[7] Jim Keller, Silicon Wizard 🧙‍♂️

Was Jim Keller really 'the father of Zen'? In this wide-reaching interview, Jim talks to Ian about his time at AMD, Intel, and others, along with a variety of management technique advice, how to approach design, the future of Moore's Law, which instruction set matters (x86 vs Arm), but also the intersection between maturity and experience.
Written version of the interview is on AnandTech
www.anandtech.com/show/16762/...
Jim Keller is currently CTO of Tenstorrent, a 2016 AI startup that recently secured $200m of Series C funding to go build their 4th/5th generation processors. I recently interviewed CTO Jim and CEO Ljubisa about Tenstorrent as well as the relationship between the two, which comes back to their time at AMD together.
• [6] Ljubisa Bajic and ...
0:00 Interview Part 2
0:32 Q1: What Jim Did at AMD
5:16 Q2: Father of Zen?
7:16 Q3: Everything from AMD is out?
8:41 Q4: Zen 3 a rewrite?
9:52 Q5: Is Tenstorrent a Forever Home?
13:21 Q6: What Jim Did at Intel
15:57 Q7: Would Jim Go Back to Intel?
16:38 Q8: Has it ever got boring?
18:24 Q9: Do Engineers Need People Skills?
19:44 Q10: Arm vs x86 vs RISC-V Pt 1
23:42 Q11: The right compute point for AI
25:47 Q12: Adding Vectors to AI
26:48 Q13: Arm vs x86 vs RISC-V Pt 2
29:11 Q14: Too much bloat?
30:24 Q15: Would x86 ever die?
32:33 Q16: Abstraction Layers in Life
37:49 Q17: Is Jim Worried about Moore's Law?
41:55 Q18: Beyond EUV Lithography
44:00 Q19: How to build a team
47:45 Q20: Teams and Company Culture
49:37 Q21: Recommendation for Early Career
50:22 Q22: Jim's Mentors
54:37 Q23: Understanding People
56:05 Q24: Reading more than others
58:33 Q25: Passive Jim Keller bookclub
59:22 Q26: Making sure you absorb information
1:01:43 Q27: Managing time
1:03:44 Q28: Doing interviews, marketing, 'talk'
1:06:12 Q29: Jim's Superpower? Nature vs Nurture?
1:08:52 Q30: How To Mentor People
1:13:03 Q31: Proudest Moments
1:17:21 Q32: Silent Heroes and Self-Promotion
1:19:48 Q33: Intel vs AMD, Intel vs Apple
1:21:40 Q34: AI Enabling Chip Design
1:26:14 Q35: Proactive or Reactive Security
1:29:09 Q36: Ethics of Chips Built
1:31:27 Q37: Elon, Neuralink, Cryptocurrency
1:33:47 Q38: Going Beyond Silicon
1:37:00 Cat Tax
Welcome to the TechTechPotato (c) Dr. Ian Cutress
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#techtechpotato #jimkeller #ianinterviews

[@jellowiggler]

Ian, this is some of the best interview footage ever. Thank you. I love hearing Jim talk because he can break something down so well so that an under grad level person or even a hobbiest can understand it. You don't have to have 2-3 Phds to understand it. It is so refreshing to hear him talk to someone who knows the correct questions to ask because they truly understand what he is talking about on approximately his level, and they keep in mind who the audience is so you don't evolve to a conversation the blows up to something not comprehensible to normals. Excellent job. A++. Well done. Bravo!

[@shazmosushi]

So much of this interview (and the two interviews of Jim Keller by Lex Fridman) should be required viewing for all engineers, and managers of engineers. So many nuggets of engineering and management wisdom from one of Silicon Valley's most prominent engineers. Great work Ian! I hope your channel continues to grow!

[@gzubeck3]

9 more interviews (various tech gurus) like this and it will be equivalent to an MBA. LOL!

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

Our Divine Leader speaks.

