Lisa Su, CEO of AMD and board member of the US Semiconductor Association, was invited to give a speech at National Taiwan University this month, sharing her journey of leading AMD from challenges to success, insights into the massive AI market, and high praise for Taiwan's semiconductor industry ecosystem.
This semiconductor giant, born in Tainan and holding a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, brought a deep dialogue about technology, strategy, and life philosophy to the students and industry professionals present. Here are the key points compiled by BlockTempo:
At the beginning, Lisa Su humbly said that exchanging ideas with talented students made her feel "very old," but she hoped to share some stories to inspire students' careers.
She reviewed her academic background, from bachelor's, master's to doctoral degrees at MIT, specializing in semiconductor devices. Her three decades of semiconductor industry experience made her deeply understand the rapid technological development. Since joining AMD in 2012 and becoming CEO in 2014, she positioned the company clearly: focusing on High-Performance Computing (HPC).
"High-performance computing has essentially become the core of our daily life," Lisa Su emphasized that AMD's technology touches billions of people daily, whether in cloud data centers, network edges, personal computers, automobiles, or industrial fields.
She pointed out that for a technology company, the most important thing is to have a long-term strategy and technological roadmap. AMD's success is based on three pillars:
- Focus on High-Performance Computing: Making HPC its core competitiveness and continuously investing in R&D.
- Establishing Excellent Partnership Relationships: TSMC is one of AMD's most core partners, jointly creating leading products.
- Embracing Technological Change, Betting on Chiplet Technology: Given the slowdown of Moore's Law, AMD boldly bet on Chiplet technology, viewing it as key to future development.
These strategies have been significantly effective, making Lisa Su proudly state that among the world's top ten supercomputers, five use AMD's technology. "I firmly believe high-performance computing will be the most important core field in the future," she said.
AI Wave: 5000 Billion Dollar Market and Holistic Design Thinking
Discussing the current hottest AI topic, Lisa Su candidly said the AI industry's innovation speed is amazing, "Almost every week brings new technologies and innovations." Using the DeepSeek model that attracted attention in January as an example, she explained how it successfully lowered AI's usage threshold and cost through technologies like Mixture of Experts, thereby accelerating AI's popularization and application. "DeepSeek's main contribution is truly accelerating AI applications."
Lisa Su emphasized that the AI computing ecosystem has no "one-size-fits-all" solution. On one hand, it requires investing hundreds of billions of dollars to build the most powerful frontier large models; on the other hand, there's a demand for numerous small and medium-sized models and various algorithms. She predicts that investment in the AI field will continue to grow significantly, covering large and more cost-effective investments.
"Regarding AI, the most important point is: the market scale is extremely huge," Lisa Su predicted that the AI market size will reach 500 billion dollars in the next three to four years. Such a massive market requires various computing capabilities, including CPU, GPU, ASIC, FPGA, etc. "No single company can provide all solutions." She believes AMD's AI strategy includes two key points:
- Providing Comprehensive Solutions: Covering hardware, software, and system levels.
- Building an Open Ecosystem: Encouraging cooperation and collaborative innovation, allowing everyone to learn from each other. She again mentioned DeepSeek's open model characteristics, which promote secondary innovations.
Lisa Su further pointed out that AI has penetrated every aspect of AMD's business, from the largest data centers to personal computers, all of which will have extensive AI applications. "This means enormous market opportunities for all of us."
She also reminded that, especially in the AI field, design thinking must change. "You must perform holistic design." She emphasized that hardware, software, and systems must be co-designed, no longer considering each part separately. One must start from the overall system application and algorithms, then think about how to design chips.
Taiwan's Ecosystem's Key Roles and Resilience Construction
Lisa Su also gave high praise to Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem. "Taiwan's ecosystem is very special." She pointed out that from TSMC's excellent manufacturing capabilities to the complete industrial chain covering ODM, OEM, manufacturing, and design, everything is impressive. She expects future investments in software and systems will increase. AMD's team in Taiwan is an important part of its global R&D, which makes her very proud.
At the same time, she emphasized the interdependence of today's world ecosystems. "From the US perspective, we indeed heavily rely on Taiwan's manufacturing ecosystem." Therefore, establishing "resilience" for this ecosystem is crucial. This also echoes the recent global supply chain restructuring and diversification trend, highlighting Taiwan's indispensable position in the global technology industry.
This executive, born in Tainan and later immigrating to the United States, also shared her personal growth experience. She thanked her parents for their emphasis on education, and even when she was eager to enter the workforce, her parents still "strongly recommended" that she pursue a doctoral degree.
"It turned out my parents were right." She believed that university and graduate school experiences provided valuable opportunities to learn diverse knowledge and build confidence in solving future problems. From a semiconductor engineer to a business leader, and then to a semiconductor leader, this journey of "dream work" was not easy, especially in the early stages, where family support was crucial.
Leadership, Innovation, and Advice for Students
Su Zifeng believes that leadership styles vary, but university education is very helpful in cultivating leadership. She shared one of the best advice she received: "Go solve the most difficult problems." She encourages students to choose projects, problems, or companies that can generate massive impact, because that's where they can learn the most and contribute the most. "I can certainly say I learned the most from my biggest mistakes." She believes that errors are not bad things, but opportunities for learning and improvement.
Regarding AMD's transformation journey, she recalled the challenges when she first took over in 2014. At that time, the company's product roadmap lacked competitiveness. "In a tech company, products are everything." Therefore, her primary task was to redesign the product blueprint and establish three key priorities: creating excellent products, building deep customer relationships (emphasizing collaboration's importance), and maintaining agility and quick action.
To achieve the goals, the team needed time to build a great roadmap. Today, CPUs based on Zen technology have developed to the fifth generation, and AMD has transformed from "non-optimal" to one of the companies with "the world's best CPU technology".
She believes key trends in the semiconductor industry include the necessity of holistic design thinking and that the AI field is still in "early innings", with enormous innovation space in the next decade. She is particularly optimistic about AI's application potential in healthcare and life sciences, such as helping cure diseases, discovering new drugs, and early health problem diagnosis.
Finally, Su Zifeng offered sincere advice to the students present: "Be very ambitious about the goals you want to achieve." She encourages young students to have "grand dreams" and bravely share these dreams with others, because people will help you achieve your goals.
She also reminded students, especially those from Taiwan or Asia who might be more shy, to overcome this and express themselves courageously. She emphasized the importance of continuous learning and maintaining mental agility because the world changes so quickly. When facing setbacks, one can be briefly sad, but must then learn from them and focus on the next goal.
Su Zifeng also mentioned that talent "quality" is more important than "quantity". At the time, AMD had only about 8,000 employees, much smaller than competitor Intel, and many believed AMD could not succeed. But she firmly believed that the key was having "the right people, the right projects, the right focus, and the right vision".
