Recently, Jim Keller, a star chip architect who has been with Intel for 3 months, accepted an interview with foreign media VentureBeat. During this period, he talked about his own experience in joining the semiconductor industry, his views on the semiconductor industry, and his new role: Intel technology. Senior Vice President of System Architecture and Client Division and General Manager of Chip Engineering Division.
People think that faster chips and Moore's Law are a matter of course. Considering the history of semiconductors and the achievements of chip makers such as Intel, which has been around for 50 years, this process seems to have been inevitable.
But in fact, the advancement of chip technology requires hard work and smart talent. This is why Intel announced the recruitment of Jim Keller as senior vice president in April this year. He will lead the company's chip engineering research and development work, including building a A set of chips that handle almost any task within the system.
Keller's achievements in chip architecture are unmatched. He can define the appearance of a complete set of chips. The chip design is more and more complex, sometimes it takes thousands of engineers to study the details together, just like designing a flow of people in a 3D metropolis. So complicated.
Linley Gwennap, senior chip analyst at Linley Group, believes that Keller may bring a new look to Intel's many years of x86 architecture, or research the next generation of AI artificial intelligence chips, or integrate more chips into a single system. For the $412 billion semiconductor industry, These are big moves.
Chips designed by Intel architects are constantly being built from billion-dollar factories
Keller is not the star of everyone's pursuit, but the whole industry is very concerned about his job-hopping. He has a prominent resume in chip architecture design.
His brilliant career started at DEC and played an important role in the design of DEC Alpha processors in the 1990s. In 1998, he joined AMD, developed the Athlon K7 processor, led the K8 project, and beat Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip. For the first time, AMD has gained a foothold in the lucrative server chip space.
When the Internet bubble expanded in 1999, he joined the startup company SiByte, which was acquired by Broadcom for $2 billion in 2000. After the dot-com bubble burst, the deal depreciated greatly, and Broadcom’s own rapid development also stagnated.
In 2004, Keller switched to P.A. Semi, a startup focused on mobile processor development, as chief engineer, and then went to Apple in early 2008.
Apple also acquired P.A. Semi's team and continued to develop A-series processors for the iPhone. This is part of Steve Jobs's strategy of getting rid of the chip maker's strategy, which has achieved significant results, saving Apple billions of dollars.
In 2012, Keller predicted that the change is coming, and the development of PC processors is slowing down. He rejoined AMD and led the development of a new microarchitecture, codenamed 'Zen'. AMD released its first Zen-based chip in 2017, and for the first time in many years, it quickly grabbed shares from Intel.
In 2015, Keller left AMD again. Join Tesla , Developed autopilot engineering technology for the company's electric vehicles. (Obviously, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was tired of spending money on NVIDIA's AI chips.)
Now, the famous processor architect has finally joined Intel, the world's largest processor manufacturer.
The following is the actual record of this interview, slightly sorted out.
Jim Keller, current senior vice president of Intel
Question: Some people think that big companies should be able to design their own chips. Others think that it is OK to let chip makers like Intel. What do you think?
Jim Keller: I have been in this line for a long time, vertical integration and horizontal integration have been seen. In fact, thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi, has been changing. Different times have different reasons.
In terms of technological change, we are at some turning point. Mobile is still the main theme of the industry, to reduce power consumption. The expansion of the cloud is amazing. We are in the AI revolution, you can look at how many startups in this field.
But one thing is the same, the fab is really very difficult to do. The design of high-end processors is very difficult to do. Combining countless modules into differentiated, high-value processors is very difficult to do.
You look at the current semiconductor industry, the high-end continues to grow, the mid-end is swaying. Some are standard products from big companies, some are custom-designed custom chips. In the past three years, this situation has changed several times. But the constant is that Super difficult problems require real experts to solve.
Question: How do you think about Intel before joining Intel? What do you think they need?
Jim Keller: I want to say it is a bit different. For a long time, I only know that Intel is a company, a competitor, and a supplier. I am very curious about Intel's corporate culture.
We all know that the world of computing is changing. The old-fashioned host has disappeared, and then there is a minicomputer, then a PC, a server. Now, we are on the cloud. How long does it take for cloud computing to take? I still remember when IBM proposed Grid They don't know how to make it or sell it. It took 20 years.
Mobile change is seeping into the entire ecosystem. The Internet is too broad, and AI is about the same. To me, I am here to participate in the next wave of computational change.
Question: Do you think there is hope for more success in chip design? People always say that Moore's Law is coming to an end.
Jim Keller: That is of course. I have attended an AI conference. Someone asked me: 'Has Moore's Law been over?' They listed various reasons.
I said: 'I have been doing this for 35 years. The saying that Moore's Law will end in 5-10 years is always there. 'I will never believe this kind of ghost in my life. I don't worry about Moore's Law at all.
In the face of these challenges, if you look back at the history of the chip, it is very interesting to look at the history. We really did not expect the arrival of flat metal, but it really solved the big problem. Copper also solved the big problem. Low K dielectric Solved the big problem. The larger 12-inch diameter wafers, the current fabs are working in a closed space, which is super cool. Now, EUV EUV lithography is coming, and there are stereo transistors.
