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I just wanted to say this about Intel vs AMD. Back when Intel was the "underdog" it couldn't compete with Athlon/Opeteron CPUs from AMD with its Pentium IV line

I just wanted to say this about Intel vs AMD. Back when Intel was the "underdog" it couldn't compete with Athlon/Opeteron CPUs from AMD with its Pentium IV line, fan boys from both sides continually escalated the armchair warfare on Slashdot and Anandtech forums when Intel finally came out with the Conroe architecture that blew the competition away. I've seen this pendulum swing from one side to the other and back. Putting Intel marketing (awful) and AMD's marketing (awful again...), and their fan bases (toxic) aside, can we acknowledge the fact that working on a computer architecture is an extraordinarily 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA 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

t-writescode 7y ago
Oh yes, totally. I have complete respect for Intel’s engineers. It’s their business department I’ve long had trouble with, but those engineers do truly astonishing, near zero bug work.
- spectramax 7y ago
  I think the culture is improving despite of cashing it out in the 90's and 2000's during the Ballmer / Jack Welsch era. Semiconductor industry hasn't done a good job of cultivating a good, positive company culture and making it less regimented. We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company. I can assure you that there are so many incredible challenges that exist - with good definition/funding to tackle them from materials to marketing (direly needs to revamped). Imagine running a portion of the world's most advanced manufacturing processes. Ultra high volume (thousands of wafer starts per week), mind you. Perhaps videos such as these are shining a positive light on the entire semiconductor goodwill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI
  - aidos 7y ago
    Wow. Those machines are something else altogether. I watched a chip making clip a while back and I recall that they talked about having to make strange patterns in the stencils (not sure what they’re called) to work around the way the light twists when it actually hits the die. I’ve probably got most of that wrong but is that still a thing with the addition of the water layer?
    - spectramax 7y ago
      Yeah, they calculate the transfer function of the pattern and then pattern the mask to achieve the end result printed on the silicon substrate. With EUV lithography, it substantially reduced this pattern complexity. Jim talks about it at this mark in this presentation: https://youtu.be/Qnl7--MvNAM?t=784 https://youtu.be/Qnl7--MvNAM?t=784
    - saganus 7y ago
      Sounds like this video: Indistinguishable from magic: Manufacturing modern computer chips https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4 https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4 Just amazing. I wish a newer video explaining more recent technologies was available.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    > We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company. I'm not sure I agree. If by 'cool' you mean along the lines of receiving respect and admiration from others because, while they don't really understand the actual specifics of what you do, they have a general idea and it's celebrated widely, then I don't think we want that happening in semi space. It looks to me that it's happened already in software development, and I don't think the end result of that is net-positive. I think that when people are passionate about what they do, and do it because they're passionate about it, the end results tend to be better than if they're doing it because other people will give them recognition. I'm not saying this is something that happens all the time, and you can argue that I'm being elitest, snobby, or annoyed that the 'cool kids' have come into my playground and are playing with my toys, all of which would be valid positions to take. I do think that with all communities, they're very different when they have smaller appeal to when they have wider appeal. Niche communities are not without their problems (and the toxicity that can happen in them cannot be understated), but I personally prefer them, and believe the output is generally of a higher quality, than communities with wider appeal.
Causality1 7y ago
I think people also need to accept the fact we're never going to engineer a solution to human stupidity. If our society doesn't raise people to be good users, no amount of hardening will stop systems from being compromised.
- XMPPwocky 7y ago
  Like what? I've written in-depth about why "don't click untrusted links" is unhelpful: see https://xmppwocky.net/blog.py?page=22 https://xmppwocky.net/blog.py?page=22
  - Nullabillity 7y ago
    That domain isn't resolving.
    - ZiiS 7y ago
      It is also and untusted link, so I feel could only be preaching to the choir.
      - Nullabillity 7y ago
        Right. Heh.
- gear54rus 7y ago
  Agreed. Wasting countless hours on the engineering end doesn't seem wise when those same hours could be spent doing something meaningful. This requires education on the user end. Education that will help them understand the world around them better so everyone wins in the end.
  - pas 7y ago
    Those are wasted hours. We have to make stuff maximally safe AND educate users, because even that maximal safety/ergonomics/etc. is too little compared to how complex our world is.
bdefore 7y ago
Really enjoyed that video, all hour and a half of it. Thank you!
ksec 7y ago
I wouldn't use Underdog to describe Intel, they were never one in their x86 history. Always the TopDog. Intel in the P4 era is a lot different to now. P4 was an engineering mistake. And it wasn't Cornoe that saved that, it was Pat Gelsinger's Pentium M or Banias / Dothan. The current ( or past ) Intel issues isn't engineering, they have amazing engineers. It is lying. Blatant lies that were fed from Sales and Marketing all the way to their C-Level. That is what happen when a successful company were driven by Sales and Marketing people.
- acqq 7y ago
  > P4 was an engineering mistake. The story I've heard was that P4 was a management mistake. Some engineers claimed they surely understood that the limits existed, but the management believed that the only thing that's sellable is a bigger number of GHz. So the engineers got the goal to make a processor architecture for 10 GHz, and apparently P4 was made for that (long pipelines) and it was known that on lower number of GHz the architecture performed worse. But 10 GHz was unachievable because physics can't be cheated (the chips would simply melt without some special cooling that was also not sellable), so P4 architecture was never driven with the clock speeds for which it was designed.

