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

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

February 5, 2020

Duration

1h 34m

Channel

Lex Fridman Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Jim Keller is a legendary microprocessor engineer, having worked at AMD, Apple, Tesla, and now Intel. He's known for his work on the AMD K7, K8, K12 and Zen microarchitectures, Apple A4, A5 processors, and co-author of the specifications for the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect. This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it & use code "LexPodcast": Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 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 CONNECT:

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🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lex Fridman

  host

• Jim Keller

  guest

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, featuring Lex Fridman and Jim Keller, Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, and First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #70 explores jim Keller dissects chips, brains, Moore’s Law and human meaning Lex Fridman and legendary chip designer Jim Keller explore how computers are built from first principles, from atoms and transistors up through instruction sets, microarchitecture, and large-scale systems. Keller explains modern CPU and GPU design, out‑of‑order execution, branch prediction, and the practical reality of Moore’s Law as stacked S‑curves of innovation rather than a single trend. They discuss AI, neural networks, autonomous driving, and why computation’s exponential growth keeps unlocking fundamentally new kinds of algorithms and applications. The conversation widens into organizational design, first‑principles thinking, consciousness, superintelligence, and Keller’s skeptical but optimistic view of existential AI risk and the broader meaning of technological progress.

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