AMD's Lisa Su: Leading the Semiconductor Industry's Race

Lisa Su has transformed AMD into a formidable chipmaker, navigating an ever-changing technology landscape.

### The High-Stakes Race of Chip Making: Lisa Su's Journey at AMD
* 🏎 The chip-making industry is a **relentless race**, with constant changes and challenges that keep leaders like **Lisa Su on their toes**.
* 💡 Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, transformed the company from a struggling chip maker to a **key player in gaming and cloud technology**, emphasizing the **importance of adaptability** in this fast-paced sector.
* 📈 Under her leadership, AMD's stock **surged from $2 a share to new heights**, particularly after the successful launch of the **Zen architecture**, which revitalized the company's **competitive edge against rivals Intel and Nvidia**.
* 🤖 Su believes that AI represents the **most significant technological transformation** of her career, surpassing previous trends like the internet and mobile phones, with an **unprecedented pace of change** in the industry.
* ⚙ Despite AMD's success, the company faces fierce competition from Nvidia, which has emerged as a **dominant force in AI**, compelling AMD to **innovate continuously** to maintain its position.
* 🌍 The geopolitical implications of chip manufacturing, particularly concerning **Taiwan's role in the industry**, highlight the **complexities and challenges** that AMD and its competitors must navigate.
* 👩 Su is committed to **empowering the next generation of leaders in technology**, advocating for **increased representation of women in the field** and encouraging **confidence and risk-taking among aspiring engineers**.
* 🏆 As AMD continues to evolve, Su remains focused on future challenges, stating, "**Look for the hardest problem to solve and volunteer to help**," embodying the spirit of **resilience and innovation** that defines her leadership.

There's no shortage of drama when it comes to chip making. Even when you're winning, the game changes. Do you ever feel like you're running a race that just never stops?

Oh, of course, of course. Absolutely. That's exactly what we're doing.

I'm running like a different company every few years. Hmm. Like the industry is changing that fast. The technology that we're building is changing that fast. It's a fantastic race though, because each race is different. It's like a different movie,

but it's a more exciting movie each time. Today is a really big day.

Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, likes to be in the driver's seat. Born in Taiwan and raised in New York with a passion

for electrical engineering and three degrees from MIT. Su worked at a couple of big-name chip makers before clinching a big victory, transforming AMD from a failing chip company into a formidable force in gaming PCs and the cloud.

Like, what does that mean? People didn't even understand where technology really fit in the grand scheme of things. Now everybody knows, everybody talks about chips. Chips rule just about everything around us. It's one of the most ubiquitous

and consequential technologies in the world. They power your smartphones, cars, planes, power grids, the internet, the global economy, and even Formula One races, where AMD sponsored the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team. And I think the adaptability that you need

to have in this sport is similar to a high-performance real-world company. The technology develops, and that's why it's so much fun. And what I love is the stopwatch never lies. Chips are at the heart of a global technology race

and a battle for supremacy between China and the United States. So for the AMD CEO, the heat is on. She's in the middle of a race of her own, pulling off the impossible by surpassing archrival Intel, only to find

that AI has completely changed the game, and now Nvidia is in the lead. I'm in Austin to see how Su competes on and off the track, and if she can pull off the unthinkable once again. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for doing this.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for coming. So the first thing we did when we got here is we went to your lab and your engineers made us this chip. Wow. It's our own chip. A circuit on a circuit.

This is our epic with the circuit with Emily Chang. You've been CEO of AMD for 10 years. You've been working in the chip industry for decades. But I want to go back to a moment. When did you first hear that you were going to be CEO of AMD?

It's a phone call you get from your chairman of the board and he said, "Lisa, can you talk?" I'm like, "Sure." And he goes, "It's time." And I'm like, "Time for what?" He said, "You know, the board has made a decision and they would like you to be the next CEO." I said, "Okay."

Well, how did that feel? Because it was a tough time. AMD was trading at $2 a share. One guy said it was 'deader than dead'.

What made you think you could prove them wrong? The opportunity to be CEO of AMD was truly like a dream come true. It's like, wow, okay. Like you think that maybe you can do this, and here you're going to have the opportunity to lead a major semiconductor company. Yes, you're right. It wasn't the best time, but I was pretty confident that we had the right pieces. They just needed to be put together in the right way.

