Intel's CPU development department was more or less dead for years, so Jim has a lot of work to do. If that's where he's going, anyway. It's also possible he was hired for some special task that's not related to Intel's bread and butter CPUs.

Kaarme:

It's also possible he was hired for some special task that's not related to Intel's bread and butter CPUs.

Gluing CPUs together 😀

The Empire prepares to strike back. They were supposed to launch a completely new architecture beyond 2020 maybe this is why Jim comes into play.

His next position: CEO at Coca Cola...

IT mercenaries ............

Kaarme:

Intel's CPU development department was more or less dead for years, so Jim has a lot of work to do. If that's where he's going, anyway. It's also possible he was hired for some special task that's not related to Intel's bread and butter CPUs.

I think he was hired for Ocean Cove - Intel is currently doing an engineering/hiring ramp for it.

Kaarme:

Intel's CPU development department was more or less dead for years.

Um....what? That's a good chunk of their entire budget.

NaturalViolence:

Um....what? That's a good chunk of their entire budget.

Maybe on paper. But considering how amazingly little changed from the first Core CPUs to the latest iteration, how much did they need to invest in R&D? Even the bloody Meltdown and Spectre remained unchanged from generation to generation. I'd say the R&D was spent elsewhere, like the process node shrinking. The iGPU development must have taken more than the CPU development. Of course it still takes people and resources to shrink the CPU and add new features like lolptane, but not as much as coming up with something new, plus they don't need any gurus to keep doing the same old stuff.

Damm this guy is A lot like me bounces around from job to job except iam no cpu designer. After Intel Jim runs for President lol. I still haven't found something I like doing and iam 41.

nz3777:

Damm this guy is A lot like me bounces around from job to job except iam no cpu designer. After Intel Jim runs for President lol. I still haven't found something I like doing and iam 41.

I hear you loud and clear... this could be an entire new post that would go on for many years....

Kaarme:

I'd say the R&D was spent elsewhere, like 24/7 partying, thinking up daft ideas and other larking about.

Thought this would seem more appropriate 😀

I was hoping it said he reached his final form. Looks like, now that there's actually some competition, Intel might finally be aiming for more than 0.0002% increase in performance per generation.

Really? First AMD GPU Indian dude back stabs AMD and joins INTEL and now JIM Keller!?!?!?!!?! INTEL can't pull illegal moves to hurt AMD they just buy their workers. INTEL got lazy and needs talent and now they are stealing AMD workers, just great. Looking back INTEL was never great they only succeeded by monopoly moves.

Dimitrios1983:

Really? First AMD GPU Indian dude back stabs AMD and joins INTEL and now JIM Keller!?!?!?!!?! INTEL can't pull illegal moves to hurt AMD they just buy their workers. INTEL got lazy and needs talent and now they are stealing AMD workers, just great. Looking back INTEL was never great they only succeeded by monopoly moves.

From Conroe to Sandy Bridge, Intel were great. Sure they were guilty of nasty anti-competitive practices, but from Conroe to SB they ruled the roost in pure performance that AMD just couldnt match. After SB, they went into an 8 year slumber and AMD blind-sided them with Zen.

NaturalViolence:

Um....what? That's a good chunk of their entire budget.

And yet its been completely dead.

It's actually even more dead.. in the earnings call today they said 10nm volume ramp won't occur until 2019 now. One of Intel's largest advantages has always been it's foundry.. Now one of AMD's greatest strengths is being foundry-less as they have the ability to shop to Samsung/TSMC/GF to get the best performance/cost, all of whom are starting to pass Intel and will definitely pass them in 2020 with 5nm.

Kaarme:

Maybe on paper. But considering how amazingly little changed from the first Core CPUs to the latest iteration, how much did they need to invest in R&D? Even the bloody Meltdown and Spectre remained unchanged from generation to generation. I'd say the R&D was spent elsewhere, like the process node shrinking. The iGPU development must have taken more than the CPU development. Of course it still takes people and resources to shrink the CPU and add new features like lolptane, but not as much as coming up with something new, plus they don't need any gurus to keep doing the same old stuff.

Aura89:

And yet its been completely dead.