[@peterjansen4826]

I enjoyed this conversation too. More of those conversations with the top-guys in the industry please.

[@teemuvesala9575]

These extremely knowledgeable and intelligent engineers are able to do explain complex things so easily because they understand so well what they're talking about. I think it was Einstein who already said long ago that if you can't explain something in a way that most people can understand it, you don't understand the topic yourself well enough.

[@TheVigi99]

Jim keller is the jedi master of computers.

[@martinbadoy5827]

He trained his natural neural network well :)

[@kenw8875]

SEAL Team 6 Computational Architect OIC

[@raga3457]

Dr. Cuttress. I pressed the like button and then here are the extra likes which I wanted to give to this amazing and interesting interview 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 Reasons are as follows: 1) Interview covered not only Jim as an engineer, but also as a person 2) Eventhough you might had the list of questions for him, you went with the flow and ask/ discuss based on his previous answers 3) You had made enough research about his previous speeches and his comments. Not an easy job....🙂 Thanks once again

[@j340_official]

Jim has such a profound mind. I’m glad he also sees the value in the people/emotional side of the coin as well. Beautiful.

[@dennywong2408]

From this interview, I think we have to reclassify Jim Keller as a management genius/people enabler first and foremost - there is obviously no dispute to his credentials in silicon engineering, but leading people seems to be where Jim shines. To fly over overnight to AMD, turn around the minds in a room full of self-doubting engineers, who end up creating the world-beating Ryzen, is Hollywood-worthy level of leadership demonstration.

[@robertkincannon5325]

Great interview, there are certain people that I could listen to talk about anything, Jim is one.

[@ItsJustVV]

So it's true, Jim Keller does have a superpower! Now it all makes sense :) Amazing guest, great interview and GJ Ian.

[@hedleyfurio]

Great to have the generosity of time from an inspirational person who has been part of delivering results .

[@cyberdrace]

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Amazing... talk? Conversation? Opportunity to let Jim Keller monologue? Really great "Interviews" tend to transcend their own format, and this one really felt like that, too. Good job, Dr. Cutress!

[@wurstmensch3000]

SOOOOO GOOOOOOD nice questions, Ian! It really seems like its easier to teach an Engineer journalism, than a Jounalist engineering.

[@Zorro33313]

Different obstacles. In first case the character is an obstacle, in second - education. Ian's got lucky to be raised as a communicative person and worked enough to get an engineering education. To be fair - it's actually MUCH harder to rebuilt personality than to learn a new skill or discipline, so if it's your goal - it's easier to teach journalist engineering, but IRL journalists are generally too obsessed with sensation hunting to actually study.

[@alesksander]

KEKW 💀💀 I giggle a t that more than i should. Good words sir.

[@douginorlando6260]

Really worth hearing Jim Keller’s perspective. His engineer Dad, therapist Mom, reading all the books in the house, applying Shakespeare, Jung & Machiavelli in corporate management. His team building and team empowering is PHENOMENAL. He would make the ideal leader to work for.

[@Shivartin]

I at first read: Jim Keller, Silicon Lizard 🦎. And was like what? Is this some kind of inside joke :D.

[@loonie5468]

He is the Lizard King...he can do anything. Raise your hand if you understand.

[@luke.m]

+1 for a Jim Keller bookclub!

[@spiralout112]

Top 10 recommended reading list would be fantastic IMO.

[@gerogyzurkov2259]

If Jim write and publish his own book I would get it

[@julkiewicz]

Please, please, please, please, please, get that list @TechTechPotato, I'm begging you!!!

[@w0nd3rlu573r]

Look., leave the man alone so he can engineer the next protein computer. Then ask the chip and it will tell you what were the books, that Jim read, also adding it's own recommendations :-D

[@MrCarburettor]

Didn't he say he was dislexic 50:58? I guess he read a book about it and fixed that problem...