AMD was founded in 1969 by executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, the famed company that pioneered integrated circuits. Founder Jerry Sanders was famous for saying, "Real men have fabs." Those are the plants that manufacture chips. AMD started off as a memory chipmaker, like Intel.

by executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, the famed company that pioneered integrated circuits. Founder Jerry Sanders was famous for saying, "Real men have fabs." Those are the plants that manufacture chips. AMD started off as a memory chipmaker, like Intel.

and followed its larger rival into new markets, but always struggled to achieve the scale and performance Intel enjoyed. With a cash crisis on its hands, AMD had to spin off those fabs and outsource its manufacturing. A sign of the uphill battle Su was facing,

few believed AMD would make it, until she started making her moves. Now AMD stock is trading in a totally different stratosphere. Was there a moment along the way where you really saw AMD turn a corner? Probably the most important moment for us

was the launch of our new architecture, the launch of Zen. You'll hear us talk about Zen a lot. Zen was our clean-sheet design to, you know, really design the next-generation architecture in CPUs for the next, you know, decade.

AMD's main competition in designing the best chips comes from two players: Nvidia in graphics processing units or GPUs, and Intel in central processing units or CPUs. A CPU is the Swiss Army knife of semiconductors. They run operating systems and programs, retrieve files,

and are generally the heart of a computer. A GPU, or graphics chip, is much more specialized. They were designed to do multiple small calculations simultaneously. That parallel processing makes them ideal for AI. We've told you our brand; the new Zen architecture put AMD

back on top and gave it a range of chips capable of taking market share from Intel. You proved the naysayers wrong; that has to feel like vindication. Like, do you ever just shut the door and go, "Yes!" All by yourself?

I don't know that I did that, Emily. You know, those first few years were more about just stabilizing the company and getting ourselves on a good roadmap. And then we went through a period of tremendous growth around the portfolio.

And now we're in the AI world. This current AI wave is moving so fast. How would you describe the pace right now? I truly believe AI is the most transformational technology that I've seen in my career. And, you know, we've seen all kinds

of technology transitions. We've seen the rise of the internet, we've seen the rise of PCs, mobile phones, the cloud—all of these things were really mega trends. I think AI actually surpasses all of that.

The rate and pace of change in the industry is faster than anything we've ever seen. It's like we've made more progress in the last 18 months than in the last 10 years, certainly. Now, to win and keep winning, you have to keep at that pace

and keep bringing the heat over decades. How do you keep up your own pace? Personally, I really enjoy the learning aspect of technology and of being in our industry. I spend a lot of time with our engineers

as they're developing products. And in every one of those conversations, I learn something; something that I can then say, 'Hey, maybe we should do this a little differently.' I come here for two reasons.

I come when there are good things, because I, you know, want to be able to see some of the new technology myself. And then I come when there's a problem, and when there's a problem, I'm here to cheer them up.

Oh, to cheer them up. Oh yes. Not to crack the whip. No, because at the end of the day, these guys love what they do. I've heard you make some late-night trips to the lab.

I've done late nights, I've done weekends. I don't want to surprise them. It would be too much of a surprise. I can't just pop in; they might have a heart attack.

That's right. I'm going to show you some of our latest tech. This is a gaming chip. We're pretty sure when it launches it will be the fastest gaming chip in the world.

What makes you think this is the fastest gaming chip in the world? It has a special technology, which we call X3D,

which puts, you know, memory really stacked on top of the processor. So it's phenomenal for gaming. The fastest gaming chip in the world. Does it look like it? Who would know? She would. We talked a lot about AI. Yeah.

You need to at least see the technology. I want to see it. So let's take a look here. Bring it on. Yeah. So what we have here is our AI chips. This is the MI300 engineering sample.

It says, and this is how it looks actually on the board. It's heavy, the weight of AI. So this is currently in production. One of the things that we run is, you know, sort

of a lot of the AI workloads, the stuff that's running on Microsoft Azure, you know, GPT, GPT-4. Those things. They're running on MI300. Meta's LLAMA. Did I hear that you referred

to these machines as your children? They're all my kids, yes. So if you were to actually step into my library at home, you would see chips galore. Because every time I launch a chip, like I save that

as a souvenir. And there's no favorite, although I have to say this one has gone a long way. So shh, don't say it too loudly.

In this new race to deliver the best chips for AI, Su is focused on catching up to Nvidia. A niche player that got its start in the nineties making chips for computer graphics and video games, Nvidia realized early on that its GPUs could be pivotal

for AI and suddenly blew past its competitors. When ChatGPT came on the scene, NVIDIA's chips were the hot commodity for Meta, Google, and Amazon, sending its stock through the roof and besting Apple as the most valuable company in the world.

