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Today’s guest is Chris Lattner, one of the most important engineers for modern computing. Chris invented key compiler infrastructure tech like LLVM and MLIR, but he’s also the inventor of the Swift language, a key contributor in bringing Google TPUs to market, and a lot more. Today he’s the founder and CEO of Modular, where he’s reinventing AI infrastructure to make software portable across GPUs and platforms.
With Chris, we talked about his vision for AI and computing. We talked about how Modular’s mission makes us closer to a future where AI is open and portable. And we talked about open source, how AI is both empowering and straining contributors, how it’s changing intellectual property, and what workflows we need to change as engineers.
Finally, we discussed how AI is changing software craftsmanship, how he’s bullish about junior engineers, and a lot more.
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🥇 Interview Summary
If you are a 🔒 paid subscriber 🔒 you will find my own summary of the interview below.
It’s the 5-minute takeaways of what we talked about, with timestamps to the relevant video moments, for those who don’t have time to sit through the 1-hour chat
Here is the agenda for today:
🔧 Modular’s mission and the GPU accessibility gap
🌐 Open source in the age of AI
⚡ AI and software craftsmanship
👩💻 Junior engineers, manager thinking, and team building
🏗️ Best practices under pressure
Let’s dive in 👇
