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K8 seems pretty small after he made the fucking Zen architecture (and Tesla AI). Lex has good interviews with Jim[1], he's not just very smart, he is wise. He s

by comboy 4y ago

K8 seems pretty small after he made the fucking Zen architecture (and Tesla AI). Lex has good interviews with Jim[1], he's not just very smart, he is wise. He started Tenstorrent some time ago with Ljubisa Bajic so I'm assuming this fab is related. Here is youtube channel for Tenstorrent[2], and last time I checked it was getting under 100 views per video... Ian also interviewed him[3] some time ago. Long story short if I had money that would be relevant in this context I would invest really hard into Tenstorrent. Investing time to listen to the guy seems to be not worse. 1a. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA 1b. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4hL5Om4IJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4hL5Om4IJ4 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzgyksS5pX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzgyksS5pX8 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFVDZeg4RVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFVDZeg4RVY

robert_foss 4y ago
Jim certainly didn't start Tenstorrent, but he did join it a while back. Some former AMD employees started it.
- comboy 4y ago
  Ljubisa here[1] says they incorporated only after Jim put money in it and it was a few months after they started thinking. 1. https://youtu.be/sMvudTBBQNw?t=289 https://youtu.be/sMvudTBBQNw?t=289
  - robert_foss 4y ago
    You're right, he may have been an early investor too.
    - IanCutress 4y ago
      Jim was the Angel investor, so to speak.
scrlk 4y ago
> he made the fucking Zen architecture From Jim himself: > IC: A few people consider you 'The Father of Zen', do you think you’d scribe to that position? Or should that go to somebody else? > JK: Perhaps one of the uncles. There were a lot of really great people on Zen. There was a methodology team that was worldwide, the SoC team was partly in Austin and partly in India, the floating-point cache was done in Colorado, the core execution front end was in Austin, the Arm front end was in Sunnyvale, and we had good technical leaders. I was in daily communication for a while with Suzanne Plummer and Steve Hale, who kind of built the front end of the Zen core, and the Colorado team. It was really good people. Mike Clark's a great architect, so we had a lot of fun, and success. Success has a lot of authors - failure has one. So that was a success. Then some teams stepped up - we moved Excavator to the Boston team, where they took over finishing the design and the physical stuff, Harry Fair and his guys did a great job on that. So there were some fairly stressful organizational changes that we did, going through that. The team all came together, so I think there was a lot of camaraderie in it. So I won't claim to be the ‘father’ - I was brought in, you know, as the instigator and the chief nudge, but part architect part transformational leader. That was fun. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-keller-laziest-person-at-tesla https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...
- comboy 4y ago
  Well yes, this is exactly why I say he is wise. And also surprisingly humble. But if you listen to the whole story, how the architecture came to be, scratching reasons not to do it one by one etc., the picture seems pretty clear.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    I’d be inclined to take the man at his word humility or not. If he says it was a team effort, especially if he’s speaking clearly about the different aspects and who was responsible for them, I wouldn’t disagree with him. He would know after all.
    - Hikikomori 4y ago
xlbuttplug2 4y ago
> I would invest really hard into Tenstorrent How would one go about doing this?
- piva00 4y ago
  Have a big stack of cash and contact the founders to pitch being an investor.
jason_wo 4y ago
> Long story short if I had money that would be relevant in this context I would invest really hard into Tenstorrent. I would happily accept a bet (e.g. $100 bucks or a nice bottle of whiskey) from you (or anyone) that atomicsemi is successful. I will just bet against it because I am skeptical that a new company is successful in a capital intensive segment. It is probably slightly insulting, foolish, and arrogant to bet against the famous Jim Killer on a website dedicated to startups. This should not be a dig against Sam and Jim Killer. I guess that will try something truly innovative. But if I look a the past, the odds seem to be stacked against them.
- comboy 4y ago
  I would not bet on atomicsemi, I think it's just a tool for prototyping in quick iterations. And Tenstorrent I still see as a risky bet, but in my mind it's very +EV. Everything is ML nowadays and we still use very naive approach driven by what hardware was available at hand.

by comboy 4y ago

robert_foss 4y ago

Jim certainly didn't start Tenstorrent, but he did join it a while back. Some former AMD employees started it.

comboy 4y ago
Ljubisa here[1] says they incorporated only after Jim put money in it and it was a few months after they started thinking. 1. https://youtu.be/sMvudTBBQNw?t=289 https://youtu.be/sMvudTBBQNw?t=289
- robert_foss 4y ago
  You're right, he may have been an early investor too.
  - IanCutress 4y ago
    Jim was the Angel investor, so to speak.

scrlk 4y ago

> he made the fucking Zen architecture From Jim himself: > IC: A few people consider you 'The Father of Zen', do you think you’d scribe to that position? Or should that go to somebody else? > JK: Perhaps one of the uncles. There were a lot of really great people on Zen. There was a methodology team that was worldwide, the SoC team was partly in Austin and partly in India, the floating-point cache was done in Colorado, the core execution front end was in Austin, the Arm front end was in Sunnyvale, and we had good technical leaders. I was in daily communication for a while with Suzanne Plummer and Steve Hale, who kind of built the front end of the Zen core, and the Colorado team. It was really good people. Mike Clark's a great architect, so we had a lot of fun, and success. Success has a lot of authors - failure has one. So that was a success. Then some teams stepped up - we moved Excavator to the Boston team, where they took over finishing the design and the physical stuff, Harry Fair and his guys did a great job on that. So there were some fairly stressful organizational changes that we did, going through that. The team all came together, so I think there was a lot of camaraderie in it. So I won't claim to be the ‘father’ - I was brought in, you know, as the instigator and the chief nudge, but part architect part transformational leader. That was fun. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-keller-laziest-person-at-tesla https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...

comboy 4y ago
Well yes, this is exactly why I say he is wise. And also surprisingly humble. But if you listen to the whole story, how the architecture came to be, scratching reasons not to do it one by one etc., the picture seems pretty clear.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  I’d be inclined to take the man at his word humility or not. If he says it was a team effort, especially if he’s speaking clearly about the different aspects and who was responsible for them, I wouldn’t disagree with him. He would know after all.
  - Hikikomori 4y ago

xlbuttplug2 4y ago

> I would invest really hard into Tenstorrent How would one go about doing this?

piva00 4y ago
Have a big stack of cash and contact the founders to pitch being an investor.

jason_wo 4y ago

> Long story short if I had money that would be relevant in this context I would invest really hard into Tenstorrent. I would happily accept a bet (e.g. $100 bucks or a nice bottle of whiskey) from you (or anyone) that atomicsemi is successful. I will just bet against it because I am skeptical that a new company is successful in a capital intensive segment. It is probably slightly insulting, foolish, and arrogant to bet against the famous Jim Killer on a website dedicated to startups. This should not be a dig against Sam and Jim Killer. I guess that will try something truly innovative. But if I look a the past, the odds seem to be stacked against them.

comboy 4y ago
I would not bet on atomicsemi, I think it's just a tool for prototyping in quick iterations. And Tenstorrent I still see as a risky bet, but in my mind it's very +EV. Everything is ML nowadays and we still use very naive approach driven by what hardware was available at hand.