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

Lex Fridman · interview · Watch on YouTube

Computer architecture & CPUsTech pioneers & interviewsSemiconductors & chip manufacturing

What it is

Lex Fridman interviews legendary chip architect Jim Keller about Moore's Law, microprocessor design, and first-principles thinking. Keller draws on his work at AMD, Apple, Tesla and Intel, discussing instruction sets, transistor budgets, and self-driving.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN cites it whenever chip architecture, Moore's Law or CPU design comes up, as an unusually deep and accessible view from a top designer.

  • 8 people recommended it
  • 8 different months
  • 4 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2023

What HN commenters said

  1. “I was stunned by Jim's total command of Computer Architecture, and his deep insights about the subject.”

    Jim Keller's deep insights on computer architecture

    GeorgeTirebiter, 2020-02 · Strong recommendation · in “How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?”

  2. “Loved the episodes with Jim Keller [0] and Brian Kernighan [1] as well.”

    Great episode of Lex Fridman's show

    Pandabob, 2020-12 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2020?”

  3. “skip to 1:20:50 of this (effing amazing) interview”

    Keller's impressions of working with Elon

    robocat, 2022-09 · Strong recommendation · in “Korean nuclear fusion reactor achieves 100M°C for 30 seconds”

  4. “Jim Keller was on the Lex Fridman podcast twice [1, 2] and it was awesome.”

    Keller interview with Lex Fridman

    WestCoastJustin, 2023-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Second IC – Homemade 1000 transistor array chip”

  5. “legendary chip designer”

    Chip architecture is hard, from legendary designer Keller

    spectramax, 2020-03 · Recommendation · in “New AMD side channel attacks discovered, impacts Zen architecture”

  6. “I found this to be an excellent explanation for what is going on in these x86 CPUs that makes them so powerful”

    Explains what makes modern x86 CPUs powerful

    bob1029, 2020-07 · Recommendation · in “Apple Silicon: The Passing of Wintel”

  7. “For more details about Jim's thoughts I recommend this interview”

    Jim Keller's thoughts on Moore's Law

    empiricus, 2020-09 · Recommendation · in “Huang’s Law Is the New Moore’s Law, and Explains Why Nvidia Wants Arm”

  8. “There's a great podcast/interview from the x86 specification author”

    Interview with the x86 spec author on instruction sets

    est31, 2020-10 · Recommendation · in “ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: jim keller, moore's law, cpu design, x86, transistors, lex fridman

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