Among Saporito’s recent successes was the August 2021 launch of IBM’s 7nm Telum, its
first chip with AI inferencing acceleration.
Just continuing to bleed-out top talent to the competition.
https://thestack.technology/next-generation-google-cpu-anthony-saporito/
Duh!!! Who would you rather work for Google or IBM??? IBM has been in decline for 20 years... IBM is yesterday's computer giant. No more. Microsoft, Google, Apple, those are the computing companies with mindshare. IBM is forgotten. Doesn't impress young people. Only geezers remember IBM with awe.
It appears IBM is merging technologies into one offering/strategy Z vs Power The following article does a pretty nice job of laying this out. NOTE how IBM withdrew from HPC as there was lots of volume, but almost zero profit (scale out didn’t make any money and open power died on the vine). Enterprise platforms is where IBM is investing. Does the low end offer an opportunity for IBM? Yes but it would be cheaper for IBM to replace the low end with an LPAR on an enterprise platform in the cloud, and to abandon the HW side of the low end. If IBM can ever get its act together on pricing OS/400 and AIX via an LPAR (yes ISV’s are a sticking point), you will see IBM exit the low end HW market place.
https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/01/for-ibm-ai-inference-is-the-most-important-hpc/
Google is poaching lot of ibm engineers who have been there for decades in chip design.
These people are distinguished engineers and what not so ibm can definitely not match what G is paying because that's probably the max they could pay.
(G can pay more to their senior engineers than ibm can to their vps)
Ibm cannot exit Z hw business if it has any ambtion to be a tech company because that's the only monopoly remaining on top of which AK is basing his strategy.
They might exit power business though.
No one is licensing ibm (chip) technology because they have to build all the tools around it, arm already has support for everything and i think they might be building arm based cpu like apple.
That being said i hope ibm doesn't have anyone left to execute any new changes in their hw team and they have to beg people to even consider them.
Rot in he-l ibm
These design teams tend to be pretty deep. Losing an individual tends to happen a couple of times a year. (Power and Z teams) Just look at the migration to AMD. The real question is did Google just offer him a boat load of money for a non-intel point of view, or is IBM deemphasizing Processor design for the new strategy which is far more HW agnostic. The tell will be the design patents. If Google has to license IBM design IP or decides to embed it into its future designs, then this may be a win win as Google is driving far far far more volume. Time will tell, but I find it very hard to believe that IBM management didn’t know this fellow was interviewing or get a chance to counter.
No noncompete clause in his HR forms I guess?
So Google is trying to catch up with IBM in this area?
That is the reason why I don't understand why people at IBM keep on doing patents!!!
This is the d-mbest thing ever. If you really have a great idea (because most patents are sh-t), then leave IBM, register your patent and do something with it.
If we see IBM cross license some of their design patents, then we know IBM is exiting the HW business, and will contract for the Z17 and P11 technology. Didn’t IBM partner with Samsung in Albany. NOTICE he has 100+ patents, but they belong to IBM and I expect IBM to defend that IP technology ruthlessly