Do you not understand how hard it is to achieve a 10% IPC gain on a modern uarch? It takes billions in R&D since all of the "low hanging fruit" have already been picked (branch prediction, macro/micro op fusion, register renaming, etc.). Which is why 10% is the standard. If you look at samsung and AMD it's the same. The optimizations needed to do this stuff are insanely complex. People here seem to think that because Zen has a 61% higher IPC than it's predecessor that means AMD is improving faster than Intel but what they don't realize is this rate of improvement is actually consistent with Intel. There were 5 years of time between the release of piledriver and Zen. At 10% improvement per year that works out to....yup, 61%. But somehow 10% per year from Intel is "pathetic" while 61% after 5 years from AMD is "amazing". Intel CPU development is "dead" and "lol what are they doing with all that money?" while AMD is "leading the charge". Now Zen+ is out and it's 10% faster than Zen just as we would expect. So why is it that in the review thread the same people that complain about Intel's "small" annual performance improvements are praising Zen+? Why are these people still calling these performance improvements from Intel pathetic when AMD has now shown us a development roadmap that seems to be the same slow iterative annual release tick/tock cycle that Intel uses? This is not a fair opinion to hold, this is hypocrisy plain and simple. I'm sorry to be an asshole but there is no nice way to say this. You guys need to take some electronic engineering courses at a university to get an understanding of just how hard this stuff actually is. Or at the very least read some relevant books. I highly recommend starting with Jon Stokes "Inside the Machine" for people with limited understanding on existing trends in cpu design. I'm tired of seeing people scoff at what could possibly be the most complicated field of engineering that exists in the modern age. Even worse is that scoffing is only directed at one company it seems.

OH your a CPU engineer! To answer your question, INTEL is the Evil Empire and has monopolized the CPU landscape till Zen. Most feel Intel overcharged for the simple 10% annual improvements, cause AMD had nothing to compete. Where have you been if you know so much about the CPU but so little about people? That is the General opinion of Intel, not mine but you did ask. I'm sure now you'll copy n paste something else to try n fire me up.

@NaturalViolence : Do you work for intel? It looks like you do since you claim that they achieve 10% IPC improvement from year to year. Such claim is true only if one shifts original IPC into intel's "Instructions per Core" or per core performance improvement. Because that 10% is only if you factor year to year clock improvements. If you took Sandy (2nd generation) which could clock to 5GHz and compared it to today's 8th gen at same 5GHz... sad story. At real IPC field, intel did poor job since inception of current cores they use.

NaturalViolence:

I'm sorry to be an asshole but there is no nice way to say this. You guys need to take some electronic engineering courses at a university to get an understanding of just how hard this stuff actually is. Or at the very least read some relevant books. I highly recommend starting with Jon Stokes "Inside the Machine" for people with limited understanding on existing trends in cpu design. I'm tired of seeing people scoff at what could possibly be the most complicated field of engineering that exists in the modern age. Even worse is that scoffing is only directed at one company it seems.

Perhaps you should consider the fact Intel refused, yes refused, to increase the mainstream core country for a decade, generation after generation. That was the primary reason why the CPU scene was so dead. Then suddenly, when AMD released Zen and it turned out to be good, Intel got a 6-core out in the same bloody year it had already released the latest stupid 4-core, that is, last year with Kaby Lake followed by Coffee Lake. They got Coffee Lake out so fast, and you can bet your hat that it is fast because Kaby desktop is indeed also a 2017 CPU. So, why didn't they go 6-core in 2014, for example? It's certainly not because it's so hard, as you suggested, because they managed to do it in a little more than half a year after Kaby's release. Of course the development took longer, but that changes nothing because it always does and they know it. Like Fox2232 already said, the generational performance increase was largely thanks to clocks (I know that personally, having gone from Ivy i5k to Sky i5k, and the performance difference is mostly due to the clock difference). It's fine in a certain sense because getting the clocks up is also important. But there's simply no excuse for not adding more cores when increasing the clocks becomes difficult. Well, no excuse aside from not wanting to spend money in R&D when the money can instead be pocketed by the bosses and stock owners. Intel is a financial corporation, atfer all, not a technology corporation.