Nvidia is seen as the dominant force in AI right now, and AMD is widely considered the next best option. Is that good enough for you? Do you like being seen as the underdog?

What I would say is, you know, AMD has a history of doing amazing things. From that standpoint, we've always been in this place where we haven't necessarily had the same number of people that other larger companies have,

but we've certainly punched above our weight in terms of technology capability and impact on the industry. This is the most complex, highest-performance computer. People are kind of obsessed with the fact that you and Jensen are distant cousins.

I know that you are competitors, but do you ever trade notes? Well, first of all, Jensen is brilliant, so I fully admire him. We were really distant, so we didn't grow up together. We actually met at an industry event,

so it wasn't until we were well into our careers. So, no family dinners? No, just to put the rumor to rest—no family dinners. It's an interesting coincidence.

So many of your customers are building their own chips—hyperscalers like Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Is that a threat? This is a huge market, Emily. There's more than enough chips for everybody to build.

You know, chips are so important. Yes. So it's natural that they're going to have their own capability. Has the shakeup of a very established industry surprised even you? It has a little bit, I have to say, when you think about

this conversation about the resiliency of the world, depending on, you know, semiconductor diversification, like those kinds of things, you know, those are big things. They're beyond an industry. They're really sort

of underpinning the global economy, you know, underpinning national security. It is something that, for someone who's been in semiconductors for a long time, it's different. This is a very complex business with trillions of moving parts.

One wrong bet or manufacturing delay can cost billions and give competitors the chance to jump ahead. Just ask Intel. It's just been a stunning fall from grace. This company used to be the world's dominant chipmaker. Over the years, they have fallen away from being the leader.

Their technology is not advanced. We saw the worst share decline in about 40 years for the company. They gave a very grim growth forecast. They also announced plans to slash 15,000 jobs. They've always been on the brink and they

always seem to find a way. But we've never seen anything like this. Back in San Francisco, I wanted to get perspective on the changing dynamics of the chip industry from Bloomberg reporter Ian King, who knows the stakes better than anyone else.

Explain the pace of the chip industry. Does it feel like a race to you? It's absolutely a race.
It's a murderous race. You fall behind, you're in big trouble. For decades, Intel had more
resources than anybody else,

more revenue, and was way ahead. It set the agenda, then took five years off, basically made some bad decisions that it shouldn't have made. And now we're in a position where they might never catch up again. Right. The train doesn't
wait for anybody.

What do you think Lisa Su's legacy will be? It's already set in stone, right? They're going to build a statue of her because she took a company that was, and also ran, that used to get laughed at. Almost made a difference, right?

AMD, and made it a significant provider of cutting-edge technology. A serious company, one
that people believe in and trust, and she did that. Are we trading the dominance
of one company for another? The direction for the industry was set

by Intel for decades. Right now, the whole AI
thing is built on Nvidia. Nvidia is coming out with
software, new chips, new services, faster than anybody else. And everybody's just following them because that's the easy thing to do.

At a certain point,
they become utterly pervasive and then the cost of replacing
them becomes prohibitive. So what does AMD
have to do to catch up? Depends what you mean by catch up, right? This industry tends to
have a very strong player,

Number one in each market. A good number two, and then a number three where you're like, 'Why are you bothering?'
At the moment, AMD is a solid number two and is doing well; they
have billions of dollars of revenue from this AI accelerator

that they didn't have last year. So they're doing way better. But compared to the tens
of billions of dollars that Jensen's bringing in at Nvidia, they're a long way behind. Let's talk a little
bit about the geography.

How did the chip industry become
so concentrated in Taiwan? The industry is
concentrated in South Korea for memory and in Taiwan for
logic manufacturing. Intel used to sneer at them, saying outsourced
manufacturing in semiconductors

doesn't make sense. It's not practical. It'll
never be as good as we are.' Guess what? It's way better
than they are right now. It's enabled Nvidia, it's enabled AMD, and a host of other companies
that could never compete

with Intel, to do more than compete—to win—because it's providing the best
manufacturing in the world. However, this has created
a very geopolitically difficult situation. Taiwan is, at its closest point, about a hundred miles away from
the coast of mainland China.

As you know, China regards
Taiwan as a rogue province and part of its sovereign territory. That tension has existed. The U.S. has been the guarantor
of Taiwanese safety, with chips becoming more and
more important geopolitically. And we've seen that tension arise.

Obviously, there's concern that China might strategically try to take control of Taiwan. Will silicon manufacturing ever meaningfully return to Silicon Valley? Will chip manufacturing come back to the U.S.? I think we will see chip manufacturing return to the U.S.

