"any genuinely talented systems administrator"
Met loads of those......
"has a genuinely rich knowledge"
Yep and met one or two of those
with "underlying hardware design (CPU architecture, memory subsystem limitations"
Hardly any of those....!
IMHO....it takes a ikle bit more than being Sys Adm to understand hardware to that level.
Sys Adm gives you good overall but not the fine detail to understand at the level we are talking here.
I've been a Sys Adm for 9 years, a developer for 10 years before that and I began as an electronics tech in the 6502/z80 era....the stuff they do today is way beyond my patience and understanding.
I certainly can hold my own at the x86 architecture level but I would never claim I could component level design/build or repair one.
To much for my brain to hold onto without leaking.
