In the midst of the vicissitudes of the technology industry, there is such a woman, with her outstanding talent and perseverance, she has fought her way through the male-dominated semiconductor field, not only becoming one of the world's highest-paid female CEOs, but also leading a company on the verge of bankruptcy to fight back and return to the top of the industry. She is Lisa Su, the helmsman of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).
From Taiwan to Silicon Valley: The Path of Growing Up as a Gifted Girl
In 1969, Su Lifeng was born in Taiwan to a family that valued education. Her father, Su Chunhuai, was a math genius who received a full scholarship to study at Columbia University in the United States when Su was 3 years old. The family then moved to the United States and began a new chapter in their lives.
Growing up in the U.S. opened a door to the world of technology. From an early age, she showed a keen interest in electronics. Unlike other parents, instead of stopping her daughter from disassembling toys, Su Chunhuai encouraged her to explore the unknown, which inspired Su's love for technology and the courage to take on challenges.
In 1983, 14-year-old Su Lifeng was admitted to the famous Bronz Science High School in the United States with excellent academic performance. Here, her talent is on full play. In her junior year of high school, Lisa Su won the prestigious Westinghouse Science Genius Award, which opened the door to top universities.
Faced with the solicitation of many prestigious universities, Su finally chose the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), majoring in electrical engineering, which is considered the most challenging. Inspired by her father's admonition to "face and challenge those complex fields and solve the most difficult problems", Lisa Su has been at MIT with tenacious perseverance and a solid attitude to delve into the esoteric theories of the field of electrical engineering.
It was during her time at MIT that she was exposed to silicon wafers and became intrigued by the future potential of semiconductors. This experience laid a solid foundation for her future career in the semiconductor industry. At her father's suggestion, Su did not rush into the workforce, but chose to continue her master's and doctoral studies at MIT. The decision proved to be a major turnaround in her career.
From the lab to the pinnacle of the industry: the rise of the queen of semiconductors
In 1994, at the age of 25, Lisa Su entered the workforce as a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT and joined Texas Instruments as a semiconductor technology specialist. Just a year later, she joined IBM to develop copper chip process technology for IBM.
It is worth mentioning that as early as her university years, Lisa Su was involved in the research of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. This technology successfully broke through the technical bottleneck of chip development at that time by building transistors on top of insulating material layers to improve chip performance and reduce power consumption. This experience made her a central figure in the development of the copper chip process as soon as she joined IBM.
During her 12 years at IBM, Su Lifeng was promoted from an ordinary researcher to vice president of R&D, becoming a top expert in the field of semiconductors, and the highest position a Chinese reached in IBM. She led the team to overcome the difficulties of copper process technology and made great contributions to the improvement of chip performance. Lisa Su's outstanding performance has been widely recognized by the industry, and her alma mater, MIT, has named her a "Top Innovator Under 35" and named a building after her.
In 2007, Lisa Su left IBM to join Freescale Semiconductor. Here, she continued to demonstrate her leadership skills, rising to the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Networking & Multimedia Division in just five years. However, the real challenge is yet to come.
In 2012, the shocking news came that Lisa Su accepted AMD's offer to become the company's chief operating officer. At that time, AMD was in the most difficult period, losing money for many years and was on the verge of bankruptcy. AMD has changed four CEOs in the past four years, and male executives across Silicon Valley have shrugged off the hot potato.
The addition of Lisa Su is undoubtedly a savior. As a Chinese woman, she is not only the first female CEO of AMD, but also the entire semiconductor industry, and this appointment has aroused widespread attention and heated discussions.
The Road to Counterattack: Reinventing AMD
After taking over AMD, Su found that the company's actual situation was more grim than the outside world had described. Faced with such a predicament, she showed extraordinary courage and determination, and began a series of drastic reforms.
First of all, Su Lifeng decisively carried out "optimizing the allocation of resources". She cut the number of employees worldwide by 7% and streamlined all redundant departments. Although this decision was opposed by many people, Su Lifeng insisted that in order to save the company's "seriously ill patient", it must endure a certain amount of pain.
