the success are a few decisions outside of the design of the Zen core. One is an investment back in the Opteron days for an efficient, scalable, low power, low latency, high performance serial interconnect. This is a key enabler for the new chiplet strategy that has paid off so handsomely for AMD. Now a single piece of silicon can scale from low end Ryzen through the highest end servers without having to divide their limited R&D budget across numerous different designs. Additionally selling off global foundries enables them to pick the best fab per generation, something that Intel can't, or at least hasn't done. So Intel had a set back on the fab where the difficulty (chip yield) is increased by their larger chips. While AMD can switch fabs (they switched from global foundries to TMSC at 7nm) and make much smaller chips. The top of the line Epyc chip has 9 chips inside (I/O + 8 CPU chiplets). This positions AMD Particularly well for the future, they could now rev the I/O chip for DDR5, more memory channels, or any other performance tweak without having to re-engineer the CPU chiplets. It also doesn't require all the chip related technologies to move in sync. The I/O chiplet is actually made on an older process than the CPU chiplets. If the PCI-e 4 I/O chip was late, AMD could have shipped a PCI-e 3 I/O chiplet. If mid cycle PCI-e 5 becomes a must have AMD would have much less engineering to fix it.

snuxoll 7y ago
PCIe generations are the ONE thing AMD cannot easily rollback or advance out of cycle, since it’s used as the interconnect between everything on the die.
- sliken 7y ago
  Really? The Infinity Fabric (current generation that evolved from hypertransport) is a cache coherent serial network that can also do PCI-e (non-cache coherently). This can be swapped on a per serial connection basis as needed. Seems like they could rev the PCI-e side without changing the IF side. The I/O chip has separate connections for off chip, so they could use PCI-5 there and not change the connections to any of the CPU chipets. At least it seems that way... corrections?

zokula 7y ago

Jim Keller is not the person behind Zen Mike Clark is! Mike Clark is the person who designed Ryzen . He is the guy who came up with the name Zen as well. https://www.statesman.com/business/20160904/amid-challenges-chipmaker-amd-sees-a-way-forward https://www.statesman.com/business/20160904/amid-challenges-...

iforgotpassword 7y ago
www.statesman.com - Access Denied Error code 16 This request was blocked by the security rules
- gimmedanger 7y ago
  > username checks out
- sliken 7y ago
  https://outline.com/zBTCPG https://outline.com/zBTCPG

NotCamelCase 7y ago

I like how some people pin the recent success of AMD on that one person, even if he doesn't claim it himself. Is it because of not truly knowing what it takes to do VLSI nowadays or just hoping that if one man did it, it can be done again?

afiori 7y ago
> even if he doesn't claim it himself. To be fair many people that are the single reason for success of a company do not claim it themselves.

WillPostForFood 7y ago

Jim Keller recently spoke at UC, on the topic of Moore's law not being dead. Very impressive guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc