Chris Lattner on the Future of Computing and Programming Languages

Chris Lattner on the Future of Computing and Programming Languages

Lex Fridman interviews Chris Lattner, a world-class software & hardware engineer, leading projects at Apple, Tesla, Google, and SiFive.

OUTLINE:

  • 0:00 – Introduction
  • 2:25 – Working with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Dean
  • 7:55 – Why do programming languages matter?
  • 13:55 – Python vs Swift
  • 24:48 – Design decisions
  • 30:06 – Types
  • 33:54 – Programming languages are a bicycle for the mind
  • 36:26 – Picking what language to learn
  • 42:25 – Most beautiful feature of a programming language
  • 51:50 – Walrus operator
  • 1:01:16 – LLVM
  • 1:06:28 – MLIR compiler framework
  • 1:10:35 – SiFive semiconductor design
  • 1:23:09 – Moore’s Law
  • 1:26:22 – Parallelization
  • 1:30:50 – Swift concurrency manifesto
  • 1:41:39 – Running a neural network fast
  • 1:47:16 – Is the universe a quantum computer?
  • 1:52:57 – Effects of the pandemic on society
  • 2:10:09 – GPT-3
  • 2:14:28 – Software 2.0
  • 2:27:54 – Advice for young people
  • 2:32:37 – Meaning of life

Chris Lattner: Compilers, LLVM, Swift, TPU, and ML Accelerators

Chris Lattner: Compilers, LLVM, Swift, TPU, and ML Accelerators

Lex Fridman lands another top notch interview.

Chris Lattner is a senior director at Google working on several projects including CPU, GPU, TPU accelerators for TensorFlow, Swift for TensorFlow, and all kinds of machine learning compiler magic going on behind the scenes. He is one of the top experts in the world on compiler technologies, which means he deeply understands the intricacies of how hardware and software come together to create efficient code. He created the LLVM compiler infrastructure project and the CLang compiler. He led major engineering efforts at Apple, including the creation of the Swift programming language. He also briefly spent time at Tesla as VP of Autopilot Software during the transition from Autopilot hardware 1 to hardware 2, when Tesla essentially started from scratch to build an in-house software infrastructure for Autopilot. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast at MIT and beyond. Audio podcast version is available on https://lexfridman.com/ai/