[@e2rqey]

These series of interviews is absolutely priceless in my opinion. Thank you very much Ian

[@bubba132]

First interview I've seen. Ian's an incredible interviewer. Especially his ability to let the silence draw out answers.

[@SinisterPuppy]

Great interview. I loved the mix of personal/work/life philosophy with semi deep dive technical questions. I took a lot away from this interview beyond just technical (nerdy) knowledge. I too would like a Jim Keller book club. :P

[@Maadhawk]

It isn't often I will watch an hour long plus video start to finish, but this one I did. Best interview by far.

[@justdoityourself7134]

The K7 1ghz Athlon CPU was my first DIY build. Brings a tear to me eye to think of those days.

[@marktackman2886]

When Jim started talking about team building, Q19, it felt moving and life changing. I could see you trying to pry gems out of his brain, THANK YOU!

[@loonie5468]

For me it was the last part of Q31 - of just never ever giving up on getting good people to believe in their ability to solve the problems with Zen and reiterating that to them relentlessly, as many times as was needed. He might not have been the 'Chief Architect' of Zen, but he most certainly earned his title of being its 'Chief Nudge.'

[@bwratt91]

Gotta be one of the best tech interviews I've watched, tech is cool and people behind the tech can be cooler. Jim is now for sure in my list of people that would be mad to have a beer with.

[@masonmoyers]

I already know this will be amazing! Keep up the great work Ian!

[@FastFSharp]

Immediately clicked and thumbed-up. Haven't even watched it yet but I know it will be awesome. Aaargh! Why do I have to work right now?

[@TheManfet]

Same for me. Already read the transcript - will watch anyway.

[@Yelkwood9]

Why no questions about forearm workout routine? Dude is a body architect too.

[@squirt626]

lmao

[@WayStedYou]

Swole from carrying various companys by the hand.

[@canadian_monkey4618]

Jim touches on this indirectly at around 1 hr 10 min mark when mentoring people, and kicking their butt . The best way to improve you mood and feel energized is to weight train on a consistent basis.

[@urbankoistinen5688]

+Asif A Khan, Best depends, wheight training can be done in very little time, but swimming is also good if you can afford it. I find formulating something and then think about it while swimming for a few hours is good.

[@MrHaggyy]

He is serious fit for his age. XD but the insane forearms came from an easy posting trick: move the arms closer to the lense then your back and they will look much bigger than they are.

[@crustybread9286]

Highly appreciate this!

[@osgrov]

This was a great interview, of a very fascinating man. I particularly liked that we got to hear a fair bit of who Jim the person is. Great job there, Ian. :) Now I'm eagerly awaiting interviiew #8!

[@MobiusHorizons]

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these interviews. Excellent job!

[@rudolphlouw2719]

Man, this is good material. Fantastic job.

[@boidsonly]

Excellent interview. Thanks for doing this, both of you.

[@The89thAnarchist]

Thanks a bunch Ian. This was great.

[@Nelthalin]

Ian and Jim thanks for the awesome interview! Loved all the topics that where discussed. I could listen days to stuff like this!

[@jonnyj.]

Holy shit, this was fucking AMAZING. Probably the best interview i've ever seen, excellent questions, and lots of engineering talk answering a lot of questions I and a bunch of other people had about jim. You're legendary ian :)

[@andrew_hd]

Incredible! Thank you!

[@carloschau9310]

Jim (and Ian), thank you being you! Learnt so much from you guys

[@marktackman2886]

Very inspiring! Jim speaks the truths in life that I have been looking for.

[@ilmarinen79]

Such an incredible person. Great interview! So glad to hear more from people of this caliber. Wonders of the internet...

[@VioletPrism]

Awesome interview I'm always looking for more interviews with Jim Keller as a subscriber to this channel I was pleased to see him appear here!

[@vinamarora7049]

One of the best interviews I’ve ever seen.

[@devnull220]

Late to the party on this interview, how can I like this 100x? What an amazing interview, Dr. Cuttress.

