Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, and First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #70

I highly suggest viewing one of the Alpha's original designers, Jim Keller, recent chat with MIT Prof Lex Fridman [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.

Loved the episodes with Jim Keller [0] and Brian Kernighan [1] as well. Lex really does a great show and has amazing guests. [0]: [VIDEO] [1]: [LINK]

Jim Keller talks about his impression working with Elon - skip to 1:20:50 of this (effing amazing) interview: [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.

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] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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: [VIDEO] 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

I found this to be an excellent explanation for what is going on in these x86 CPUs that makes them so powerful: [VIDEO] (Starting from ~6:30)

Carmack was actually mentioning he asked Jim Keller about Moore's Law. For more details about Jim's thoughts I recommend this interview [VIDEO]

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 workflows, like in this instance. Ultimately, the instruction set isn't that relevant anyways, what's more relevant is how the microcode can handle speculative execution for common workflows. There's a great podcast/interview from the x86 specification author: [VIDEO]