Ryzen Architect Jim Keller Joins Intel

sideways14a · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:02

Wow, Intels .. maybe last... maybe not... hope.

But one way or the other this is a massive massive massive kick in the baws for intel.

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:03

Gerard said:
Not sure why that's a bad thing really, people throw "blame" at Raja for Vega but really they were producing a dual purpose gpu with Vega due to budget limitations. Making the best of what they had to work with at the time. It's still a good gpu 3 years later.

Raja's last GPU at AMD was the Vega 64.

Once gone it took AMD less than 2 years to come up with a GPU that is much smaller, has 40% less shaders, doesn't have HBM and is still 20% faster. Matching if not exceeding Nvidia's most up to date Shader IPC.

AMD's last Great GPU was the 290X, then Raja came along and we got a Bulldozer GPU..... sorry but....

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:14

humbug said:
Raja's last GPU at AMD was the Vega 64.

Once gone it took AMD less than 2 years to come up with a GPU that is much smaller, has 40% less shaders, doesn't have HBM and is still 20% faster. Matching if not exceeding Nvidia's most up to date Shader IPC.

AMD's last Great GPU was the 290X, then Raja came along and we got a Bulldozer GPU..... sorry but....

You do realise that faildozer came out in 2011, was a bust and from that point on they had to manage their resources better? Koduri only rejoined amd in 2013 so he likely had very little input into 290x and at that point fiji had been in development about 2 years. He obviously had more input into Vega but that was at a time where amd's stock price had tanked badly so they had to put all their eggs in one basket and do a gpu that wasn't a "pure gaming" gpu.

Navi came out in 2019 and seeing as it takes around 4 years to get a gpu out it's fair to say he had involvement in that gpu as well as it came out 2 years after he left, yet people on here seem to think he had nothing to do with it.

Placing all the blame on Raja is delusional, they had finite resources to work with and done the best they could with what they had. It wasn't ideal but it was still a good gpu in its own right, just because it didn't kick the 1080ti square in the nuts people see it as a failure.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:17

TBF we don't know if RDNA1 was something he started,after all he was involved with the R300.

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:18

Gerard said:
You do realise that faildozer came out in 2011, was a bust and from that point on they had to manage their resources better? Koduri only rejoined amd in 2013 so he likely had very little input into 290x and at that point fiji had been in development about 2 years. He obviously had more input into Vega but that was at a time where amd's stock price had tanked badly so they had to put all their eggs in one basket and do a gpu that wasn't a "pure gaming" gpu.

Navi came out in 2019 and seeing as it takes around 4 years to get a gpu out it's fair to say he had involvement in that gpu as well as it came out 2 years after he left, yet people on here seem to think he had nothing to do with it.

Placing all the blame on Raja is delusional, they had finite resources to work with and done the best they could with what they had. It wasn't ideal but it was still a good gpu in its own right, just because it didn't kick the 1080ti square in the nuts people see it as a failure.

AMD was short of money, you're right, they no longer are and i think they will come back with a bang this coming round.

Navi is an incomplete architecture, rushed out while it was "good enough" to put something on the market as it was desperately needed. i seriously don't think Raja had anything to do with it, its had 2 years of development time and its good enough, it will be complete by the end of this year.

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:26

humbug said:
AMD was short of money, you're right, they no longer are and i think they will come back with a bang this coming round.

Navi is an incomplete architecture, rushed out while it was "good enough" to put something on the market as it was desperately needed. i seriously don't think Raja had anything to do with it, its had 2 years of development time and its good enough, it will be complete by the end of this year.

Navi was on roadmaps from around 2015, a full 2 years before he left and it was obviously in the design stages long before that, so the chances of their lead guy not working on it are slim to none.

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:36

Gerard said:
Navi was on roadmaps from around 2015, a full 2 years before he left and it was obviously in the design stages long before that, so the chances of their lead guy not working on it are slim to none.

2016, it also said it was set to arrive in 2018, it was a year late, keep that in mind Lisa Sue set about Vega right after he left and increased its IPC by 58%.

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 00:44

humbug said:
2016, it also said it was set to arrive in 2018, it was a year late, keep that in mind Lisa Sue set about Vega right after he left and increased its IPC by 58%.

Ipc for gpus doesn't really factor in much vs other areas. longish read on it here.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/two-misconceptions-about-ipc-and-gpus.2476552/

KentMan · 12 Jun 2020 at 06:20

Sorry will never forget the stories of Raja apparently being a proper Diva, wanting to break RTG away and do his own thing, and that video of him at the Vega launch with a fat cigar was laughable.

Apparently he condoned the poor volta nonsense and make some noise rubbish as well.

Multiple pictures of him cuddling a pc with a vega GPU etc... The guys a total joke and if Intel are investing their time into him things are probably even worse than most people feared.

Wouldn't surprise me if Raja is the main behind the scenes reason for Jim Keller going, Intel probably has Keller saying they need to do xxx to move ahead and Raja in the other ear saying no no no lets make some noise and crank up skylake!! Poor Ryzen

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 13:03

KentMan said:
Sorry will never forget the stories of Raja apparently being a proper Diva, wanting to break RTG away and do his own thing, and that video of him at the Vega launch with a fat cigar was laughable.

Apparently he condoned the poor volta nonsense and make some noise rubbish as well.

Multiple pictures of him cuddling a pc with a vega GPU etc... The guys a total joke and if Intel are investing their time into him things are probably even worse than most people feared.

