I'm going to interview an AMD engineer
In the second or third week of October, a gentlemen from AMD Sunnyvale is coming to Michigan for a wedding. His own wedding, but that aside he's the Michigan recruiter for AMD (I just launched into huge grandiose thoughts when I heard that).
This gentlemen from AMD has one of our school's chem teachers as his best man. The chem teacher stepped into our class, and the discussion went something like this (His name is McMann):
McMann: "Why are you sitting at the good computer?"
(The good computer is a watercooled JIUHB Athlon XP 1700+ on an NF7-S 2.0 with 240gb of RAID0 SATA space on Windows 2000 Pro with a 256mb DDRII Radeon 9800 Pro and a gig of Corsair pc3500 memory)
Thrax: "I built it."
McMann: "You did huh? Do you like computers?"
Thrax: "I do."
McMann: "What do you want to do after High School?"
Thrax: "Probably major in computer engineering."
McMann: "You know my best friend is an engineer."
Thrax: "With who?"
McMann: "AMD."
(At this point Thrax looks like he's won a million dollars, the excitement is almost unbearable as Thrax prattles on about how many AMD processors he has in his house, how many he's purchased for his class, and what amount of money he generates each month through converting people to the Glory of Advanced Micro Devices. Of course, Mr. McMann has no clue what I'm saying, but he understands the excitement.)
Thrax: "Does he ever come to Michigan?"
McMann: "He's the Michigan regional recruiter."
(Thrax thinks omfgomfgomfgomfg)
Thrax: "When is he coming to Michigan again?"
McMann: "October for his wedding, I'm his best man."
Thrax: "Can you get him to come in and talk to us?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"
McMann: "Talk to Mr. Kohring" (My teacher) "And have him remind me, we'll set something up."
Thrax: "OMFG."
So this is how I'm getting an AMD engineer to come to MY school for MY class so I can interview him for Short-Media, take the questions YOU guys have that I haven't already come up with. Who knows, maybe if I kiss enough ass something sweet could happen (Drool. Yeah right...But come ON! AMD! AMD! AMD! AMD!)
Here are the questions I have (some basic, some advanced):
Can you tell me what caused the delay on the release of the Athlon 64? Yield issues? SOI development problems? Other?
What can you tell me about AMD's Paris-core Athlon 64 on the .09u process? (If he tells me anything, next 2 questions.)
-Will it support DDRII on the integrated memory controller?
-Are you outsourcing fabrication to IBM? If not them, who else?
How far along is AMD's .09u process? Has it taped out yet?
Will the Paris Athlon 64 increase the pipeline, or is it a die-shrink? Will there be any additional features that aren't present on the .13 Athlon 64?
When do you expect the Opteron to receive integrated DDRII support?
What made AMD decide to use registered/ECC memory for the Athlon FX line?
What is the future of the HyperTransport bus?
Which chipset would you as an AMD engineer use to display the best possible performance for the Opteron and Athlon 64?
Does AMD plan to transition to copper OEM heatsinks at any time?
Does AMD plan to expand its support for thermal pastes outside of shin-etsu?
Does AMD plan to ever endorse water-cooling components, and establish themselves as the first processor company to do so?
How closely is AMD working with Microsoft on their X86-64 distribution of Windows XP?
What sort applications will see an immediate benefit from a 64 bit chip?
How did AMD decide to produce socket 939, 940, and 754 chips? When did this decision occur and why?
Can we ever expect to see AMD-created special-purpose media registers such as intel's SSE2 and SIMD? An extension of the 3DNow! function?
Does AMD plan to introduce chips on new cores for the legacy Socket A for economy process?
<b>So add your questions here so we can make a kick ass interview, and so I can write a kick ass article on it (Cross fingers)</b>.
This gentlemen from AMD has one of our school's chem teachers as his best man. The chem teacher stepped into our class, and the discussion went something like this (His name is McMann):
McMann: "Why are you sitting at the good computer?"
(The good computer is a watercooled JIUHB Athlon XP 1700+ on an NF7-S 2.0 with 240gb of RAID0 SATA space on Windows 2000 Pro with a 256mb DDRII Radeon 9800 Pro and a gig of Corsair pc3500 memory)
Thrax: "I built it."
McMann: "You did huh? Do you like computers?"
Thrax: "I do."
McMann: "What do you want to do after High School?"
Thrax: "Probably major in computer engineering."
McMann: "You know my best friend is an engineer."
Thrax: "With who?"
McMann: "AMD."
(At this point Thrax looks like he's won a million dollars, the excitement is almost unbearable as Thrax prattles on about how many AMD processors he has in his house, how many he's purchased for his class, and what amount of money he generates each month through converting people to the Glory of Advanced Micro Devices. Of course, Mr. McMann has no clue what I'm saying, but he understands the excitement.)
Thrax: "Does he ever come to Michigan?"
McMann: "He's the Michigan regional recruiter."
(Thrax thinks omfgomfgomfgomfg)
Thrax: "When is he coming to Michigan again?"
McMann: "October for his wedding, I'm his best man."
Thrax: "Can you get him to come in and talk to us?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"
McMann: "Talk to Mr. Kohring" (My teacher) "And have him remind me, we'll set something up."
Thrax: "OMFG."
