Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, June 1 (AI)-Forbes magazine published a special article for AMD CEO Lisa Su on Wednesday that she orchestrated one of the most significant corporate transformations in Silicon Valley history, resulting in a nearly 30-fold increase in the share price of AMD, once on the verge of bankruptcy, in less than a decade. Next, she is preparing for the upcoming artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, trying to take the AI crown from her distant relative, Huang Renxun.

In a conference room on the roof of AMD's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., Forbes'Su Zifeng Special issue rescues AMD, who heads a company older than the word Silicon Valley. Outside the company is the extension of US Highway 101. if you go along this road, you can see the history of AMD. It is an old fab in Sunnyvale where AMD used to make chips. But through the window, Su Zifeng can see the offices of old rival Intel, whose market capitalization ($120.3 billion) has been surpassed by AMD ($153.5 billion), a milestone in AMD's rapid growth.

But these are only the good days that AMD has recently had. When Su Zifeng, 53, took over as AMD CEO in 2014, the chipmaker was in decline. At the time, the company laid off about 1/4 of its employees and its share price hovered around $2. Patrick Patrick Moorhead, a former AMD executive, recalls that the company was "better off than dead".

When Su Zifeng was promoted to head of AMD, analysts said the company had $2.2 billion in debt and was "not worth investing". Some of its valuable assets have been spun off. In 2009, AMD's chip-making plant, known in jargon as a "fab", was spun off, dealing a blow to AMD co-founder Jerry San ­ders's infamous boast of "real men have a fab". In 2013, AMD even had to sell its corporate campus in Austin, Texas, and rent it back for use, where Su Zifeng currently works.

To make matters worse, AMD is struggling with execution, and it can't launch the product before the deadline. At that time, Intel dominated the laptop market other than low-end products, while Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung carved up the emerging smartphone business. "our technology was not competitive at the time." Su Zifeng admitted.

AMD had a glorious time. Sanders began making microprocessor chips for IBM in the early 1980s and ushered in a turning point in the late 1990s and early 21st century. AMD, which has been in second place for years, began to reap record profits by making faster than Intel's own processors.

However, the good times did not last long. By 2014, these glorious days are long gone. By that time, about 1/4 of AMD's employees had been fired by Su Zifeng's predecessor, Rory Read. AMD once had about 1/4 of the market for server chips, which is now worth $24 billion, but that share fell to 2 per cent in 2014.

On the second day of becoming CEO, Su Zifeng went to the microphone on a full-staff conference call and gave a speech to frustrated AMD employees. "I believe we can build the best products," she recalls telling employees at the time. "you might think it's obvious now, but it wasn't for the company at the time."

The inspiring slogan is also the first step in her three-pronged plan to clean up AMD: create great products, deepen customer trust and simplify the company. "just do these three things to keep it simple," she said, "because if it's five or 10 things, it's hard."

Su Zifeng refocused her engineers on making chips that beat Intel, but it could take years for chip designers to come up with a viable final blueprint. AMD's share of the server market fell further, to 0.5 per cent, but researchers worked hard in the lab. "at the time, the company was not doing well, but, my God, they were developing the most exciting designs in the industry," says Mr Su. "Engineers are driven by products, and I like to put that in the first place."

Her decision to give priority to the development of a new chip architecture called Zen was successful when it was finally launched in 2017. "it's really great," she says with apparent pride, adding that Zen's computing speed is more than 50 per cent faster than the company's previous designs. More importantly, it sends a signal to the industry that AMD has pulled through. By the time the third-generation Zen was released in 2020, it had become a market leader in terms of speed. The Zen architecture is now the foundation of all AMD processors.

As her team led the development of a new generation of chips, Su Zifeng began to travel around to force the chips to data center customers who were tired of AMD chips. Even when AMD had no chips to sell, she spent years building a relationship, persuading the current company, CEO, Antonio Neri, more than four hours before driving in an ice storm in Texas. "it's fair to say that I was disappointed with AMD's previous generation of products," Neri said. "she showed me her firm belief in what she needed to do."

Su Zifeng's main strategy is to reach new agreements with technology giants, which need a lot of CPU to support their exploding cloud business. "for us, there are actually three microprocessor partners. We have Nvidia, Intel and AMD." "when I joined the company, AMD was not an important part of our ecosystem at all," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google. "they are now our very important partners, thanks to Su Zifeng."

Then Intel began to have problems. Intel began to decline because of manufacturing delays and Apple's decision not to use its chips in the Mac. Su Zifeng seized on competitors' mistakes with her keen eye and struck deals with notebook makers such as Lenovo and gaming giant Sony, as well as cloud computing giants Google and Amazon. Last year, Google and Amazon's large data centers generated $6 billion in sales for AMD.

In terms of annual revenue, Intel reached $63 billion, still dwarfing AMD's $23.6 billion. But AMD snatched coveted market share of server chips from Silicon Valley neighbors and bought semiconductor company Cyrus, which sent AMD's share price soaring nearly 30-fold in the nine years since Su Zifeng took over.