Intel has always been a leader in many major Moore's Law innovations. People often ask: 'What's wrong? The gas is exhausted?'
We will say: 'There are millions of people working hard every day. They are all faithful followers of Moore's Law. They are collectively promoting technological developments such as lithography, chemical materials, design, packaging, etc.' Future changes There are a lot more.
I am not worried about Moore's Law, it will continue to move forward. Although there will be some twists and turns, it may take several years to get everything going.
Moore's Law is not easy, but the pace is steady.
Question: AI seems to have started a new round of competition, a new competition.
Jim Keller: A set of algorithms can solve problems quickly and is universal, which is quite new. This is also the most attractive place. How does neural network output complex information? How to calculate? This is a very interesting question. , the demand for computing is very high.
The calculation method of AI and the classic scalar calculation, vector calculation, and graphic calculation are all different. It can be said that the difference is very large and the application is very extensive. Of course, now everything must be said to be somewhat confusing. Whenever there is such a change, especially It's a change from hardware to top-level software stack, and a lot of people will be involved.
Obviously, Intel has been investing in this area for a long time, most of the AI is still based on the Intel platform. We have achieved great performance improvements in both hardware and software. This is very interesting.
Question: AI may take more than ten years to fully show up, right?
Jim Keller: That's right, it's definitely a big change. You can see that people who just graduated from college wrote a language that is completely different from four years ago. This wave will sweep the entire computer world. AI and neural networks are many The aspect is earth-shaking technology. It's really interesting.
Question: Intel is rich in resources. You have seen other big companies. Is Intel the biggest?
Jim Keller: Yes, Intel definitely has enough engineers. There is no doubt about it. The excellent technology and the corporate culture of cooperation make me feel incredible. I have participated in many meetings, you have to solve a problem, you need an expert, and then There are 50 people, they are very good. It is very fun.
Question: They may make you a CEO.
Jim Keller: (Laughter) I doubt it! There are many other smart people here. The people I met in the management committee are very good, not someone is particularly prominent.
Question: There is still a lot to do at Intel. The new x86 architecture seems to be a good idea, as well as the AI chip. You may not reveal anything.
Jim Keller: We have a large, excellent Intel Core product line, which is very large in terms of performance and frequency. I think there are many interesting innovations in data and applications. The team that built Intel Atom's compact computing core has also achieved great results in these years. Progress, I am studying their results.
Strategically, how to determine what you need, when you need it, the first is the methodological problem, and then what is the problem.
Intel is already preparing some very cool changes. We are evaluating all possible applications, and what is of interest to customers, there will be more moves.
Question: I have said that the interesting thing about chip design is that it is not like designing a car engine. Sometimes you can play a lot of subjective initiative.
Jim Keller: The chip design is very interesting, because some of them look like the work I did 30 years ago. The other part is very different.
The first branch predictor I made was 2KB SRAM, which is now unknown to 10MB or 100MB. The scale of these products has changed radically. The number of transistors in modern cores is as many as the number of transistors used in the entire supercomputing center. The scale difference is too big.
Question: What stage is the chip currently in? Is there a better analogy that can help people understand?
Jim Keller: I don't know. I am also looking for an appropriate analogy. My motto is: Constant pursuit of bigger, higher, faster, smaller.
One of Intel's largest chip factories
Question: As an architect, are you at the top of these abstraction layer pyramids? Are there only a few people doing the work like you, the more people go to the next?
Jim Keller: I tried to pay attention to a lot of things. I saw many experts in the field know more than me. I have become a generalist. A series of complex expertise is very deep - not so hierarchical.
There are independent things, there are software experts, floating point experts, memory architecture experts and branch predictor experts. We then integrate some organizations, tribal knowledge and expertise.
I have a long enough career and many opportunities. I am an expert in many fields, allowing me to solve problems with many different levels of people, but this is not the case.
From an implementation perspective, there are different levels of teams. We use these IPs to develop such client components, and a vice president leads an employee to do this.
But at the technical level, you will find a fairly broad collaborative environment. This kind of dynamic is very interesting. Intel is very well organized in this regard.
Question: In the process of organizing all things, do you sometimes feel that you are designing an atomic bomb?
Jim Keller: I don't know. I usually joked that at DEC, our custom chip design was like building a wall. You started laying bricks, and halfway through it, you found that you need to change the bottom brick. I am more like an architect. , not the atomic bomb designer.
Intel is huge, with different products and talents, but technology is used in so many real scenes, unlike atomic bomb technology, more like thousands of people trying to develop computers to make the world a better place.
Question: From the outside, I think we all expect you to bring some strategic big moves.
Jim Keller: I am involved in a lot of things. Sometimes I think about it when I look back. 'Wow, this is amazing.' But when I do this, I feel that it is just the next job to do. Apple's story is just ' Let us make the best mobile phone chip as much as possible'.
it's here, We will make the best possible server and client, and develop great graphics chips. We are deeply involved in the artificial intelligence revolution. There are a lot of interesting questions, we will do something interesting in this area.
The system architecture is really interesting, especially at Intel.
