Lisa Su’s Journey of AI Transformation: A Glamorous Transition from Chip Queen to AI Leader
In the rapidly changing semiconductor industry, Lisa Su is undoubtedly a highly influential female leader. She has led AMD out of difficulties and reshaped its glory, earning the title of “Chip Queen.” Now, with keen insight and forward-looking strategic vision, she is guiding AMD’s transformation into the AI field, aiming to become a leader in the AI era.
Lisa Su’s success did not come overnight. She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and accumulated rich experience at renowned companies such as Texas Instruments and IBM. In 2012, she joined AMD and was appointed CEO in 2014 during a critical time.
At that time, AMD was facing a difficult period, with declining market share and financial difficulties. Lisa Su did not back down; instead, she decisively proposed the “5% philosophy,” encouraging the team to continuously improve and betting on AMD’s strength—manufacturing powerful processors.
In 2017, AMD launched the first generation of Zen architecture central processing unit (CPU) “Ryzen,” which successfully challenged Intel’s long-standing dominance in the CPU market with its excellent performance and energy efficiency. This marked AMD’s strong comeback and laid the foundation for its rise in the AI field.
Lisa Su understands that AI is a key driving force for future technological development. She believes that “artificial intelligence (AI) is the most transformative technology I have seen in my career.” She is actively positioning AMD in the AI market, launching a series of graphics processing unit (GPU) product lines, the Instinct series, specifically for AI model training.
Among them, the AI chip MI325X, set to launch in October 2024, aims to challenge NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell series chips’ dominance. It is reported that its inference performance on Meta’s large language model Llama3.1 is 40% higher than NVIDIA’s H200.
Under Lisa Su’s leadership, AMD’s AI business has made significant progress. Over the past year, AMD expects sales revenue from AI chips to reach $5 billion. She anticipates that the AI chip market will grow at a rate of 60% per year, reaching a total scale of $500 billion by 2028.
To better seize the opportunities brought by AI, Lisa Su is actively expanding partnerships and establishing close collaborations with partners like TSMC. Recently, she visited Taiwan, meeting with local supply chain partners and delivering a speech titled “AMD’s Transformation into an AI Leader.”
In her speech, Lisa Su emphasized the importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem to AMD and stated that AMD hopes to have a resilient supply chain while expanding its presence in the U.S. She also revealed that AMD’s three main focuses are efficient training, excellent partners, and collaborative technology changes.
Lisa Su’s journey of AI transformation has not been smooth sailing. In the AI chip market, NVIDIA holds a dominant position with over 80% market share. AMD faces fierce competition and significant challenges.
However, Lisa Su remains undeterred. She firmly believes that there can be multiple winners in the AI market, and AMD has the opportunity to leverage its technological advantages and innovation capabilities to secure a place in the AI field.
Lisa Su believes that AMD’s advantage lies in its modular and open customization strategy. She stated, “While we love GPUs, they are a huge growth driver for our future, but not all workloads will use GPUs. You will have traditional workloads, you will have mixed workloads, and I think that is the key point of the story. In large enterprises, you have to do many things, and our goal is to ensure we have the right solutions for all these functions.”
Lisa Su also emphasized that AMD is a computing company that uses the right computing engine for the right workloads. She believes that a significant amount of inference is done on CPUs, especially for small models and edge models.
In addition to technological innovation, Lisa Su also focuses on team building and corporate culture. Her motto is “I like to win, but I like teams that are better than I imagined,” encouraging employees to continuously challenge themselves and pursue excellence. She often visits laboratories to communicate with engineers and understand the latest technological advancements.
Lisa Su’s leadership style has also received widespread acclaim in the industry. Chris Miller, a historian of the U.S. semiconductor industry and author of the book “Chip War,” highly praised Lisa Su’s achievements, calling her one of the great turnaround stories in modern American business history.
Time magazine also awarded Lisa Su the title of “CEO of the Year 2024,” praising her for leading AMD from an industry follower to a technology leader.
Despite her tremendous achievements, Lisa Su maintains a humble and pragmatic attitude. She stated, “I don’t know if I will celebrate. For Lisa Su, the real celebration is when chips come back from the manufacturing plant and run as designed. She said it is ‘super interesting.'”
Looking ahead, Lisa Su is confident about AMD’s development in the AI field. She believes that AI will be ubiquitous, and AMD will seize opportunities, continuously innovate, and provide customers with excellent computing solutions.
Lisa Su’s journey of AI transformation is another important strategy for AMD to reshape its glory. Under her leadership, AMD is expected to rise again in the AI era and become a leading global AI chip supplier.
Lisa Su’s story teaches us that only through continuous innovation can we remain undefeated in fierce market competition. Only with forward-looking strategic vision can we seize opportunities and lead the future.
Lisa Su’s success is not only AMD’s success but also a pride for the entire semiconductor industry. She proves through her actions that women can achieve outstanding accomplishments in the technology field. She inspires more women to join the tech industry and contribute to technological innovation.
In the wave of AI, Lisa Su is leading AMD to set sail towards a more glorious future. We look forward to AMD achieving greater breakthroughs in the AI field and making a more significant contribution to the development of human society.
AMD’s journey of AI transformation is also a mirror reflecting the development of China’s semiconductor industry. The Chinese semiconductor industry needs to learn from AMD’s spirit of innovation and strategic vision, increase R&D investment, and break through core technologies to gain a favorable position in international competition.
The Chinese semiconductor industry also needs to cultivate more female tech leaders, providing them with more development opportunities to play a greater role in technological innovation.
Under Lisa Su’s leadership, AMD’s future is worth looking forward to. With the joint efforts of the Chinese semiconductor industry, the future of Chinese technology is also full of hope.
AMD, Lisa Su, AI, chips, semiconductors