I think we should recognize that the semiconductor world is global. That ship has sailed. Was moving manufacturing abroad a mistake? In hindsight, I think we would have been happier if there had been more manufacturing in the U.S. American manufacturing,

the backbone of our economy, began to be hollowed out. Companies moved jobs overseas. Today, we're down to producing only around 10% of the world's chips, despite leading the world in research and design of new chip technologies.

The U.S. government is considering capping exports of your chips and Nvidia's to other countries. Is that the right call? The technology we're building is some of the most powerful in the world. And so we understand

that there's a national security element. We want as open a market as possible while still considering national security interests. It's a balancing act. Do you worry about the future of Taiwan?

We all worry about ensuring supply chain resiliency. Putting China and Taiwan aside, a few years ago we had a major storm in Texas, and things were disrupted for several days.

You know, that's geographic concentration that you want to make sure there's resiliency for. You were born in Taiwan and I know you go back to your hometown often. What's your favorite thing to do when you're not visiting fabs?

You know, I really do love Taiwan and I was born in Tainan, a small city in the southern part of Taiwan. Actually, I was just there not too long ago to visit family.

And we have a big family; my dad had nine siblings, and my mom had six, so it was a large family.  So there are lots and lots of cousins, aunts, and uncles

and all of that. And so, yeah, it's just fun to be a part of that. Everyone's curious about the habits of super successful leaders. What are your go-tos? Like, what's in your daily routine?

Well, this morning I was up at 6:30 boxing. So that's in the daily routine. You need to have energy when you start your morning. Heck yeah. And uh, a day is either here in the office or it's on the road.

But when I'm here in Austin, it's a good day. When the pace is relentless and perfect execution is the only option, sometimes you need to take your foot off the gas and watch another team compete for some inspiration.

Formula 1 is the most technologically advanced motor sport in the world. And AMD's chips give the Mercedes F1 team an edge in the competition. Su is giving us a front-row seat to the action because, well, she likes fast cars too.

We have a lot of Porsches in our family. That's our thing. One of the things is all of my cars have our product names on them. So I have a Ryzen, and I have an EPYC

and I have a Radeon and I have an EPYC 2. That's amazing. Yes. See, I heard there's an AMD colorway. There is a color palette. The EPYC color is graphite blue metallic. And it's a gorgeous color.

And that's the color of your Porsche? It is. That's epic. When you look at a car, an F1 car, does it look like a computer on wheels to you? It absolutely does. And it's actually even more than that.

I mean, the car itself is just one piece of the equation, right? What's so amazing about the entire Formula 1 technology is it's the car, but then it's also everything behind it that helps get the car ready.

I mean, it's filled with chips and sensors. I love the fact that Toto actually keeps us informed about how things are going, and it's great that our technology helps them.

some of those adjustments. At Formula 1, along with Star Driver Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes racing boss Toto Wolff is an institution. He works hand in hand with companies like AMD and a team of elite engineers to push the limits of speed

and performance for their cars. There's a million different things that go into winning. How do you figure out the one thing that nobody else knows? There is no such thing as one thing. I agree with you. It's true.

Absolutely.  The chip industry or motor racing is just good engineering, empowerment of people, development of people, and giving them the tools to come up with good ideas and make them a reality. Speaking of technology, how do you think AI is going to change racing?

Engineers would always say the weakness of the car sits between the steering wheel and the engine. Because it's irrational, it has good and bad days. This human interaction is difficult to replicate because it's an infinite amount of data.  We generate driver data; we have hundreds

of millions, if not billions of sensors in our body that make individuals still much superior to the machine and the racing car. So we are in our infancy in terms of AI application in Formula 1. Lewis, how are you? It's so great

to see you. Lovely to see you. What's your vibe today? What do you think? How are you feeling? Practice one was horrendous; it was like the worst practice. I had a big spin. This is the circuit where all the high

Speed, it's all about confidence. You have to get your building blocks together. So when you have a spin like that, it knocks you down the ladder, and you don't have a lot of time to get back up. So in this session, I just have to, like, go for it,

hope that the car is there. And you're so involved on the engineering side of things; like, what drives you to do that? That's the fun part. Yeah. That's where you tap into your creativity, right? I'm not a designer, in terms of cars,

but I love trying to understand it and trying to see if I can pull something up from the designs they have already done. Yeah. By the way, Lewis is a gamer too, so he uses some of our gaming technology. Okay. Yes. Yeah.