Wouldn't surprise me if Raja is the main behind the scenes reason for Jim Keller going, Intel probably has Keller saying they need to do xxx to move ahead and Raja in the other ear saying no no no lets make some noise and crank up skylake!! Poor Ryzen

You're missing out on a few key parts of the story.

When Vega was in development AMD signed a deal to make a GPU for the PS5, that GPU was Navi and reportedly 2 thirds of the engineering team from Vega were transferred over to work on Navi. So not only was Vega being built under a strict monetary budget, but also a large manpower deficit. It's obvious Vega didn't turn out the way it was intended so they had to make the best they could have what they had to work with.

Vega was pulling double duty trying to be a gaming GPU and a pro level GPU for cad, deep learning etc. All under the shadow of a limited budget and at around the halfway point in its development limited engineering power.

When Koduri went to Intel he made a point of mentioning that his engineering team was around 4500 people, which pretty much confirms the talk that most of his engineers were transferred over to the Navi project. Was also mentioned by people who had worked at AMD.

Poor Volta etc is marketing and probably didn't have any input from the actual GPU division at all.

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 13:31

Gerard said:
You're missing out on a few key parts of the story.

When Vega was in development AMD signed a deal to make a GPU for the PS5, that GPU was Navi and reportedly 2 thirds of the engineering team from Vega were transferred over to work on Navi. So not only was Vega being built under a strict monetary budget, but also a large manpower deficit. It's obvious Vega didn't turn out the way it was intended so they had to make the best they could have what they had to work with.

Vega was pulling double duty trying to be a gaming GPU and a pro level GPU for cad, deep learning etc. All under the shadow of a limited budget and at around the halfway point in its development limited engineering power.

When Koduri went to Intel he made a point of mentioning that his engineering team was around 4500 people, which pretty much confirms the talk that most of his engineers were transferred over to the Navi project. Was also mentioned by people who had worked at AMD.

Poor Volta etc is marketing and probably didn't have any input from the actual GPU division at all.

Well you keep the Raja faith, i think his DG GPU's are going to be crap.

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 13:43

humbug said:
Well you keep the Raja faith, i think his DG GPU's are going to be crap.

I'm not keeping any Raja faith, simply looking at events how they unfolded instead of simply saying he designed a gpu that wasn't up-to par, when there were far more factors involved in what actually happened totally out of his control that conveniently get overlooked. Money, design and engineering are probably the 3 of the most important factors involved, and out of those 3 2 were limited, those being money and engineering.

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 13:44

Gerard said:
I'm not keeping any Raja faith, simply looking at events how they unfolded instead of simply saying he designed a gpu that wasn't up-to par, when there were far more factors involved in what actually happened totally out of his control that conveniently get overlooked.

You can't possibly think he was a success at AMD?

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 13:51

humbug said:
You can't possibly think he was a success at AMD?

Didn't say he was, but the facts are he was limited in his options by budget and manpower. Had AMD been in a healthy state when Vega was in the works it could have been a very different product. It's easy to point the blame but it's not as if he was responsible for AMD being in the shape it was in at the time, which obviously had a drastic effect on the GPU division as most resources were shifted to developing ryzen.

Martini1991 · 12 Jun 2020 at 13:57

humbug said:
Raja's last GPU at AMD was the Vega 64.

Once gone it took AMD less than 2 years to come up with a GPU that is much smaller, has 40% less shaders, doesn't have HBM and is still 20% faster. Matching if not exceeding Nvidia's most up to date Shader IPC.

AMD's last Great GPU was the 290X, then Raja came along and we got a Bulldozer GPU..... sorry but....

There's no reason to think Raja wasn't involved in Navi. In fact it's quite extreme to believe AMD just woke up one day and Navi popped into existence as you're suggesting.

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 14:12

Gerard said:
Didn't say he was, but the facts are he was limited in his options by budget and manpower. Had AMD been in a healthy state when Vega was in the works it could have been a very different product. It's easy to point the blame but it's not as if he was responsible for AMD being in the shape it was in at the time, which obviously had a drastic effect on the GPU division as most resources were shifted to developing ryzen.

Well, Intel have unlimited resources, lets wait and see...

Gerard · 12 Jun 2020 at 15:59

humbug said:
Well, Intel have unlimited resources, lets wait and see...

No such thing as unlimited resources, they do have boatloads of money to throw at it but it all depends on how serious they are about wanting to get into the high end gpu market, it seems to be a passing phase with intel with them having interest in it periodically then not so much. Be nice to have 3 players in the high end so hopefully they're going to be building something to that end.

sideways14a · 12 Jun 2020 at 16:16

Intel dont have bottomless pits of money to just keep chucking at things, they have shareholders who wont be too happy with money bleeding out all the time.

Sure at the moment they have lots to **** away bribing websites and making up BS but they cannot keep this up for ever. If they dont have a response for zen3 which doesnt look likely and nothing much for zen4 when it drops then they are going to loose a lot more money than now imho.

...also gota laugh at these claims of big numbers IPC jumps intel is making... yes big number jumps over... what? Skylake? lol!

pete910 · 12 Jun 2020 at 18:00

humbug said:
Raja's last GPU at AMD was the Vega 64.

Once gone it took AMD less than 2 years to come up with a GPU that is much smaller, has 40% less shaders, doesn't have HBM and is still 20% faster. Matching if not exceeding Nvidia's most up to date Shader IPC.

AMD's last Great GPU was the 290X, then Raja came along and we got a Bulldozer GPU..... sorry but....

Ironically after all that spiel the quickest card AMD has made is Vega based

humbug · 12 Jun 2020 at 18:57

pete910 said:
Ironically after all that spiel the quickest card AMD has made is Vega based

#### off you