[33] Ian Interviews: Renee James, Ampere Computing CEO

[@TechTechPotato]

Written version of the interview: morethanmoore.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-renee-james-ceo

[@barberb]

Lol, this woman was responsible for catastrophic business mistakes at Intel, including prioritizing greasing political wheels over product vision, and failed endeavors in mobile.

[@ZOA360]

Did you say you made an Ampere Chip video? I don't see it yet

[@hugevibez]

As an aspiring woman in the industry it's always cool to see someone as cool as Renee thrive and build something awesome. Great interview, Ian. I was looking at an Ampere system for my home infrastructure, but moving to an entirely different architecture is kinda scary

[@EthelbertCoyote]

Neatest moment at 8min when a CEO asks "why?" seeing any CEO or management person actually not go by script to that degree is smile bringing. Someone who is engaged and aware in real conversations means to me she is so top of her game analysis wise.

[@GustavoNoronha]

Very much agree, also had a smile in my face!

[@ChuckNorris-lf6vo]

She had me at her EQ but also at the phrase "normal humans" those two don't go together often. I guess it takes a lifetime to become this person.

[@Vegemeister1]

Well, yes of course she is, but that should not be surprising for a CEO. As much as people like to whine about CEO pay, they are an elite population selected for their ability to produce results. You should expect CEOs to run circles around you.

[@ChuckNorris-lf6vo]

@@Vegemeister1Mnah they just "massage" the investors and the board of directors and the make some PR acts. They can't run circles around me they are there because of pure chance. And I am not multimillion CEO yet because of my laziness. I guess.

[@JeffGeerling]

Loved this interview; would also love Ampere to make a modest consumer-oriented socketed CPU someday too, but not sure if margins/market would be there yet.

[@ChuckNorris-lf6vo]

What is best is to have like tools, software tools, to do fun interesting and fruitful things, to have fun both at home and at the datacenter at scale. So if you look at existing software tools they are clunky etc. So there is huge room to innovate and engage the markets properly from the ground up and lead the markets towards a fruitfuil vision. Something x86 didn't really do x86 rather took advantage of pre-existing thirst which is now satisfied. Bla bla not sure if articulating a point correctly you know what I mean.

[@tiagomnm]

Right now I am a small customer of Ampere that besides wanting to have acess to cheap ARM servers, also pays less than x86 equivalents. At my provider, it is some 30% cheaper for the type of performance and specs I needed. Can only say good things and looking forward for more deployments of the new chip.

[@asknight]

Renee James: One of the most interesting executives in the industry. If she's talking, I am listening. She's on a noble mission and I wish her and her team success beyond their dreams.

[@pj20050]

Good interview, candid with no corpo BS

[@sipjca]

The last 2-3 minutes of this are absolutely incredible

[@GustavoNoronha]

30:34 took me a long time and a bunch of rewinds to finally understand that "BYO" is "Build Your Own", and not an entity xD

[@centuriomacro9787]

This interview was both informative and entertaining to watch, thank you Ian an Renee.

[@RobAryeeArc]

I love hearing what a high level executive has to say when there is no legal/PR/marketing filter. Thanks Dr. Cutress

[@DileepB]

what does semi custom core mean? is it a slight modification to a standard Neoverse core? Is ARM getting into actual silicon a bigger threat to Ampere than hyperscalers building their own?

[@TechTechPotato]

It's using the Arm architecture, but it's a custom microarchitecture. Like Apple.

[@DileepB]

@@TechTechPotato then it should be called full custom and not semi-custom!

[@Karthig1987]

I guess fully custom is a core all their own not modified.

[@ZOA360]

Where is the video for Ampere's chip, I can find it 🥺

[@drdiesel1]

Damn that was a great discussion.

[@Philip8888888]

I knew of the company but not this remarkable woman who is behind it. Thanks for a great interview!

[@deinnachname6374]

Yeah, id work for her. I mean i don't have nearly the skills but i am on board. Sounds like a really good (and very demanding) boss.

[@henriquefmq]

What an amazing woman. Instant fan.

[@FuzTheCat]

ARM + PEE (all over the competition) = AMPERE.

[@poofygoof]

I worked in pathfinding in the datacenter group at Intel before she left, and she was the only manager who seemed to recognize that Intel's original arguments about replacing proprietary servers with x86 still applied.Instead of replacing SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, etc with x86, x86 would get replaced with something else, perhaps ARM. I don't know if Ampere was already in the works at the time, but she obviously understood what I was talking about at a much deeper level than other managers and engineers I had talked with.

[@registeredblindgamer4350]

Wow, she's incredible!!

[@CjqNslXUcM]

she's sharp

[@MrJackPL]

It was just awesome. I loved this interview. Thanks!

[@aneeshpandoh1734]

Back to back bangers

[@newtonpermetersquared]

What does merchant market mean?

[@newtonpermetersquared]

Great video by the way

[@JeffGeerling]

I think the idea is they build chips for anyone to buy and integrate vs. something like Amazon building chips that only run in Amazon data centers (BYO).

[@TechTechPotato]

As Jeff says, it's about building silicon that everyone can buy. AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon are merchant market silicon, for example. Compared to Amazon building their own chips, Google building their own chips, both of which are not merchant market.

[@newtonpermetersquared]

Got it, thank you

[@megaprimegamer1184]

I literally just applied to a couple of positions here 😂😂 if anyone from ampere is here, I’m interested in the die interconnect related positions!!

[@szaszm_]

I'm not in the industry, but I think you should tell them why they should be interested in you for those positions. Good luck!

[@vasudevmenon2496]

Ian how will RHEL alternative works in ampere since alma will not try to be 1 to 1 compatible but instead move to 1 to 1 ABI. Will that affect different isa? Will we see risc 5 merging with Arm to create Arm licensed chip but custom IP made on risc 5 instead of arm architecture? I'm amazed with inference performance on Groq. Will we see Groq hardware being featured with Sally.

[@olo398]

damn Renee.....hell yea! she gets it.

[@nicknorthcutt7680]

These bangers just don't stop! Damn what a great interview man. Keep em coming 😉

[@damienbalbriggan]

What a lady! Great interview

[@James-wb1iq]

That was great - thanks

[@nicolaspaglione]

Brilliant woman!!!

[@jvgoransson]

Makes me wonder how long will this company stay relevant? Interesting tho. Really liked it!

[@DS-ow2ge]

ampere is hoping intel will buy them before they run out of money right

[@Extys]

They are already profitable so that's unlikely

[@tringuyen7519]

Ampere already has a 192 core ARM CPU for cloud & AI servers. When it IPO, I’m buying its stock!

[@GustavoNoronha]

Plot twist: in a decade Ampere buys what is left of Intel design with some hard wafer allocation commitments as part of the deal.

[@ps3301]

U r all wrong. Nvidia will buy up Intel.

[@megaprimegamer1184]

No way. Even if they eat into 1-5% of intels market they’re profitable. Besides, if anything it would be Amazon or Meta buying them and not Intel. They’re filled with employees who left Intel.

[@ps3301]

Nvidia GPU inference is not efficient . That is why Nvidia will be replaced

[@ChuckNorris-lf6vo]

Mnah replaced with what purchase decisions are based on sexiness lol.

[@6jot]

I wasted my time. She is not even an engineer

[@ChuckNorris-lf6vo]

No you didn't understand leadership and investors then do engineering.

[@6jot]

@@ChuckNorris-lf6vo just shut up troll