For the past nine years, Su Zifeng has been overclocking the AMD, just like a player pushing the processor beyond the limits set by its manufacturer. Unlike many technology executives, she is a world-class researcher with a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her unique combination of technical talent, interpersonal skills and business acumen has made her one of the highest-paid CEO in the S & P 500 over the past few years, with a total compensation of $30.2 million in 2022. Over the years, she has amassed a fortune of $740 million, mainly relying on AMD shares, which has made her the 34th richest businesswoman on Forbes' annual list of American businesswomen. Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer, once exclaimed: "she does what she says, and she has achieved great results." Panai first met Su Zifeng in 2014, when she was embarking on the transformation of AMD.

When AMD's market capitalization surpassed Intel's for the first time last February, Sanders, the 86-year-old co-founder of the company, was ecstatic. "I called everyone I knew!" "I'm ecstatic," he said. "it's a pity that Andy Grove is gone, otherwise I can say, ', got it!'" Grove, a former Intel legend CEO, died in 2016.

The growth History of Chinese CEO in 1969, Su Zifeng was born in Tainan, Taiwan. Her father was a mathematician and her mother was a bookkeeper and then an entrepreneur. In the same year, Sanders founded AMD. Her family emigrated to New York City when she was three. She chose electrical engineering at MIT because it seemed to be the most difficult major. Hank Smith, who was in charge of the nanostructure lab at MIT at the time, said that as a person with such technical talent, she was also good at getting along with people, and when differences occurred among her classmates, she would play the role of a peacekeeper.

When she was told that she was a sociable person, Su Zifeng smiled. "well, that's compared to other people at MIT," she joked. I don't think anyone would say I'm an extrovert, but communication is an important part of my job. "

After a brief stint at Texas Instruments, Su Zifeng was hired as a researcher by IBM in 1995, where he helped design semiconductor chips that use copper circuits instead of conventional aluminum circuits, increasing the speed of the chips by 20 per cent. IBM executives quickly discovered her talent. In 1999, a year after the introduction of copper circuit technology, Louis Gerstner (Louis Gerstner), then CEO of IBM, asked her to be his technical assistant. In his first interview in 20 years, Mr Gerstner later said he was worried at first that Su Zifeng was too young for the job, but his doubts were quickly dispelled. "Su Zifeng proved to be one of the most outstanding employees in my office. She doesn't play by the rules, and she's been breaking the rules throughout her career." Gerstner said.

It was this appointment that gave Su Zifeng a close look at a corporate transformation at IBM that could now be a classic business school case, in part by taking advantage of the company's size and creating a customer-focused culture. During his nearly nine-year tenure, Gerstner has increased the market capitalization of the stagnant IBM nearly sixfold. Su Zifeng also had the opportunity to participate in the deal to help IBM sign a joint agreement with Sony and Toshiba in 2001 to use IBM chips in Sony's PS3.

At first, she sometimes worried that she was not qualified to sit with business heavyweights, but she soon realised that her hard-earned technical acumen gave her an advantage at the executive level. "I see a PhD at MIT being managed by the MBA of Harvard Business School, which I don't think makes any sense." Her name is now embedded in the school's nanotechnology laboratory, she said in a graduation speech delivered at her alma mater in 2017.

At the end of 2011, Nick Donofrio, then a member of AMD's board, called Su Zifeng. They met at IBM, when Su Zifeng was already a senior vice president of Austin chipmaker Freescale (now part of NXP Semiconductor). The two had dinner together. While tasting a bottle of Brunello running wine, D'Onofrio invited Su Zifeng to AMD as an executive: this is an opportunity not only to pursue incremental improvement, but also to reinvent and innovate, and AMD has sufficient resources to achieve this goal.

A few days later, Su Zifeng accepted the position of senior vice president of AMD's global business department. Two years later, she became the company's CEO, becoming the first female CEO of a major semiconductor company.

"I once walked into a room of about 25 people, and maybe I was the only woman," she recalls her early days in engineering. "I was passionate about young female engineers and wanted to keep them in the engineering field."

When Su Zifeng first took over AMD, she flew to Beverly Hills and personally asked Sanders, founder of AMD, to talk to her team. Sanders said he was moved by Su Zifeng's invitation, but refused. "this is not my team now. This is your team." He recalled. However, as a former salesman, he also made one condition: once AMD made a profit for two years, he would visit. Sanders made good on that promise in 2019, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of AMD.

Semiconductor mogul Mark Peppermaster (Mark Papermaster), who led the iPhone and iPod engineering teams at Apple, joined AMD almost at the same time as Su Zifeng and has been closely watching the amazing revival of AMD under Su Zifeng. During his time at Apple, Pepper Master worked with another prominent transformational artist, Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs), who led Apple out of disaster and on its way to becoming the most valuable company in the world. "in many ways, the task facing Su Zifeng is even more difficult," says Mr Peppermaster. "when you are not a founder, you have to build your own credibility and vision and move forward with the company, customers and investors."

