Jim Keller Joins Intel to Lead Silicon Engineering | Hacker News Reader

Jim Keller Joins Intel to Lead Silicon Engineering

newsroom.intel.com

30 pointskasabali10 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928975.

IMO these two are different and not a dupe. That article (and discussion) is about Tesla while in this one the real news is Jim Keller joining Intel.

Man this guys career should be exhibit #1 when asking if Non compete clauses should be valid. I mean, he's worked for most of hte big names in silicon design during his career.

Imagine if he was stopped from moving from DEC to AMD early in his career?

From Wikipedia.....

> Jim Keller worked at DEC until 1998, where he was involved in designing the Alpha 21164 and 21264 processors.

> In 1998 he moved to AMD, where he worked to launch the AMD Athlon (K7) processor and was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture,[17] which also included designing the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect mainly used for multiprocessor communications.

> In 1999, he left AMD to work at SiByte to design MIPS-based processors for 1 Gbit/s network interfaces and other devices. In November 2000, SiByte was acquired by Broadcom,[19] where he continued as chief architect[9] until 2004.[3]

> In 2004 he moved to serve as the Vice President of Engineering at P.A. Semi,[3][11] a company specializing in low-power mobile processors.[4] P.A. Semi was acquired by Apple in 2008, and Keller followed,[6][17] becoming part of a team to design the Apple A4 and A5 system-on-a-chip mobile processors. These processors were used in several Apple products, including iPhone 4, 4S, iPad and iPad 2.

> In August 2012, Jim Keller returned to AMD, where his primary task was to design a new generation microarchitecture[5][11][15] called Zen.[14] After years of being unable to compete with Intel in the high-end CPU market, the new generation of Zen processors is hoped to restore AMD's position in the high-end x86-64 processor market.[3][13] On September 18, 2015, Keller departed from AMD to pursue other opportunities, ending his three-year employment at AMD.[20]

> In January 2016, Keller joined Tesla, Inc. as Vice President of Autopilot Hardware Engineering.[1]

> In April 2018, Keller joined Intel.

Non-competes are illegal/unenforceable in California.

I think the problem is that the vast majority of non-competes just end up preventing people from making reasonable decisions with their careers. There are people like Keller where is would seem that some form on non-compete should exist (considering he's come to be known as an invaluable employee), but the vast majority of employees (regardless of what they'd like to think) don't pose some kind of existential threat to the company as sharing trade secrets and intellectual property has nothing to do with non-compete. Non-competes seem to just get used to prevent employees from seeking out (or being sought out by) a better job if their current one doesn't suit them.

One example of an overzealous non-compete I saw when I lived in Alabama (a place with practically zero restrictions on the scope or duration of non-compete agreements) was that of a close friend's mom. She was a telecom tech working for Bellsouth when AT&T bought them out in early 2007. Most of the local employees got laid off and at least she had a non-compete contract saying she couldn't work in anything related to telecom for two years in the geographic region - and it was valid whether you quit, got fired, or got laid off.

I tend to be of the opinion where if the loss of an individual poses an existential risk to a company, the company should do everything they can to make sure that person wants to stay. I'd also consider it a failing of a company if a single individual gained that much singular importance.

Fascinating that Keller was essentially brought in to stop gap Tesla's loss / end of relationship with Mobileye who previously supplied the EyeQ3 chipset that was the core of Tesla's autopilot.

At the time speculation was the CEO of Mobileye was uncomfortable in how Tesla pushed the limits of autopilot marketing and use (1) - they had always defined EyeQ3 as a "eyes on" technology (2).

And then last year Intel paid ~$15b to buy out mobileye (3) which gave them an immediate and broad entry into one of the most exciting chipset markets.

Keller moving over to Intel with the resources of mobileye, and a vision forged from executing Tesla's own efforts seems like a considerable coup for Intel.

(1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/mobileye-ends-partnership-with-...

(2) https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/evolution-eyeq-chip/

(3) https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/13/reports-intel-buying-mobil...

It doesn't appear that he'll be working on that, MobilEye is an "Intel company" an autonomous (pun intended) subsidiary not a division of Intel, they don't even manufacture their chips at Intel fabs.

JK is joining Intel proper looks like he'll be working on SoC design.

I'm also not sure if the analysis that JK was there to bridge the gap was correct they've bridged that gap with NVIDIA in fact they've already switched to NVIDIA before the fallout with MobilEye which is likely the main reason why MobilEye didn't took it quietly since they were already sleeping in separate beds.

The rumor was always that JK was joined Tesla to design and build their own AI SoC and doesn't look like it panned out, hopefully for the better I don't think Tesla should add ASIC design and manufacturing to their list of "achievements".

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during salary negotiations.

Dude's in his 50s and has been at the helm developing great products that have pushed the limit of what microprocessors can do. I wish these companies would allow more blog-style posts of how they overcome difficult problems; but Intel's notorious about disclosing what goes on behind the curtains as we've seen with Spectre+Meltdown. Makes you wonder how much further along we could be in this space if NDAs allowed people talk more about what they've done after leaving their previous company/companies.

very curious if anyone has info on what he will be working on if it's any specific chip family. mainline x86 ? GEN gpus ? phis ? something else ?

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