[36] 5min with AMD Zen Chief Architect, Mike Clark

I literally had five minutes with Mike. Here's what he said.

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Welcome to the TechTechPotato (c) Dr. Ian Cutress
Ramblings about things related to Technology from an analyst for More Than Moore

#techtechpotato #amd #zen5
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[solidreactor]

These 5min was great, I could also sit and listen for 50min!

[AshtonCoolman]

I collect retro PCs and their CPUs. It's nice knowing that my 7800X3D I'm using has some of the same engineers that designed my K6-2/3 CPUs. Wild!

[unvergebeneid]

"Zen daddy" clearly abbreviates to zaddy.

[MrMartinSchou]

I love his attitude.

Sometimes it's the "weird" questions that trigger the nugget, because in order to give the answer to it, you might have to explain it differently than the last ten times you've answered questions that are similar but not identical. And then you go "wait, why DID we do it this way?"

And it's not always ground breaking questions. Sometimes it's just questions that challenge the "that's how it's always been". Best example I know of isn't mine - it's an anecdote I heard from a teacher, and the grumpy face he put up as he told the story just showed how angry he was that HE hadn't asked the question.

He worked in a machine shop, and he was showing two 9th or 10th grade classes around the various shop buildings they had. They walk into one production hall, and as they walk in he gestures towards a very large water bath and says "be attentive, because otherwise you'll" and is interrupted by a loud thump followed by angry swearing, as one of the teachers had banged their shins into a drain valve at the end of the water bath.

"Don't feel too bad about it - the rest of us do that once or twice a year as well, and I've worked here for more than ten years."

Then one of the students raised a hand and was told to ask their question.

"Why don't you just move the valve to the underside of the bath, so you don't bang your shins against it?"

And it's now 30 years on, and I can still see my teachers angry, contorted face as he paused while telling the anecdote.

The valve was moved at the end of the work day, with the boss himself doing the work. Apparently the boss had ended up in the ER due to the valve at one point, so it was revenge I guess.

[retrosean]

I do enjoy snippets where you get to see the enthusiastic people that work at these various technology companies.

[asknight]

These short chats with industry VIPs are highly entertaining. Thanks for doing these!

[SirMo]

Mike is such a cool dude! Can't wait to test drive the Zen5!

[belfalas]

Just like to say I have always been a very happy AMD system customer, and that has to be down to people like Mr Clark who have shaped the company and encourage this very positive, engineering-focused attitude. I can honestly say I've had nothing but good experiences - and I've always built my own systems. (I'm an electronics engineer by trade.)

[timheeney]

So very application specific and will benefit more applications under development. Applications with rich customers, your world spins faster. Kudos to AMD.

[EhNothing]

He might be called zen daddy due to the number of buttons undone on that shirt....

[capability-snob]

I want to imagine that some of the am29k engineers are working on Zen, too. Not sure if that's too big a stretch.

[ShadowVonChadwick]

I grew up, so to speak, on P2/P2 & quickly dabbled in K6-2 350 to K6-3 500 before going back to a I5- 3750k (great CPU) that lasted till Zen Ryzen1600X on a AX370 K7, which is still running well with a 3600X today.
Only just purchased a 7600x, Tomahawk & FlareX again, another Samsung, 990 Pro. Yet to be installed.
The only regret I have is not spending the $6000 spare I had on AMD shares at the beginning of Zen. I always like an underdog, they put that extra effort in & are often willing to take a chance on change. O well, at least Zen got me out of the upgrade silly-cycle. They have provided reliable service for years.

[AgentSmith]

Imagine where we would be today if it wasn't for Zen. Hopefully AMD will not get lazy with a "good enough" approach.

[TechLevelUpOfficial]

Great video Ian, Mike seems like a great guy to chat with.

[cemsengul]

Intel needs people like Mike Clark right about now.

[RealLifeTech]

Calling 16% IPC small is kind of ridiculous. That's a huge gain for a mature architecture.

[erqey]

I'm getting major Robin Williams vibes from Zen Daddy

[threadripper]

Maybe he'll be "Mac Daddy." Nope, that doesn't seem right. 🤣

[EmanuelHoogeveen]

Interesting point about software needing to catch up to the hardware! I wonder if AMD will try to contribute enhancements to compilers to take advantage of this stuff... it might be difficult because you'd have to justify giving up performance on older, slower chips in order to make the newest chips faster. Well, either that or ship another variant of the logic that only runs on the latest chips - might be justifiable for some applications but probably a hard sell for most.

[APU-iGPU]

Nice one.

I'm a bit optimistic that Zen 7 will be on AM5.