So this is how I'm getting an AMD engineer to come to MY school for MY class so I can interview him for Short-Media, take the questions YOU guys have that I haven't already come up with. Who knows, maybe if I kiss enough ass something sweet could happen (Drool. Yeah right...But come ON! AMD! AMD! AMD! AMD!)
Here are the questions I have (some basic, some advanced):
Can you tell me what caused the delay on the release of the Athlon 64? Yield issues? SOI development problems? Other?
What can you tell me about AMD's Paris-core Athlon 64 on the .09u process? (If he tells me anything, next 2 questions.)
-Will it support DDRII on the integrated memory controller?
-Are you outsourcing fabrication to IBM? If not them, who else?
How far along is AMD's .09u process? Has it taped out yet?
Will the Paris Athlon 64 increase the pipeline, or is it a die-shrink? Will there be any additional features that aren't present on the .13 Athlon 64?
When do you expect the Opteron to receive integrated DDRII support?
What made AMD decide to use registered/ECC memory for the Athlon FX line?
What is the future of the HyperTransport bus?
Which chipset would you as an AMD engineer use to display the best possible performance for the Opteron and Athlon 64?
Does AMD plan to transition to copper OEM heatsinks at any time?
Does AMD plan to expand its support for thermal pastes outside of shin-etsu?
Does AMD plan to ever endorse water-cooling components, and establish themselves as the first processor company to do so?
How closely is AMD working with Microsoft on their X86-64 distribution of Windows XP?
What sort applications will see an immediate benefit from a 64 bit chip?
How did AMD decide to produce socket 939, 940, and 754 chips? When did this decision occur and why?
Can we ever expect to see AMD-created special-purpose media registers such as intel's SSE2 and SIMD? An extension of the 3DNow! function?
Does AMD plan to introduce chips on new cores for the legacy Socket A for economy process?
<b>So add your questions here so we can make a kick ass interview, and so I can write a kick ass article on it (Cross fingers)</b>.
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Comments
Then again, he's the great lakes regional engineer, so he has to be decently high up the ladder.
Get him to sign up to our forums!
I don't think I have ever "felt" so much excitement and enthusiasam in a post before. I mean it was just coming through loud and clear like you posted with a special Jedi Foce power post or something.
You came up with a very good set of questions, also.
SWEET... I can't wait to read the results of your interview. AMD ROCKS!
Anyhow, the questions you came up with cover everything I can think of off the top of my head...
"It's not where you are, or really what you've done....It's who you know."
1. damn right
2. damn smart
Europe had the Athlon64 first, not us in US (offical release date was not staggered, but European distributors had chips in hand first).
I would like to know about the SOI and .09 issues myself, VERY much, and the voltage implications (SHOULD be lower voltage and thus derivatively cooler CPUs this way also) if McMann will talk about that in some detail.
John.
You are one lucky guy there Thrax. I can only imagine how excited once can be to hear such great news. And who knows, if he talks to you one on one maybe he will keep you in mental thought and look you up one day
Also nice set of questions you got there, hopefully he can give us some juicy info.
And like prime said, get him to sign up to the forums and share the s-m address all across amd.
I got a Q for him. Not about a processor, you got a lot of Qs for him there but something else.
"What type of schooling/education is needed to become an AMD engineer?"
Ask him what it takes to be one. What courses are needed? What major is needed to become an AMD engineer? Or even what is needed to get in the door at AMD.
Working at AMD is kind of an Ultimate-Top Notch goal for myself. As a CET (Computer Engineering Techology) major at DeVry University I am just beginning my quest. Myabe out of reach but that would be the pinnicle. I am wondering what it takes schooling wise to get there.
There are 4 DeVry Campuses in lower California so maybe he has heard of it.
Maybe even what he took in school.
No seriously ...I'd like to know how far off Athlon128 (hypathetically) is into the future ... may be way sooner than we think.
How much time will you have for the interview? In what class will the interview transpire?
Something you could do to greatly aid your fellow students is prepare a brief for your class (in paper). I'm afraid most of your questions and the corresponding answers will go straight over their heads.
I wish you much fun.
MediaMan has already helped me prepare for asking an interview, standard procedures he follows for getting interviews. He's also provided me with introductory information about the website, and I've been compiling a profile on myself so he knows I'm completely serious.
As far as the interview is concerned, it could very well last in excess of two hours if he agrees to go along with it! There's no reason why he wouldn't want to come in thought..He's a regional recruiter! Recruiting and advertising the good word is his job in life! I'm sure he'd like to talk to a pack of tech-savvy kids and show them The Glory, if not only for the fact that his best man and best friend asked it of him.
It should be pretty solid.
1) NVidia only hires UT students once theyve completed junior level classes - including electronic circuit design
2) AMD takes mostly Co-op students for their Austin office, mostly summer interns for the California office. they take SOME freshman, mostly people with more experience (i'm kind of in the middle, because im a freshman whos a "junior")
anyway, if that helps anybody
His ass is, politely, mine.
Furthermore, the AMD Engineer is coming to my school. It's all set up. Sometime in late October (I forget the precise date).
Tell them that you'd like to get someone to put the P4-3.2 EE up against the AFX... See if you can get them to give me a board & cpu to test (and no, they can't expect them back)
Hmm, if someone other than our Folding team donated the parts, then I could compete for the hosting honors, as it wouldn't involve conflict of interest of me being in the Host Selection Committee!
Wugs, you've got a great idea.