t-writescode 7y ago

Oh yes, totally. I have complete respect for Intel’s engineers. It’s their business department I’ve long had trouble with, but those engineers do truly astonishing, near zero bug work.

spectramax 7y ago
I think the culture is improving despite of cashing it out in the 90's and 2000's during the Ballmer / Jack Welsch era. Semiconductor industry hasn't done a good job of cultivating a good, positive company culture and making it less regimented. We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company. I can assure you that there are so many incredible challenges that exist - with good definition/funding to tackle them from materials to marketing (direly needs to revamped). Imagine running a portion of the world's most advanced manufacturing processes. Ultra high volume (thousands of wafer starts per week), mind you. Perhaps videos such as these are shining a positive light on the entire semiconductor goodwill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI
- aidos 7y ago
  Wow. Those machines are something else altogether. I watched a chip making clip a while back and I recall that they talked about having to make strange patterns in the stencils (not sure what they’re called) to work around the way the light twists when it actually hits the die. I’ve probably got most of that wrong but is that still a thing with the addition of the water layer?
  - spectramax 7y ago
    Yeah, they calculate the transfer function of the pattern and then pattern the mask to achieve the end result printed on the silicon substrate. With EUV lithography, it substantially reduced this pattern complexity. Jim talks about it at this mark in this presentation: https://youtu.be/Qnl7--MvNAM?t=784 https://youtu.be/Qnl7--MvNAM?t=784
  - saganus 7y ago
    Sounds like this video: Indistinguishable from magic: Manufacturing modern computer chips https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4 https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4 Just amazing. I wish a newer video explaining more recent technologies was available.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  > We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company. I'm not sure I agree. If by 'cool' you mean along the lines of receiving respect and admiration from others because, while they don't really understand the actual specifics of what you do, they have a general idea and it's celebrated widely, then I don't think we want that happening in semi space. It looks to me that it's happened already in software development, and I don't think the end result of that is net-positive. I think that when people are passionate about what they do, and do it because they're passionate about it, the end results tend to be better than if they're doing it because other people will give them recognition. I'm not saying this is something that happens all the time, and you can argue that I'm being elitest, snobby, or annoyed that the 'cool kids' have come into my playground and are playing with my toys, all of which would be valid positions to take. I do think that with all communities, they're very different when they have smaller appeal to when they have wider appeal. Niche communities are not without their problems (and the toxicity that can happen in them cannot be understated), but I personally prefer them, and believe the output is generally of a higher quality, than communities with wider appeal.

Causality1 7y ago

I think people also need to accept the fact we're never going to engineer a solution to human stupidity. If our society doesn't raise people to be good users, no amount of hardening will stop systems from being compromised.

XMPPwocky 7y ago
Like what? I've written in-depth about why "don't click untrusted links" is unhelpful: see https://xmppwocky.net/blog.py?page=22 https://xmppwocky.net/blog.py?page=22
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  That domain isn't resolving.
  - ZiiS 7y ago
    It is also and untusted link, so I feel could only be preaching to the choir.
    - Nullabillity 7y ago
      Right. Heh.
gear54rus 7y ago
Agreed. Wasting countless hours on the engineering end doesn't seem wise when those same hours could be spent doing something meaningful. This requires education on the user end. Education that will help them understand the world around them better so everyone wins in the end.
- pas 7y ago
  Those are wasted hours. We have to make stuff maximally safe AND educate users, because even that maximal safety/ergonomics/etc. is too little compared to how complex our world is.

bdefore 7y ago

Really enjoyed that video, all hour and a half of it. Thank you!

ksec 7y ago

I wouldn't use Underdog to describe Intel, they were never one in their x86 history. Always the TopDog. Intel in the P4 era is a lot different to now. P4 was an engineering mistake. And it wasn't Cornoe that saved that, it was Pat Gelsinger's Pentium M or Banias / Dothan. The current ( or past ) Intel issues isn't engineering, they have amazing engineers. It is lying. Blatant lies that were fed from Sales and Marketing all the way to their C-Level. That is what happen when a successful company were driven by Sales and Marketing people.

acqq 7y ago
> P4 was an engineering mistake. The story I've heard was that P4 was a management mistake. Some engineers claimed they surely understood that the limits existed, but the management believed that the only thing that's sellable is a bigger number of GHz. So the engineers got the goal to make a processor architecture for 10 GHz, and apparently P4 was made for that (long pipelines) and it was known that on lower number of GHz the architecture performed worse. But 10 GHz was unachievable because physics can't be cheated (the chips would simply melt without some special cooling that was also not sellable), so P4 architecture was never driven with the clock speeds for which it was designed.