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Others in the thread below have mentioned Jim Keller worked on DEC Alpha. DEC sued Intel for some patents related to Pentium, so even this bit of the history re

Others in the thread below have mentioned Jim Keller worked on DEC Alpha. DEC sued Intel for some patents related to Pentium, so even this bit of the history relates back to Jim somewhat.

paulmd 4y ago
Jim Keller is tied to basically every ground-breaking architecture of the last 30 years. Not that everything he's worked on has been a hit, but, if something ended up being a huge success there's a high probability Jim Keller has been skulking around somewhere. Conroe/Sandy Bridge are the only ones that come to mind that haven't been him. His greatest hits: DEC Alpha, AMD K7 (Thunderbird/Athlon), AMD K8 (Athlon 64), Apple A5, AMD Zen... probably others I'm forgetting. Like god damn can someone else in the industry have some ideas of their own please, lol /s And again not that other people aren't involved either, in particular Mike Clark was really the guy who executed Zen development, but Keller was there at least as an advisor for a lot of the early development. He's one of Zen's uncles, Clark is the father. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vyNzgOP5yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vyNzgOP5yw I think it also says a lot that he completely fucking bailed from Intel after only being there a couple months... I think he saw they just weren't ready/willing to execute well and his time would be wasted there. He's the wandering silicon samurai who drops some golden nuggets of advice and wanders off into the sunset, not a babysitter while you purge middle-managers playing office politics. (He left due to a "family situation" and while I have no doubt that it was real... I also think he probably might have stayed if Intel wasn't a complete dumpster fire too.)
- KMag 4y ago
  Right. Back when Keller and Dobberpuhl were at P.A. Semi, I was waiting for them to IPO so I could invest... very low power 64-bit dual-core PPC chips from a few of the key Alpha people seemed just what Apple needed to solve their problems with IBM not being able to get the G5 power consumption down low enough for laptops. I was disappointed when Apple switched to x86 instead, and a few years later, Apple acquired P.A. Semi, which I believe became the bulk of Apple's mobile processor team. If rumor is to be believed, it really is too bad that Ken Olsen refused to drop margins and increase volume on the Alpha in order to create a scaled down version for Apple back when Apple was looking to leave the m68k architecture.
- pas 4y ago
  ronin, samurai are loyal to the end, no? :) even if he's not the determining factor of success - as he clearly said it's a team effort - he's very likely a safe bet, and a good canary, a good advisor (not a yes-man).

Others in the thread below have mentioned Jim Keller worked on DEC Alpha. DEC sued Intel for some patents related to Pentium, so even this bit of the history relates back to Jim somewhat.

paulmd 4y ago

Jim Keller is tied to basically every ground-breaking architecture of the last 30 years. Not that everything he's worked on has been a hit, but, if something ended up being a huge success there's a high probability Jim Keller has been skulking around somewhere. Conroe/Sandy Bridge are the only ones that come to mind that haven't been him. His greatest hits: DEC Alpha, AMD K7 (Thunderbird/Athlon), AMD K8 (Athlon 64), Apple A5, AMD Zen... probably others I'm forgetting. Like god damn can someone else in the industry have some ideas of their own please, lol /s And again not that other people aren't involved either, in particular Mike Clark was really the guy who executed Zen development, but Keller was there at least as an advisor for a lot of the early development. He's one of Zen's uncles, Clark is the father. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vyNzgOP5yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vyNzgOP5yw I think it also says a lot that he completely fucking bailed from Intel after only being there a couple months... I think he saw they just weren't ready/willing to execute well and his time would be wasted there. He's the wandering silicon samurai who drops some golden nuggets of advice and wanders off into the sunset, not a babysitter while you purge middle-managers playing office politics. (He left due to a "family situation" and while I have no doubt that it was real... I also think he probably might have stayed if Intel wasn't a complete dumpster fire too.)

KMag 4y ago
Right. Back when Keller and Dobberpuhl were at P.A. Semi, I was waiting for them to IPO so I could invest... very low power 64-bit dual-core PPC chips from a few of the key Alpha people seemed just what Apple needed to solve their problems with IBM not being able to get the G5 power consumption down low enough for laptops. I was disappointed when Apple switched to x86 instead, and a few years later, Apple acquired P.A. Semi, which I believe became the bulk of Apple's mobile processor team. If rumor is to be believed, it really is too bad that Ken Olsen refused to drop margins and increase volume on the Alpha in order to create a scaled down version for Apple back when Apple was looking to leave the m68k architecture.
pas 4y ago
ronin, samurai are loyal to the end, no? :) even if he's not the determining factor of success - as he clearly said it's a team effort - he's very likely a safe bet, and a good canary, a good advisor (not a yes-man).