Su Zifeng's success in AMD inspired young engineers and made her a hero for investors. This also makes her a meme. A few years ago, an 8-bit animation went viral on Twitter. In this animation, Su Zifeng uses AMD's Ryzen chip to become a superhero or fire a laser from her eyes. On the shelf in her office, there is a statuette in orange armor and helmet, a gift from a fan at E3. "this may be one of the most interesting moments of my career." Su Zifeng said. She said that although she is a loyal user of Twitter and Reddit, she is not "keen on emojis" and "this is not my type."

Ruler of AI chips: Nvidia now, as AI mainstreaming leads to demand for silicon chips behind machine learning, Su Zifeng faces a decisive opportunity and a daunting challenge for his legacy: can AMD produce a chip powerful enough to break Nvidia's near monopoly in generative AI processors? " If you look forward to the next five years, you will see that every product of AMD has the shadow of AI, which will be the biggest growth driver. " Su Zifeng said so.

However, unlike Intel, whose revenue has fallen 12 per cent to $63.1 billion in three years, Nvidia appears to be a leader in the industry. In addition to showing amazing images in games such as Cyberpunk 2077, its graphics processing unit (GPU) has become the engine of choice for AI companies such as OpenAI. OpenAI's ChatGPT chat robot can give surprisingly humane answers to questions and commands, making the public both happy and uneasy.

These so-called big language models are really just amazing tricks, but they are the opening performance of AI's revolution. Bigwigs such as Bill Gates say AI change will be as important as the rise of the internet. There is already a huge demand for the GPU that drives these large models. At least one research firm predicts that GPU manufacturers will be able to make $400 billion over the next decade. But now, only one can really produce this kind of GPU. "AI equals Nvidia," said Glenn O'Donnell, an analyst at Forrester, a research firm. "Nvidia's position has been so consolidated that AMD must really improve its strength to overcome this challenge."

At the same time, Intel's shadow still hangs over Highway 101, even as the founder of the PC chip faces further production delays, chip defects and leadership changes. "AMD has a lot of advantages, but the bad thing is that we have two world-class competitors," said Forrest Norrod, a senior AMD executive. He helped Dell build a data center business worth about $10 billion (2014 revenue), relying in part on AMD chips. AMD never thought the main rival would drag on the problem, he said. "We always thought Intel would solve the problem."

"distant relative" Huang Renxun Su Zifeng revives and invigorates AMD, focusing on ensuring that AMD has its own future in a highly competitive market. As she tries to rebuild her business, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang is also working hard to make her company a must-have supplier of AI computing.

According to Forbes, Huang Renxun is a distant relative of Su Zifeng. It has also been reported that Huang Renxun was also born in Tainan. Su Zifeng's grandfather and Huang Renxun's mother are brother and sister, and Su Zifeng has to call Huang Renxun "cousin". However, Su Zifeng denied in an interview in 2018 that the two were related.

Huang Renxun and Su Zifeng Huang Renxun believe that the business of selling chips to support AI tools such as Chat-GPT is a gold mine. Demand for AI chips has pushed Nvidia's share price to near all-time highs, trading at about 64 times forward earnings, almost twice as much as AMD. "that's why investors are focused on AMD: because they want a cheap version of Nvidia," said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein, an investment bank. "maybe the market is too big for them to compete."

But Su Zifeng is ready. She hopes to raise the status of AMD by betting on annual chip upgrades, competing with Nvidia's H100 GPU, which focuses on AI. Under her leadership, AMD's R & D spending nearly quadrupled to $5 billion, almost all of the company's revenue when she took over AMD.

A new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is a passion project for Su Zifeng. It was completed in 2022 and became the world's fastest supercomputer at the time. With a processing capacity of at least 10 billion calculations per second, this breakthrough machine is a demonstration of the power of AMDAI chips. In addition, she launched an unexpected move: the MI300 chip, which combines CPU and GPU, will be launched later this year to deal with Nvidia's new generation of super chips.

She has also been fighting Nvidia through acquisitions, such as her $48.8 billion acquisition in 2022 of Cyrus, which makes programmable processors that help speed up tasks such as video compression. As part of the deal, Bloomberg (Victor Peng), former CEO of Cyrus, became president of AMD and head of strategy at AI.

In addition to Nvidia, AMD faces other potential threats: some AMD customers have begun to develop their own chips, a move aimed at reducing their dependence on semiconductor giants. Amazon, for example, designed a server chip for its AWS cloud business in 2018. Google has spent nearly a decade developing its own AI chip, the Tensor processing Unit (Tensor Processing Units), to help "read" the logo names captured by its streetview car cameras and power the company's Bud chatbot. Even Meta plans to develop its own AI hardware.

Su Zifeng dismisses the concern that AMD customers may one day become competitors. "it's natural." While seeking operational efficiency, companies want to make their own components, she says. But she believes they can only do so much without the technical expertise AMD has accumulated over the decades. "I don't think any of our customers are likely to replicate the entire ecosystem." She said.

In the AI chip market competition, Su Zifeng occupies a favorable position. But she is well aware that corporate recovery will soon turn into decline. "AMD has more work to do to ensure that the company continues," she said. "We have to prove that we are a good company, and I think we have done it. Proving our greatness again and building a lasting heritage for our contribution to the world are some interesting questions for me." Phoenix New Media science and technology "AI outpost" will continue to pay attention to this.

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