Thursday, June 11th 2020
Jim Keller Resigns from Intel
Intel today announced that systems designer-extraordinaire Jim Keller has departed the company citing personal reasons. Whether or not this is a blow to Intel likely depends on how far Jim Keller brought their Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group throughout his two-year tenure at the company whilst serving as its Vice President. The semiconductor and chip architecture world isn't being driven by Mr. Keller himself, obviously; there are a number of architects and designers that bring the industry forward through their concerted efforts. However, it's hard to look past Jim Keller's pedigree when it comes to doing his job - if anything, AMD's Zen architecture is a testament to that, and has put Intel in the place we now see it in the CPU world.
To fill in the void, Intel has announced a reshuffling inside their Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group. Jim Keller will still be serving with Intel for the next six months as a consultant, thus easing the transition. Read the full press-release below.
Source:
Intel
To fill in the void, Intel has announced a reshuffling inside their Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group. Jim Keller will still be serving with Intel for the next six months as a consultant, thus easing the transition. Read the full press-release below.
Today, Intel announced that Jim Keller has resigned effective June 11, 2020, due to personal reasons. Intel appreciates Mr. Keller's work over the past two years helping them continue advancing Intel's product leadership and they wish him and his family all the best for the future. Intel is pleased to announce, however, that Mr. Keller has agreed to serve as a consultant for six months to assist with the transition.
Intel has a vastly experienced team of technical leaders within its Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group (TSCG) under the leadership of Dr. Venkata (Murthy) Renduchintala, group president of TSCG and chief engineering officer. As part of this transition, the following leadership changes will be made, effective immediately:
Sundari Mitra, the former CEO and founder of NetSpeed Systems and the current leader of Intel's Configurable Intellectual Property and Chassis Group, will lead a newly created IP Engineering Group focused on developing best-in-class IP.
Gene Scuteri, an accomplished engineering leader in the semiconductor industry, will head the Xeon and Networking Engineering Group.
Daaman Hejmadi will return to leading the Client Engineering Group focused on system-on-chip (SoC) execution and designing next-generation client, device and chipset products. Hejmadi has over two decades of experience leading teams delivering advanced SoCs both inside and outside of Intel.
Navid Shahriari, an experienced Intel leader, will continue to lead the Manufacturing and Product Engineering Group, which is focused on delivering comprehensive pre-production test suites and component debug capabilities to enable high-quality, high-volume manufacturing.
Intel congratulates Sundari, Gene, Daaman and Navid as we begin the next phase of our world-class engineering organization and look forward to executing on our exciting roadmap of products.
114 Comments on Jim Keller Resigns from Intel
While IPC as it is used these days is technically a misnomer and it would be more correct calling it cock-normalized performance per core or something, the understanding of what it represents is pretty universally considered the same. And Zen2 does more work per clock cycle than Skylake at this point.
Edit:
clock-normalized, obviously :)
Nope, again zen2 has a higher IPC.
Yes & if AMD hadn't stumbled with their node shrinks (pre BD) Intel bribing OEMS & what not, Intel wouldn't be where they are today. Argument goes both ways doesn't it?
What is your reasoning for it not being comparable? Especially for connecting CPUs or their cores/components?
Inter-die is largely irrelevant in this context.
First, what silicon engineering fails Jim could fix? He's an architect, not a silicon engineer.
Second, what you want to see changed at Intel the next day he left?
From AMD he left in 2015 and you see results in 2019.
So why are you expecting results in a day from Intel?
Jim never took a leave for personal reasons at his previous successful posts. He left AMD and Tesla AFTER finishing his projects. The project success would be news and then later we found out that Jim left.
Jim probably didn't have to do the job he usually does at AMD/Tesla, etc. He just came with more ideas for them to push IPC even more, because Intel already has a great team of architects that gave us Core, Nehalem, Sandy Bridge. I also believe Ocean Cove was already on the tables when he joined in 2018 simply because we need to understand the context.
If Intel didn't have fab issues, they should have had the following:
2016: Cannon Lake
2017: Ice Lake (launched in 2019)
2018: Tigerlake (willow cove)
2019: Alder Lake (Golden Cove)
2020: Meteor Lake (Ocean Cove)
You can imagine that in 2015 they didn't really expected massive issues with 10nm, so design teams were already working on Golden maybe even Ocean Cove cores.
We don't know what happened in the meantime, if they stopped the projects, if they paused them or if they just rethought the strategy and said, hey, since we're going to stagnate for a few years, lets do a clean sheet Core and come back with a bang. That is my opinion, that they chose the bang option and started work in 2017. By 2018 they saw Jim is free and they probably needed some extra ideas (getting the rumoured 80% higher IPC vs Skylake is a massive task) to get this new core designed. So my 2020, Ocean Cove should be already developed with design/verification in late stages. It will take one more year probably until tape out, so mid 2021 tapeout and release in mid 2022, if everything goes well.
Just read this: www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/intel-sunny-cove-successor-significantly-bigger-jim-keller.259653/
Quote: "Keller describes Intel's next big CPU core as being "significantly bigger" than "Sunny Cove," with its 800-wide instruction window, and "massive" data- and branch-predictors, to put Intel back on a linear performance growth trajectory between generations. Keller also commented on this being a "mindset change" at Intel, which over the past decade, only delivered minor IPC increments between generations, and focused on other areas, such as efficiency"
Thank you for your post! Was fantastic....
I felt quite alone in here on the Cove topics...
I find it very strange others aren't fallowing Intel Cove projects... They quite important.
Ocean Cove is or was the most important project was tide to Meteor Lake which is Intel first 7nm+ CPUs launch that's now over 2 years behind......
I'm still hoping for Q4 2022 launch but most likely 2023
Before that....we have 11th gen (Rocket Lake) Willow Cove on H5 LGA 1200 socket. 8 cores and Just a little IPC update.
Willow Cove is replacing SkyLake Q1 2021boom...finally the first desktop Cove update.
So much in the works starting 2021 with two series in the same year....
Bad time to buy 10th generation knowing what's coming.
Jim Keller was with Ocean Cove project even more advanced 13th generation 7nm+ (Meteor Lake)
Crazy extreme performance coming...thanks to Jim Keller
Competition is healthy....and guys like Jim Keller play on both sides is pretty amazing.
I wonder if Jim Keller would ever go with Nvidia? would be interesting...
Ringbus doesn't scale.
Mesh is a hot garbage mess.
Q1 2021
11th gen (Rocket Lake) Willows Cove is the last 14nm++
Intel new 16 Cores big.Little architecture on new H6 LGA 1700 socket.
Now moves too...10nm++
Q4 2021
12th gen (Alder Lake) Golden Cove
Q4 2022
Which brings us to Jim Keller Ocean Cove project on 13th generation (Meteor Lake) 7nm+
Basically Intel Meteor Lake is Intel Zen2 aka version....
13th gen (Meteor Lake) is the coming fix to what everyone is complaining about... Ultra low power, double Cores, 7nm+, Ultra IPC.... More than 80 IPC Gain over 10th generation SkyLake IPC.
I'm really curious how far Jim Keller Ocean cove project is right now...