[@hannahkiekens5097]

Best Jim Keller interview in recent times!!!

[@rapt00rs]

Thanks for this Interview. It’s awesome and inspiring that someone like Jim Keller can still teach not only as an engineer but as a person as well. Keep the good work up.

[@bmenrigh]

What a great interview. Ian your willingness to ask good questions and then shut up and let your interviewee talk is (one of) the things that made this interview so good. Also Jim has great team leadership insight which I wasn't expecting from an engineer.

[@eyeofthetiger7]

What an awesome interview(both parts)! I just subscribed. I always love Jim Keller interviews (a couple of good ones with Lex Fridman).

[@emp.splash]

Fascinating guy. And a wise person. Thanks Ian for this!

[@nahuelcutrera]

well this is fantastic ian ! love it.

[@andrewknowles55]

Best interview I've ever watched 👍

[@zsoltmolnar1143]

Damn, amazing interview! I could listen for hours to him

[@the_wau_]

really awesome interview; thanks a lot Ian!

[@jerrywatson1958]

Great interview, for me Jim Keller is the Jerry Garcia of silicon. The way he speaks and brings people together, just amazing. Thanks

[@user-rx3ny9ji8i]

Such a great interview, I will rewatch it for sure. The amount of hindsight we can gather is pretty awesome. I'll try to remember to read management books to assess how much worse actual management is compared to what it could be if at least understood by the managers themselves 😅 He may not view himself as a great lecturer, but I'd love to see him regularly ~once a month or so just for a semi oriented lecture about a set subject Those questions where great btw ❤🍠, you bounced back pretty well and I clearly felt the "I want to ask him to develop but don't know if I can get my others questions in if I prolong this bit too much"

[@mohammedaminemjaidila666]

A podcast with Jim Keller, Thanks man

[@Adept893]

Followed you since before you got that DPhill. Always thought you wrote great stuff for Anand great to see you in a new format.

[@yamilabugattas3895]

This was an amazing interview!

[@bend3842]

Thank you so much for asking Q19. So important, and Jim answers with much wisdom. That would definitely be worth a short excerpt video on your other channel.

[@bend3842]

The book part is great as well, what about a list of suggestions from Jim?

[@AshyIsMe]

Fantastic interview! Completely agree with Mike Roy above, great conversational interview style too.

[@nazavode]

This is really great stuff. Thank you so much.

[@OTechnology]

I enjoyed reading the interview now I am going to watch it

[@laslog]

Awesome interview, Jim is simply the best, the perfect merge of the archetypical engineer and the archetypical teacher AND he is a fun guy!

[@zyspan]

"Chief Nudge" - excellent

[@skywalker1991]

Out all the companies Jim Keller worked , his work in AMD stands out the most , first opteron 64bit CPUs he build for AMD , beat Intel in IPC and over all performance, Amd took 25% data centre market share. 2nd was also at AMD , he built ZEN CPUs , again beat Intel in CPU performance. Not sure the work he did for Tesla or apple , but AMD is where he is known for his work. Can't wait to see what he done for Intel , might be some crazy fast CPUs.

[@erlienfrommars]

Jim is also responsible to the greatness that was Apple A4, the defining moment for Apple that made everyone started respecting them as a CPU designer, Just look at where Apple SoCs have gone these days, it still carries the legacy that Jim and his team there have influenced.

[@EpicHardware]

I had to keep notes of all the good things i heard. I watched a lot of interviews and presentations from Jim Keller so i had low hopes of keeping notes this time! Im glad i was wrong. Deep technical question, life and politics. Can wait for the next interview!

[@Evleos]

Wow, this is one of the best interviews I've ever watched. You guys are able to communicate clearly on so many intersting subjects, hats off. I wasn't aware that there's another shift coming soon in semiconductor manufacturing - x-ray lithography. I've heard people have tried to pull this of for decades. Could you dig up more on this subject, do you know of places to look?

