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Jim Keller to Depart Intel

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Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#81

Post by schappim »

culturestate wrote: post #69
londons_explore wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's been at Apple before. Doubt he'll go back to a place he's been before unless he thinks the landscape has changed enough he can have a really big impact again. I don't think thats the case at Apple. No - I think he'll go to Nvidia, because he hasn't been there before, hasn't really worked on GPU's before, and because I think GPU's could gain a lot of performance by having someone look at optimizing the big pictur…

> Doubt he'll go back to a place he's been before unless he thinks the landscape has changed enough he can have a really big impact again He did two separate stints at AMD, and if the rumors of Apple switching the Mac to the A-series are true (which they probably are) then there will be some very interesting problems to solve over the next few years.

Also the timing w/ WWDC coming up and rumours of an Intel → ARM switch.

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#82

Post by majewsky »

culturestate wrote: post #69
londons_explore wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's been at Apple before. Doubt he'll go back to a place he's been before unless he thinks the landscape has changed enough he can have a really big impact again. I don't think thats the case at Apple. No - I think he'll go to Nvidia, because he hasn't been there before, hasn't really worked on GPU's before, and because I think GPU's could gain a lot of performance by having someone look at optimizing the big pictur…

> Doubt he'll go back to a place he's been before unless he thinks the landscape has changed enough he can have a really big impact again He did two separate stints at AMD, and if the rumors of Apple switching the Mac to the A-series are true (which they probably are) then there will be some very interesting problems to solve over the next few years.

If Apple switches Macs to ARM this or next year as rumored, all the interesting problems w.r.t. chip design must have been solved at this point.

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#83

Post by wolfgke »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #67
tw04 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Process didn’t cause all the security holes implemented as performance hacks, architecture did. AMD caught up through architecture, process was just icing on the cake.

No one thought of speculative execution and hypertheading as performance hacks until the last few years. They were brilliant techniques. They still are, they just were found to have a cost. They are still used now but more carefully. Intel Management Engine and SGX on the other hand, are basically user-hostile parts of the hardware, with some bugs mixed in.

> No one thought of speculative execution and hypertheading as performance hacks until the last few years.

"Everybody" who has some knowledge in security (espcially with respect to side channels) knew from beginning that these CPU features were a ticking time bomb in terms of potential side channels.

What was unclear was how this (at this time played down by CPU vendors) potential threat could be used to create real attacks.

Going from potential threat (that "everybody" knew about) to real attack is the central achievement of the authors of the Spectre and Meltdown attacks (and their successors).

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#84

Post by culturestate »

majewsky wrote: post #82
culturestate wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doubt he'll go back to a place he's been before unless he thinks the landscape has changed enough he can have a really big impact again He did two separate stints at AMD, and if the rumors of Apple switching the Mac to the A-series are true (which they probably are) then there will be some very interesting problems to solve over the next few years.

If Apple switches Macs to ARM this or next year as rumored, all the interesting problems w.r.t. chip design must have been solved at this point.

You could make this same argument for any sufficiently mature architecture, but the reality is that there's always something new around the corner. I can't imagine the processor in an eventual ARM-based Mac Pro will look much like the one in the first ARM-based MacBook, you know?

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#85

Post by Traster »

Intel has some absolutely killer politics, especially at the higher level, entire organisations will plan road maps deliberately contingent on deliverables they know other teams are going to miss. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the result of Keller just having enough of it and giving up. The fact that the press release involves an already resolved organisational structure that looks highly political is a big red flag.

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#86

Post by ksec »

olliej wrote: post #68
londons_explore wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops Intel manufacturing their designs with third parties. Yet they don't. Either it isn't worth it (too much coupling between fab and designs - not the right abstractions), or institutional inertia stops them doing it.

I'm not a hardware engineer/cpu designer/electrical engineer, but my understanding is that designing high end cpus requires engineering and designing towards the specific manufacturing process of the fabs you're using. Even if intel did decide to, I don't think they could just send their designs to tsmc/global foundries or what have you.

They cant, they will need to redesign the whole thing with new rules, mask and testing. Not to mention using tools that likely Intel is extremely unfamiliar with. ( At least their CPU teams.)

It is more of a cost/ economical issues, which jabl above provides a decent explanation.

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#87

Post by fizixer »

ccmcarey wrote: post #75
fizixer wrote: post #30

Best guess: Jim Keller came in with guns blazing about how Moore's law is not dead and if you believe so you're stupid. He was a comp-architecture guy counting on the device/physics folks to deliver. They didn't, while Jim put his reputation on the line. He probably resigned in disappointment and/or protest. - Moore's law is dead at the physics level. - Exponential tech progress doesn't stop but it won't be in the fo…

Got a source for that AGI claim?

Source is me.

(Of all the naysayers who I've come across in the past many years, if a tenth of them were willing to fund me to work on AGI, by now I'd be well on my way to prove them wrong. But therein lies the rub. Why would they spend money on being proven wrong?)

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#88

Post by crawlcrawler »

fizixer wrote: post #87
ccmcarey wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source for that AGI claim?

Source is me. (Of all the naysayers who I've come across in the past many years, if a tenth of them were willing to fund me to work on AGI, by now I'd be well on my way to prove them wrong. But therein lies the rub. Why would they spend money on being proven wrong?)

Naysayers have already decided they won't invest in AGI. Perhaps if you approached yaysayers instead of naysayers, you'd have a better chance of getting funded. The only question they would have to answer is, why fund you, specifically, instead of someone else.

Re: Jim Keller to Depart Intel

#90

Post by fizixer »

crawlcrawler wrote: post #88
fizixer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source is me. (Of all the naysayers who I've come across in the past many years, if a tenth of them were willing to fund me to work on AGI, by now I'd be well on my way to prove them wrong. But therein lies the rub. Why would they spend money on being proven wrong?)

Naysayers have already decided they won't invest in AGI. Perhaps if you approached yaysayers instead of naysayers, you'd have a better chance of getting funded. The only question they would have to answer is, why fund you, specifically, instead of someone else.

That is my current strategy, i.e., to work with the yaysayers. "Why me" would be the least of my worries. My biggest hurdle was getting a Ph.D degree in a highly multidisciplinary field and that's now out of the way.
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