[ChipTalk] "The 10-Year Comeback Story That Saved AMD"... Writing a New History for AI Chips

Time Magazine's 'CEO of the Year' Lisa Su
Appointed AMD CEO in October 2014
Diversified business targeting embedded market
Transformed struggling company into global leader
Market cap grew from $2 billion to $200 billion
Unveiled Instinct accelerator 'MI325X'
Outperforms Nvidia in computation and inference
Focus on breaking AI chip monopoly market structure

"One of the greatest turnaround stories in the history of modern American industry."

Chris Miller, a historian and author of the global bestseller Chip War, described the achievements Lisa Su has shown over the past 10 years since becoming CEO of the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in this way. It reads as praise for her leadership that transformed AMD, which was collapsing and falling apart, into a globally recognized company that everyone is paying attention to.

The American current affairs weekly Time introduced Miller’s remarks when it recently named Lisa Su as “CEO of the Year.” Time also added that Harvard Business School began teaching Lisa Su and AMD’s story to students starting this fall. Despite giants like Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, who are leading the AI era and dominating the market, Time chose Lisa Su as CEO of the Year and highlighted her because the journey she has shown over the past decade has been so powerful.

Lisa Su marked her 10th anniversary as CEO on October 8. AMD’s stock price, which was around $3 in 2014, when Lisa Su joined as CEO, is now trading at $140 in the securities market 10 years later. During that time, the market capitalization soared from $2 billion to over $200 billion. In 2022, the company’s value surpassed Intel for the first time, surprising the entire United States. As of December 2022, AMD’s market capitalization was approximately $124.9 billion, while Intel’s was $123.1 billion. AMD’s products are currently used to power 50% of the world’s top 10 fastest supercomputers and 40% of the top 10 most energy-efficient supercomputers. In particular, AMD’s flagship product line, the “AMD EPYC processors,” has significantly increased its server revenue market share from 1% to about 34%. AMD’s research and development (R&D) investment increased about fivefold from $1 billion in 2014 to $5.9 billion last year. Even in the past year, it invested over $1 billion to develop new products that could shake the market and challenge NVIDIA’s dominance in AI chips.

"AMD Was My Opportunity"

Lisa Su accepted an offer to join AMD in 2012 from Nicholas Donofrio while she was serving as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Freescale. Her first role was Senior Vice President of Global Business. Recognized for her abilities, she became CEO in October 2014. Donofrio, who had worked as an engineer at IBM before resigning and serving as an AMD board member, had observed Lisa Su as a mentor during her time at IBM. Based on that experience, Donofrio judged that Lisa Su was the person who could save AMD, which was on the brink of collapse. Lisa Su recalled, “I thought I was preparing myself to do something meaningful in the semiconductor industry,” adding, “AMD was my shot.” After becoming CEO, Lisa Su shifted the company’s business paradigm, which had been stagnant focusing only on central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), to diversify into data centers and enterprise solutions. Ultimately, she targeted the embedded systems market. Based on this, AMD expanded its original strengths in the GPU and CPU markets and grew into a company that is now an indispensable player in the AI market.

Industry insiders believe Lisa Su’s outstanding management skills stem from her quick understanding of technology and market insight. Behind this are her unique paternal affection and her life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Lisa Su was born in 1969 in Tainan City, Taiwan, and immigrated to the United States with her parents at age three, growing up there until adulthood. Her father, a statistician, was known for his strong dedication to education. From age seven, she learned piano and arithmetic. When a toy car she played with broke at age ten, she became curious about how it worked and developed an interest in engineering. Noticing this, her father encouraged her curiosity by gifting her an Apple II PC. Her father also supported her admission to Bronx High School of Science and MIT. At MIT, she first encountered semiconductors while working on a project to make silicon wafers at a semiconductor lab. Fascinated by the small and precise nature of semiconductors, she delved deeply into the field. In her 2017 MIT doctoral degree ceremony speech, Lisa Su said, “I believe understanding technology allowed me to make better business decisions.”

AMD unveiled the MI325X. Photo by AMD

Blackwell Rival MI325X

Lisa Su and AMD are striving to open new horizons in the market with new AI chips. The industry has high expectations for the Instinct accelerator “MI325X,” unveiled last October. This product, which aids rapid AI computation, is regarded as a rival to NVIDIA’s “Blackwell,” scheduled for release in 2025. It features 5th-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM), HBM3E, with a capacity of 256 gigabytes (GB), providing a memory bandwidth of 6 terabytes (TB) per second. Compared to its predecessor, the “MI300X,” unveiled in June last year, memory and bandwidth have improved by 33% and 13%, respectively. Its computational performance is 1.3 times better than NVIDIA’s H200 currently on the market. In inference, it is reported to be up to 40% higher than NVIDIA’s product in Meta’s large language model LLaMA 3.1. AMD’s MI325X will be sold to major partners starting in the first quarter of next year. If well received, the industry expects it to break NVIDIA’s near 90% market share dominance in AI chips, shift the market into a competitive structure, and lead to price reductions for NVIDIA products.

AMD plans to release new products with even higher performance consecutively. It has revealed a roadmap to launch the MI350 in 2025 and the MI400 in 2026, effectively releasing one product per year. At CES 2025, the world’s largest electronics and information technology exhibition held in Las Vegas, USA, next January, AMD will showcase new CPU and GPU products and the latest technologies.

However, AMD still faces challenges, such as a 122% increase in data center business revenue but stagnation in gaming and embedded businesses. Last month, the company announced a global workforce reduction of about 4%. Time emphasized, “Lisa Su has the heavy responsibility of leading the company through multiple obstacles.”