[@roosell793]

Of course X-rays are coming up. After the visible light spectrum came ultraviolet. Right now, they're working on the extreme end of that - very, very fine wavelengths. Next up on the spectrum is X-rays. It stands to reason that gamma rays may, at some point, be considered for a future lithography process, as it's the last on the spectrum.

[@5lickwi11]

Really enjoyed this interview

[@woolfel]

love this interview. the reality of how tech gets more features, gets bloated and you have to start over. Love the words of wisdom about team building. I've seen this first hand in the software and open source world. When I mentor young developers I try to emphasize the importance of not being married to a solution and avoid getting stuck. My degree is in english lit and I agree 1000% with Jim about reading books. From my experience, CS grads that fail because they have terrible people skills. In the consulting world, we like to say "our customer have people problems, not technology problems".

[@chechitogmail]

very inspiring interview, thanks a lot

[@Vvvrrrmmm]

Thank you for such a great interview, +1 for the book club :)

[@spirosnyx2194]

what an interested and experienced man! thanks for feeding us hardware junkies with such kind of content Dr Cutress....

[@neutechevo]

I was waiting for this particular interview and it was rewarding at so many layers! (as a sidenote i rem at '96 when in Tech Institute as students then we discussed Arm at the time and how its compute components could work asynchronously from other components.. also ,always amazed at Hypertransport (IF) , always imagined it as a High Speed Motorway that some part requesting Data could tap into it.) Many interesting subjects..also about meditation , i knew he was gonna say that , your mind will work the answer and present you the results ,just give it the time it needs. If i had the time earlier i could ask about the book section if Jim had read young , I.Asimov 'Foundation' and 'Robots' Series? Great conversation Ian thanks!

[@nukedathlonman]

A very enjoyable and very interesting interview - big thank you for it, and a thank you to Jim Keller for obliging. :-)

[@Davido2369]

Dammn this was good. Great work Dr. :)

[@reinerfranke5436]

I wished a little out of box through thinking about the disconnect between space/distance in language and hardware. Thinking about self-organizing molecules and the efficiency of replication feel skipping the obvious next problem space to me. But one of best talk i recept last times.

[@ChimpyChamp]

It was interesting seeing you try to move the conversation into more technical depth, I got the feeling he wanted to keep the conversation at quite a "high level" but that you wanted a more "low level" nitty-gritty type of conversation.

[@SirMo]

Jim's cool. Great interview Ian!

[@aceofspades001]

Fantastic interview, I like it more than the Lex ones. Great questions and interactions.

[@NathanielStickley]

Great interview! Wow.

[@TheBoltcranck]

1:00:00 best moment of the interview, wish you all a good day and stay hydrated.

[@kylegushue]

Jim is the man.

[@theWanAndOnly]

Awesome interview

[@eivsyvgmailcom]

Good interview, you actually listen

[@zyspan]

Great interview

[@ShowsOn]

Let's not forget that Zen had an important mother - Lisa Su.

[@princepramod22]

I see you adapted Lex fridman's type of thumbnail deisgn 😜. Anyways, thank you Ian for bringing the silicon's rockstar to talk about life stuff. Keep up the good work!

[@XDbored1]

i love Jim's idea of debugging people, people have alot of bugs and sometimes they need help fixing them to accomplish greatness, like some kind of old beloved piece of software that could be the best thing ever if something just debugged it.

[@SG710]

Didn't know what to expect from such a legendary chip designer as Jim Keller, but safe to say I was surprised positively in many ways. Very level-headed about his successes, couldn't believe when he brought up reading books and Shakespeare. I've known too many engineers or tech types who couldn't fathom the idea that something to do with humanities could be of use to anyone ever.

[@TTPclipsnchips]

I think a good point here is that Jim does a lot of passive intake. He'll read it, and see what sticks or what ruminates. A lot of engineers only see value in active intake - if they can't focus on it and take it in at the time, they see less value in it.

