[pests]

You say ex AMD like that's all he's known for. Jim Keller is like some fairy who flies around companies designing sota chips.

From DEC, to AMD, to ARM and Broadcom, his own firm, hops over to Apple which then buys his old firm, heads back to ARM and then over to Tesla and finally one last stop at Intel before going into startup land again.

Worked on the K7/K8, MIPs for networking, did the A4 and A5 for Apple, on the Zen/K12, and the Tesla TPU.

[amelius]

But building a fab is less about designing chips (which is a lot like programming) and more about chemistry and fundamental physics.

So that fairy is completely useless in this context.

[mensetmanusman]

Good design incorporates materials and process limitations, which in this industry changes every other year enough to matter.

[amelius]

That doesn't mean you need an IC designer to build a fab.