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

I really enjoyed this conversation with Jim. Here's the outline: 0:00 - Introduction 2:12 - Difference between a computer and a human brain 3:43 - Computer abstraction layers and parallelism 17:53 - If you run a program multiple times, do you always get the same answer? 20:43 - Building computers and teams of people 22:41 - Start from scratch every 5 years 30:05 - Moore's law is not dead 55:47 - Is superintelligence the next layer of abstraction? 1:00:02 - Is the universe a computer? 1:03:00 - Ray Kurzweil and exponential improvement in technology 1:04:33 - Elon Musk and Tesla Autopilot 1:20:51 - Lessons from working with Elon Musk 1:28:33 - Existential threats from AI 1:32:38 - Happiness and the meaning of life

Jim's super cool and also very respected in the industry. He was a big inspiration for me early on in my career. I was a fairly junior CPU performance engineer at AMD when Jim joined AMD in 2012 (he'd worked at AMD earlier in his career too). I worked on the Zen program, which was being led by Jim. I saw him at my gym one morning, deadlifting 275 lbs (or maybe more) and I went up to him and introduced myself. He was super friendly and continued to be so whenever I'd run into him. We'd exchange our personal bests in lifting. IIRC, he was in his mid 50's then. Given the similarity in our backgrounds (CPU design) and his professional achievements and his amazing discipline, it was a no-brainer for me to aspire to be like him.

Oh my god Silicon Ronin himself. Silicon Ronin has no home. He goes from impossible task to next impossible task and builds his miracles. Jim is a man of focus, commitment, sheer will... something you know very little about. I once saw him design a FPGA in a bar... with a pencil, with a fucking pencil. Then suddenly one day he asked to leave. So I made a deal with him. I gave him an impossible task. A job no one could have pulled off. To make AMD competitive again and he succeeded . The architecture choices he made that day laid the foundation of what we are now.

This is the guy behind the Ryzen series of processors which brought AMD back from the dead.

Could watch this one on a loop indefinitely. So many good tidbits in here.

I like how Jim isn't afraid to make Lex question his entire career

Jim's work has changed so many peoples lives, including mine.

One thing that's incredible is that Jim doesn't "err" or "umm" at all, or almost at all. It's crazy how present all the stuff he's taking about is in his mind.

This is a man at the cutting edge of his field.

New video is out. I've never heard of the guest. His field is microprocessors, which I've never thought of as something interesting. Turns out to be one of the wisest humans I've listened to and possibly the best hour and a half of listening experience I've had in my life. Jim is incredibly insightful about technology, science, and just the human condition in general. Thanks Lex for making stuff like this possible.

Best podcast I have heard in a while. A very refreshing guest!

Thanks Lex! I am a big fan of Jim Keller. I somewhere heard that the microprocessor industry is just this guy competing with himself. He is hired by different companies to beat the processor he had built previously at other company.

"Physics itself has been a shitshow for thousands of years." Brilliant!

These Lexures are nothing short of amazing. Don’t change anything. Your voice is yours.

"If you constantly unpacked everything for deeper understanding you'd never get anything done, and if you don't unpack understanding when you need to you'll do the wrong thing." - Jim Keller This man is truly a treasure.

Would love to see you talk with Linus Torvalds

"I've read a couple books a week for 50 years." WOW. 1:24:00

Jim Keller reminds me of an older Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley.

What an incredible cocktail of a personality! Humble and down to earth, while seamlessly savage and large as a star at the same time.

IMO, this is definitely one of the best interviews by Lex. I found Jim Keller to be a version of Elon Musk with improved communication skills and more grounded/effective approach to projects. Thank you Jim for the insights and Lex for facilitating the interview, it was truly fascinating.