[@RenRenification]

@@TTPclipsnchips too true

[@raghul1208]

awesome!!

[@w0nd3rlu573r]

Good job - my sleep just went out the window :D Also: how come this interview got 7 dislikes?!? Was it the lighting or the snacks at the brake weren't fresh enough? Man.

[@craigdaurizio686]

Jim Keller is easily one of the most if not the most interesting tech expert ever. When he talks, I listen. If he has a different opinion than I do, I seriously reconsider myself and think about where I've probably gone wrong.

[@Veptis]

I has this in my watch later for way to long (really trying to catch up, been down from 520 to like 495 over the past two days already). Still watching but I am really enjoying this so far. I interact with computers mainly on a high level, but I am trying to think down to the silicon a bit to optimize my programming. Especially with learning based models replacing well thaught out algorithms, it seems like the inference task might be far more efficient. But training should still be considered part of the computation - someone has to do it. Currently I am doing both to annotate training data. In the end I will benchmark both against one another. Might modify the comment as the interview progresses. From the timestamps it looks like you touched on my questions as well. It sounds a little like Jim thinking about people and relations, the way you think neurons in a generational neural network. You will always only find the local minimum, and you never know if it's the global minimum. increasing the mutation or running parallel generations might give better results (and by the recent Veritasium video I watched, in the real world crazy mutations might happen even if you don't see progression for a while). The mentor question was answered, I will look up some of the names. But the book topic is really interesting - I started to read books on my daily commute and I really enjoyed that. For the past 1.5 years I haven't been going to campus due to the pandemic and also haven't been reading at home. I am excited for student life to hopefully continue in October again. About the way we think is really interesting. Our brain can think about the most complex problems but if also got it's limits. We are building computers that are far more powerful for specific tasks that our brains couldn't do at all. Yet we can still understand how computers work as it's simple on the lowest level.

[@El.Duder-ino]

Jim Keller is a huge inspiration for the future chip development and he's very much right about Moore's law and many other things!

[@PlanetFrosty]

Terrific interview and we are working with biologics in quantum computing, but much work to be done.

[@darraght6528]

Would you consider releasing this style of interview on an audio only podcast platform?

[@stephanematis]

Excellent interview with a an opinionated and cogent individual.

[@gdpvk]

Would like to share this interview to my manager...but he won't care coz this starts with discussing computer Edit: this team management discussion was best..thanks Dr.Ian

[@SaccoBelmonte]

Jim Keller is a fascinating individual.

[@Rickbearcat]

I liked this video just because of the/your cat picture at the end. I myself had a torty shell and she was the best, just like I know you feel about her.

[@Ariane-Bouchard]

I've been seeing these interviews floating around KZbin for a while now and I'd always been put off by their length until today. I finally watched one, and man, it was super interesting. But I still don't think I would have the stomach to spend hours on several more. Have you considered posting some questions separately as shorter clips? It might be more approachable.

[@TechTechPotato]

I have a clips channel :)

[@erlienfrommars]

Jim said it loud and clear, Zen is a work of numerous engineers, not just a wonder product of a single person, so some guys really just has to stop their BS. Jim is CPU wizard but he can't do everything all by himself. There were so many unnamed people worked hard to bring together this wonderful architecture and they deserve some respect for that. AMD itself refers to Mike Clark as the Chief Architect of Zen, so I don't understand why people insist about the otherwise. Heck some people fail to even recognize Lisa Su as one of the key people to bring AMD back and stronger than ever.

[@marktackman2886]

You are doing something Joe Rogan would not be capable of on his best day!

[@GNARGNARHEAD]

this is what I was after, cheers

[@alexczar1456]

I'd love to get the recommended list of management books from mr. Keller.

[@Raven-lg7td]

jesus Christ the CPU God himself and you managed to get an interview with such a legend? damn...the level of connections you have