I only ever play Call of Duty, but I've been looking recently at what else is there? I know there's a lot that I'm missing. The thing is, there's such a nice parallel with Formula 1 in that we learn in every race,

it's the same thing in our world of technology, right? We learn with every customer environment that we put our technology in. With the entire F1 season, like every race, you learn something and you adjust.

While it's still early days in the next great technology race, Su has shown she can master a pivot and deliver results. Something none of her predecessors could do at a company that many had written off. And typical of Su, she skips the victory lap.

and is laser-focused on the next step forward. What else do you want to accomplish in the world, aside from making AMD succeed? I'm passionate about developing the next generation of leaders.  So I, you know, I was very lucky in my career.

People paid attention and gave me opportunities. I believe that's part of my job as well. There should be more women in technology. I think we've made a lot of progress over the last few years, but there's a lot more to do.

So what's the lesson there? Have confidence in yourself, take a chance. Don't worry about failure.  Speak up in meetings and say what's on your mind,

AMD's CEO Wants to Chip Away at Nvidia's Lead | The Circuit with Emily Chang

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Bloomberg Originals

The relentless race in chip manufacturing and Lisa Su's journey at AMD

The chip industry is a constantly evolving, competitive landscape.

Lisa Su describes her role as a continuous race with the industry constantly changing.

Su compares the industry's rapid pace to a series of exciting, evolving movies.

Introduction of Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, highlighting her background and achievements in turning around AMD.

The pervasive impact of chips across various aspects of modern life is emphasized.

AMD's challenges and successes against competitors in the context of AI's emergence

The intense competition between AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, particularly in the AI market, is highlighted.

The narrative shifts to Su's visit to AMD's lab in Austin.

Su recounts the moment she was appointed CEO of AMD, a time when the company faced significant challenges.

Su's confidence in turning AMD around despite its precarious financial state is discussed.

AMD's history, its early struggles, and its eventual turnaround under Su's leadership are described.

Technological advancements and competition in CPUs and GPUs

The differences between CPUs and GPUs and their respective roles in computing are explained.

AMD's new Zen architecture is credited for its resurgence and market share gains against Intel.

Su reflects on the initial focus on stabilizing AMD and subsequent periods of growth.

Su's perspective on AI as a transformative technology surpassing previous technological advancements is presented.

AMD's latest technologies: gaming and AI chips

A new gaming chip is presented, claiming to be the fastest in the world due to its X3D technology.

AMD's AI chips, MI300, are showcased, emphasizing their use in major AI applications.

Su's personal connection to the chips, referring to them as her children, is revealed.

Nvidia's dominance in AI and AMD's position as a competitor

Nvidia's rise to dominance in the AI chip market is explained.

Su's perspective on AMD's position as a strong competitor to Nvidia is discussed.

AMD's history of achieving significant results despite having fewer resources than larger competitors is highlighted.

The relationship between Lisa Su and Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO), who are distant cousins, is addressed.

Geopolitical implications and the future of chip manufacturing

The impact of hyperscalers building their own chips and its implications for the industry are discussed.

Su comments on the surprising changes in the semiconductor industry.

The significance of semiconductors for global economy and national security is emphasized.

Intel's decline and the challenges in the chip industry are discussed.

The concentration of chip manufacturing in Taiwan and its geopolitical implications are explored.

The potential return of chip manufacturing to the US and the global nature of the semiconductor industry are discussed.

The consequences of moving manufacturing abroad and the current low percentage of US chip production are highlighted.

The balancing act between open markets and national security concerns regarding chip exports is discussed.

The importance of supply chain resiliency is emphasized, citing examples like weather-related disruptions.

Lisa Su's personal life, routines, and future aspirations

Su's connection to Taiwan and her family is shared.

Su's daily routine, including boxing, is described.

Formula 1 racing and its connection to AMD's technology

The connection between Formula 1 racing and AMD's technology is explored.

Su's personal interest in fast cars and her naming of cars after AMD products is shared.

Su describes F1 cars as computers on wheels and discusses the technology behind the sport.

The collaboration between AMD and Mercedes F1 team is highlighted.

The potential impact of AI on racing is discussed.

The role of human interaction in racing and the limitations of current AI applications are addressed.

Lewis Hamilton's perspective on racing and the importance of confidence is shared.

The parallel between learning in racing and technology development is drawn.

Su expresses her passion for developing future leaders, particularly women in technology.

Advice for young engineers is given: to have confidence, take chances, and run towards problems.