Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, and First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #70
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it whenever chip architecture, Moore's Law or CPU design comes up, as an unusually deep and accessible view from a top designer.
What it is
Lex Fridman interviews legendary chip architect Jim Keller about Moore's Law, microprocessor design, and first-principles thinking. Keller draws on his work at AMD, Apple, Tesla and Intel, discussing instruction sets, transistor budgets, and self-driving.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec GeorgeTirebiter · 2020-02 · on “How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?”
I highly suggest viewing one of the Alpha's original designers, Jim Keller, recent chat with MIT Prof Lex Fridman [this video] I was stunned by Jim's total command of Computer Architecture, and his deep insights about the subject. I will never again utter the phrase 'modern computer' without requisite awe.
Strong rec Pandabob · 2020-12 · on “Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2020?”
Loved the episodes with Jim Keller [0] and Brian Kernighan [1] as well. Lex really does a great show and has amazing guests. [0]: [this video] [1]: [LINK]
Strong rec robocat · 2022-09 · on “Korean nuclear fusion reactor achieves 100M°C for 30 seconds”
Jim Keller talks about his impression working with Elon - skip to 1:20:50 of this (effing amazing) interview: [this video] Edit: Also Jim talks about Elon’s engineering skills at 50 minutes into this interview: [LINK] Disclaimer: I’m not an Elon fan at all.
Strong rec WestCoastJustin · 2023-04 · on “Second IC – Homemade 1000 transistor array chip”
I didn't make the connection until now, but Jim Keller was on the Lex Fridman podcast twice [1, 2] and it was awesome. In terms of founders this is pretty great team. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Recommends spectramax · 2020-03 · on “New AMD side channel attacks discovered, impacts Zen architecture”
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
Recommends bob1029 · 2020-07 · on “Apple Silicon: The Passing of Wintel”
I found this to be an excellent explanation for what is going on in these x86 CPUs that makes them so powerful: [this video] (Starting from ~6:30)
Recommends empiricus · 2020-09 · on “Huang’s Law Is the New Moore’s Law, and Explains Why Nvidia Wants Arm”
Carmack was actually mentioning he asked Jim Keller about Moore's Law. For more details about Jim's thoughts I recommend this interview [this video]
Recommends est31 · 2020-10 · on “ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name”
Yeah that's how RISC vs CISC is taught in class, I've heard that same thing. I think it's an outdated paradigm though, if it's not been wrong all along. A CISC chip can still officially support instructions, but deprecate them and implement them very slowly in microcode, as is done with some x86 instructions. And a RISC chip manufacturer might just have used this phrase as a marketing line because designing RISC chips is easier than starting with a monster that has tons of instructions, and they needed some catchy phrase to market their alternative. They then get into the gradual process of making their customers happier one by one by adding special, mostly cold, silicon targeted for special