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Apple's Johny Srouji Gives Rare Media Interview, Discusses Apple Silicon For the Mac
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Awesome interview. Kinda ironic that the man behind Apple Silicon was also once at Intel, the company that got the boot. Small world.
Apple Silicon is a great achievement for Apple, it is no small feat to design high performance silicon that competes with, if not out-competes, its modern Intel/AMD competition at some tasks, while being far more power efficient. No other company has been able to do so at scale.
I personally think it's a bit sad that Apple doesn't sell its chips to the Dells, Lenovos, HPs of the world. I know Apple has a competitive advantage in being the sole customer of Apple Silicon. But if Apple was to enter the merchant CPU business, I think it would seriously threaten the profitability of Intel/AMD. So long as Apple Silicon remains only inside of Macs, Intel/AMD will remain dominant, at least until Nvidia or Qualcomm deliver a superior ARM solution to the ecosystem.
Apple Silicon is a great achievement for Apple, it is no small feat to design high performance silicon that competes with, if not out-competes, its modern Intel/AMD competition at some tasks, while being far more power efficient. No other company has been able to do so at scale.
I personally think it's a bit sad that Apple doesn't sell its chips to the Dells, Lenovos, HPs of the world. I know Apple has a competitive advantage in being the sole customer of Apple Silicon. But if Apple was to enter the merchant CPU business, I think it would seriously threaten the profitability of Intel/AMD. So long as Apple Silicon remains only inside of Macs, Intel/AMD will remain dominant, at least until Nvidia or Qualcomm deliver a superior ARM solution to the ecosystem.
On the topic of no more intel Macs. I saw this commercial and was very confused about the message of the visuals. I think Dell/Intel was going for this inclusive and epic moment, but it lacked any emotional clarity.
Curious if anyone else felt the same...
Curious if anyone else felt the same...
Best MR article in 2022 by far (for me)
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I can’t see it very well but the equipment on the right appears to show fiber optic connections so my guess would be it is just networking equipment.
That’s what I did in the 60’s.
Did not work for Apple though.
I'm very impressed with what Apple Silicon has been able to do.
Start a petition and get the government to make it law.
Probably had to, as a lot of the (very expensive) commercial CAE applications for IC design are x86-only.
There's a joke about cosmetic surgery somewhere, but I can't think of one.
Stop obsessing with credentials. Start obsessing with DOING.
I have spoken to so many kids who think they want to get into "computers" but I ask them questions about what they care about, and blank stares -- they assume the college will do it for them.
If you are the sort of person Apple wants to hire, your degree does not matter, what matters is what you do right now. Are you spending every free moment reading papers about micro-architecture? Are you reading patents? Are you reading PhD theses? Are you designing micro-benchmarks to figure out how CPU's work internally?
If not, why not? That's what people who LOVE this stuff do...
While technically possible to get hired for chip development at Apple or other similar companies without a related 4 year degree and or masters, it will be a much longer road to get there. I know the industry well, and to get into the top tier companies like Apple, it requires a personal referral from an existing team member to skip past the initial credential screen, and even so such a hire would be treated suspiciously. So, you would have to be extraordinary, and have "an in".
Since that almost never happens, nearly all successful candidates follow a pretty common formula. A Computer or Electrical Engineering, or related BS degree plus either a masters degree, or alternatively 5 years of industry experience at a minimum. If you search Apple's Jobs Site for ASIC positions, you'll find that is the minimum qualification.
edit: The point about reading papers and and practicing doing it yourself is still valid though. Coming knowledgeably prepared to the interview will pay off. If you don't get the chance to practice it in college, or don't have the opportunity to learn on the job, I'd recommend picking up an FPGA development board and practice logic design and verification with some of the free tools available. Dig into some open source projects, to build up proficiency.
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clearly very skilled and talented but seems horribly uncharismatic, like a robot. I would actually pay money not to work for him.
And tie them to weekly multi million dollar fines (that go… somewhere quite useful I guess?) until the monopoly on “non-raytraced hardwares” is brought down. Add-in option: let people have third party RT cores added to it!
Can get behind this… I actually have a B.S in Electronics Engineering and even did learn about the basics of computer architecture (RISC and CISC and all that) but I forgot all of that because on my free time I was obsessed with anything 3D, CG and video games…
The result? I never ended up exercising the engineering degree.
My whole career ended up being TV Ads, Cinema, etc VFX/CG related to now full video games from programming (alright, fake C# programmer for the C++ hardcore ones over here) to VFX, tech art and a lot of related shader work.
Here is an interesting quote, “the company’s software designers tuned the computers to favor the specifications it most desired, such as smooth videogame graphics.”
Yeah, got a lot of time for the dude in charge of Apple Silicon. Surely he is the most competent of all the Apple executives at the moment.
Well, that's the difference between people who want to work with the best people in the world, vs people who want to work with a group of friends...
He's also the only one who was able to get his team into an environment where they could thrive, instead of sitting in cubicles in the donut.
Apple still has a very long way to go with GPU performance and getting Metal adopted, the M1 and M2 are just to replace Intel/AMD for the majority of people. I would not hold my breath for any advanced GPU stuff in the coming year. If this is what your are looking for you are on the wrong platform.
Which is itself still interesting, since they’re willing to show one or two machines running Windows, if you look closely…
I assume electrical design and chip production tools aren’t on Mac OS, but it’s interesting that they have allowed Windows software to be visible in these marketing videos.
It also makes me wonder if they’re doing anything behind the scenes to get it ported, or if they’re motivated to have Windows continue to run on Mac hardware as a result. Their data centers are likely all PC hardware running Linux.
You want to work in high level/deep engineering? These are the types of human beings you’re going to interact with regularly. It’s great that he’s socially functional enough to appear in scripted videos and do interviews.
Being amazingly competent, skilled, and credentialed in one area does not necessarily make a person the same in other areas. Specialization is fine, and ladder-climbing for the sake of it is irrational and mindless.
Plus: Leadership positions are generally not something in which I enjoy engineering/tech people…