Second, in order to raise funds, Su Lifeng made a bold decision: to license AMD's core technology, "Zen architecture processor technology", to China's Tianjin Haiguang Company. At the same time, she also promoted AMD's cooperation with Tongfu Microelectronics, established a joint venture company, and transferred 85% of its equity to Tongfu Microelectronics. These two initiatives generated $660 million in cash flow for AMD, which not only helped the company weather the storm, but also provided the necessary financial support for subsequent reforms.
Thirdly, Lisa Su understands the importance of customer trust. She personally participated in the project acceptance process, and even used Google Translate to drill through user reviews on e-commerce platforms to accurately grasp market demand and potential pain points. This approach to the market makes AMD's product development more in line with the needs of users.
The most important thing is that Su Lifeng re-planned AMD's technology roadmap. She decisively replaced the head of the CPU and GPU division, and invited industry veterans Keller and Koduri, respectively, to take charge of CPU and GPU design, in an effort to revive AMD's technical capabilities.
Lisa Su focused the company's main efforts on Zen, a new architecture for PC CPUs. After four years of research and development and more than 2 million man-hours, this groundbreaking architecture was finally unveiled in 2017.
The launch of the Zen architecture shocked the entire computer field with a thunderclap on the ground. After the first PC processor based on the Zen architecture was launched worldwide, Ryzen (Ryzen) has significantly improved its performance, successfully competing with the Intel Core processors at the time, and has won high praise from the market and users.
This success has greatly boosted AMD's morale and market position. In the years that followed, AMD continued to introduce new products that continued to challenge Intel's market dominance. In 2018, Intel suffered from out-of-stock and price increases due to capacity constraints, and AMD quickly grabbed some of Intel's share of the market with the excellent performance and widespread acclaim of its second-generation Ryzen series.
At the same time, as the only manufacturer in the industry to produce both CPUs and GPUs, AMD's technical strength to integrate the two on a single chip has promoted the development of thin and light laptops. This advantage has made AMD's processors favored by major brands, including Huawei, Lenovo, Sony, Google and other well-known manufacturers have begun to use AMD chips.
Intel, on the other hand, lost Apple, an important customer, in 2019 due to production delays and other issues, and fell into an unprecedented predicament. AMD seized the opportunity to win more customers and bring the company back to the top of the industry.
AMD's stock price has soared, from less than $2 per share in 2015 to around $50 per share in March 2020. By 2022, AMD's market capitalization will exceed the $180 billion mark, surpassing its old rival Intel for the first time and completely washing away the label of "the second in the millennium".
Looking to the future: AMD's new journey
Today, Lisa Su has been at the helm of AMD for 12 years. Under her leadership, the company grew significantly, from 8,000 employees to nearly 30,000. AMD is no longer the "patient" on the verge of bankruptcy, but a tech giant with a market capitalization of more than $180 billion.
However, challenges remain. With the rapid development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, and the Internet of Things, the semiconductor industry is facing a new round of change. How to stay ahead of this revolution is an important question for Su and AMD to think about.
In addition, the restructuring of the global chip supply chain has also brought new opportunities and challenges to AMD. How to maintain technological innovation and market expansion in a complex geopolitical environment will be another difficult problem for Su Lifeng.
However, with Lisa Su's talent and the strength of the AMD team, I believe that they can continue to stand out in the fierce competition in the semiconductor industry and write more legendary chapters.
epilogue
Lisa Su's success is not only a personal victory, but also a revelation to the entire technology industry. She proves that with talent, courage and perseverance, no matter who you are, it is possible to create miracles in this industry full of opportunities and challenges.
From a little girl who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan to the helm of one of the world's top tech companies, Lisa Su's experience can be called a modern version of the "American dream". Her story has inspired countless young people with dreams, especially women in tech.
In today's ever-changing technology industry, the story of Lisa Su and AMD continues. We have reason to believe that in the wave of the new era, this "queen of semiconductors" will lead AMD to create more amazing achievements and leave a more colorful mark in the history of change in Silicon Valley.