Jun 15, 2023 08:00:00

An interview video released by Jim Keller, a genius engineer who has worked for Apple and AMD, talks about the future of RISC-V and his enthusiasm for open source

Jim Keller , a genius engineer who has been involved in the development of numerous chips such as Apple's A4 chip and AMD's Zen microarchitecture , will be appointed president and CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of AI chip startup Tenstorrent in 2021. I did . And in early 2023, Mr. Keller, who became CEO of Tenstorrent, was interviewed exclusively by the electronics industry media EE Times .

Jim Keller on AI, RISC-V, Tenstorrent's Move to Edge IP - EE Times
https://www.eetimes.com/jim-keller-on-ai-risc-v-tenstorrents-move-to-edge-ip/

Jim Keller on AI, RISC-V, Tenstorrent's Move to Edge IP-YouTube


Mr. Keller in recent years has a strong interest in the open source instruction set architecture ' RISC-V '. While conventional instruction set architectures were bound by licenses, open source RISC-V can be used without licenses and has the advantage of being able to participate in the development itself.

'I believe open source will win. Once people switched to Linux , no one went back to NT or OS 360. It's a one-way street. Over time, RISC-V will win.' It's technology you can own, you don't have to license it, and you won't be surprised by rising licensing fees.'

Tenstorrent is still in the early stages of business and has sold several IPs, hardware, cloud services, etc., but the team is still small. ``As a technologist, I'm very interested in engaging with smart people,'' Keller said. I have no reason to refuse,' he said.

In response to the question, 'How do you avoid competing with other companies?' Answered no.

On top of that, Mr. Keller expects that there will be a 'growth stage where competition is not an issue' for the time being, as the value of companies working on RISC-V will increase as the number of

network effect users increases. After that, competition will occur and there will be situations such as corporate integration, but it seems that Tentorrent has already achieved great success.

The interviewer also mentions that Tenstorrent has licensed AI accelerator and high performance computing (HPC) IP to Korean multinational company

LG Electronics . 'What did LG Electronics find in Tenstorrent that other IP providers didn't find?' he asks.

Keller replied that what LG Electronics wanted was ``a programmable IP that you can own, change, and meet your needs.'' IPs in the AI field have a narrow focus and are difficult to program, so it is often the case that certain IPs do not work in the next model. When Mr. Keller and others explained this problem, it seems that LG Electronics offered a partnership.

In interviews, Keller repeatedly talks about the advantages of being open source. When Mr. Keller, who used to work for a startup, was using NT for the server, he reported a bug to Microsoft because there were some tools that could not be executed due to bugs. However, it seems that the bug was not resolved even in the update one year later. On the other hand, when I had a similar problem with a peripheral device after switching to Linux, I was able to solve the problem in just an hour and a half by searching the Internet and consulting with colleagues, said Keller. says.

Keller said the advantage of open source is ``being able to actually see the details of the software,'' and said he plans to open source the AI software stack in 2023. Although it was actually scheduled to be released in 2022, the software stack was too messy, so the release was delayed to properly partition.

The original video is a 48-minute long interview, and in addition to the exchanges introduced, he talks in detail about competition with major companies and innovation.