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I would imagine that this is what Jim Keller is working day and night at Intel to avoid. I’m really looking forward to what comes out of his work at Intel. Comp

I would imagine that this is what Jim Keller is working day and night at Intel to avoid. I’m really looking forward to what comes out of his work at Intel. Competition is good.

quantummkv 6y ago
I don't think so. Intel's problem here is not that they were unable to design new architectures with all the cool features. Intel's problem here is that they were unable to actually manufacture that design. Jim Keller is a chip designer. But even if he manages to design something that is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, it won't matter if Intel is unable to manufacture it.
- localhost 6y ago
  Totally understand that Intel's manufacturing problems are a really important factor here, but GP was talking about their lack of IPC gains, which is exactly the kind of thing I would imagine they hired Jim to solve.
  - eloff 6y ago
    I think the confusion is because the chip design is tied to the manufacturing process. Intel likely has IPC gains in their new architecture for 10nm, but they can't manufacture that yet, and they can't just build it on 14nm instead without significant work to port the design to the new process node.
    - localhost 6y ago
      Thanks for clarifying things; as a software guy this is all in the realm of "magic" to me :) Do you have any pointers to layperson things that I can read about microarchitecture design improvements and process nodes?
      - ksec 6y ago
        For beginners, just go through the list of article on Anandtech would be good enough for most. From IPC, uArch to Fab, that would take at least a few weekends to get a meaningful understanding. After that Wikichip is a more intermediate+ level site. I just want to add additional information to your parent, it is not quite Intel cant manufacture it yet, they have it on mobile, called Ice Lake, and Tiger Lake coming later this year. So that is 2 generation ahead of its desktop counterpart.
    - StillBored 6y ago
      Well, this has been the discussion about porting it to 14++, but presumably they need a higher density to cram a bunch of extra transistors into the design. Hindsight at this point, but a big rich company like intel, should have had a fallback plan to port it to 7nm (or whatever) at TSMC a couple years ago to keep the pipeline full. It would have been a huge black eye, but at least they would have been moving forward while they straighten out their own manufacturing story.
baybal2 6y ago
I don't think so. I'm not very confident if he is given design or architect duties. On last few employers, he was mostly a glorified project manager/lead first, and an engineer later. Intel has more than enough big name architects, and designers to deliver new architectures. The reason they cannot do it now is because they locked themselves into iterative mode of operation by years of low risk, cow milking projects. If they can't stop iterating, they have no alternative to continuing milking Skylake just like AMD did with Nulldozer
- localhost 6y ago
  Interesting! Do you have any anecdotes that you can share about his recent roles at AMD and Tesla? From public information, he was the designer of the Zen microarchitecture at AMD.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    Zen architecture team lead was Mike Clark, engineering lead Suzanne Plummer
- localhost 6y ago
  Here's an interesting profile on Jim Keller that I just appeared in Fortune (I read it using reader mode): https://fortune.com/longform/microchip-designer-jim-keller-intel-fortune-500-apple-tesla-amd/ https://fortune.com/longform/microchip-designer-jim-keller-i...
fartcannon 6y ago
My outsiders perception seems to be that he is single handedly creating the competition for both teams. Is he truly that good?

I would imagine that this is what Jim Keller is working day and night at Intel to avoid. I’m really looking forward to what comes out of his work at Intel. Competition is good.

quantummkv 6y ago

I don't think so. Intel's problem here is not that they were unable to design new architectures with all the cool features. Intel's problem here is that they were unable to actually manufacture that design. Jim Keller is a chip designer. But even if he manages to design something that is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, it won't matter if Intel is unable to manufacture it.

localhost 6y ago
Totally understand that Intel's manufacturing problems are a really important factor here, but GP was talking about their lack of IPC gains, which is exactly the kind of thing I would imagine they hired Jim to solve.
- eloff 6y ago
  I think the confusion is because the chip design is tied to the manufacturing process. Intel likely has IPC gains in their new architecture for 10nm, but they can't manufacture that yet, and they can't just build it on 14nm instead without significant work to port the design to the new process node.
  - localhost 6y ago
    Thanks for clarifying things; as a software guy this is all in the realm of "magic" to me :) Do you have any pointers to layperson things that I can read about microarchitecture design improvements and process nodes?
    - ksec 6y ago
      For beginners, just go through the list of article on Anandtech would be good enough for most. From IPC, uArch to Fab, that would take at least a few weekends to get a meaningful understanding. After that Wikichip is a more intermediate+ level site. I just want to add additional information to your parent, it is not quite Intel cant manufacture it yet, they have it on mobile, called Ice Lake, and Tiger Lake coming later this year. So that is 2 generation ahead of its desktop counterpart.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    Well, this has been the discussion about porting it to 14++, but presumably they need a higher density to cram a bunch of extra transistors into the design. Hindsight at this point, but a big rich company like intel, should have had a fallback plan to port it to 7nm (or whatever) at TSMC a couple years ago to keep the pipeline full. It would have been a huge black eye, but at least they would have been moving forward while they straighten out their own manufacturing story.

baybal2 6y ago

I don't think so. I'm not very confident if he is given design or architect duties. On last few employers, he was mostly a glorified project manager/lead first, and an engineer later. Intel has more than enough big name architects, and designers to deliver new architectures. The reason they cannot do it now is because they locked themselves into iterative mode of operation by years of low risk, cow milking projects. If they can't stop iterating, they have no alternative to continuing milking Skylake just like AMD did with Nulldozer

localhost 6y ago
Interesting! Do you have any anecdotes that you can share about his recent roles at AMD and Tesla? From public information, he was the designer of the Zen microarchitecture at AMD.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Zen architecture team lead was Mike Clark, engineering lead Suzanne Plummer
localhost 6y ago
Here's an interesting profile on Jim Keller that I just appeared in Fortune (I read it using reader mode): https://fortune.com/longform/microchip-designer-jim-keller-intel-fortune-500-apple-tesla-amd/ https://fortune.com/longform/microchip-designer-jim-keller-i...

fartcannon 6y ago

My outsiders perception seems to be that he is single handedly creating the competition for both teams. Is he truly that good?