Intel's CEO once said: "Don't treat AMD as our competitor in the future, the next one is Qualcomm." ”
There is such a woman, she is brave enough to take over the stormy AMD when AMD's stock price fell to an all-time low and the world was in decline.
Subsequently, it took her 10 years to lead the company out of bankruptcy and successfully counterattack to a market value of more than $100 billion.
This outstanding woman is Dr. Lisa Su, an academician of the United States National Academy of Engineering, chairman of the board of directors of AMD, and United States "Queen of Chips".
It is hard to imagine that such a woman who is over half a hundred years old and has an ordinary appearance is worshiped as a goddess by countless otaku and respectfully called her "Su Ma".
At present, Su Lifeng's annual salary is as high as 400 million US dollars, making her the highest-paid female head in the world.
From a top student to a boss, her success story has inspired countless young people and made the public realize the infinite possibilities and great potential of women in the field of science and technology.
Why can this queen of Chaowei Semiconductor stand out from the crowd in the male-dominated chip industry?
01
AMD's Chinese name is "United States Chaowei Semiconductor Corporation", which was founded in 1969.
In the same year, Su Lifeng was born in Tainan City, Taiwan Province, China.
Father Su is a top student with excellent character and learning, graduated from the Department of Mathematics of Taiwan Normal University, and is studying for a master's degree at Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
When Su Lifeng was 3 years old, Su's father won a full scholarship from Colombia University to continue his doctoral studies, and also immigrated to United States with his whole family.
Influenced by her math genius father, Lisa Su was curious about electronics from an early age.
She likes to disassemble the electrical products at home, and can reassemble them after each disassembly.
The father not only did not stop his daughter, but encouraged her to "do the hardest thing if you want to do it, and what is not difficult has no point in challenging it".
Her interest and talent in technology laid a solid foundation for her future success. The relaxed family environment provides Su Lifeng with space to grow freely.
When she was in elementary school, Su Lifeng skipped a grade to enter a special junior high school (two-year system) because of her excellent academic performance, and after graduation, she was admitted to the Bronx Science High School, known as the "cradle of physicists".
The competition in this school, which has produced 6 Nobel laureates, is very fierce, and only 900 of the 30,000 candidates can be admitted, and Su Lifeng easily won the first place with her extraordinary talent.
During her high school years, in addition to her heavy coursework, Su Lifeng participated in various academic competitions of the school many times, and the most eye-catching was winning the "Westinghouse Science Award".
This award, also known as the Nobel Prize for middle school students, shows Su Lifeng's scientific research potential.
In 1986, Su entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in electrical engineering.
In her sophomore year, she began researching SOI (silicon technology) and worked her way up to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering.
After graduating with a Ph.D., Lisa joined Texas Instruments Process Center, the world's third-largest semiconductor manufacturer at the time, as a technical specialist.
At Texas Instruments' Process Center, Lisa Su has been involved in a number of important R&D projects.
This period of training has laid a solid foundation for her broader career in the future.
One year later, Lisa Su got her wish to work at the world-renowned technology giant International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
At IBM, Lisa Su was responsible for the R&D of the copper chip process. During this time, she made a major technological innovation, using copper technology instead of aluminum to connect semiconductor chips.
This technology makes the overall running speed of the chip more than 20% higher than the old model, which brings new hope for the development of the chip industry.
At IBM, Lisa Su grasped both technology and marketing, and at the same time was well versed in global strategic deployment, and spent 12 years to achieve the position of vice president of R&D center.
At the same time, this is also the highest position of a Chinese person in IBM.
This position is not only a recognition of her technical contributions, but also an affirmation of her leadership skills.
But Lisa Su didn't stop there, and she soon gave up her high-paying position at IBM to join Freescale Inc. (FSL) as chief technology officer.
At FSL, she led the development of microprocessors for well-known products, including the Kindle, which won the company many key customers, including Amazon.
At this time, Lisa Su has already shown outstanding ability in strategy and leadership, and she has also become a leader in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley with her unique product control and innovation ability.
As a woman, Su Lifeng has reached the peak of her career at this time, but she did not stop there.
"Do the hardest thing if you want to do it" has become her life creed, which has been deeply rooted in Su Lifeng's bones, and she made a decision that surprised everyone.
02
In 2012, Lisa Su was a major turning point in her career, when she moved to AMD, a company for AMD, as Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Global Operations.
At that time, AMD and Intel were both affiliated with Fairchild Semiconductor, and the two companies that competed for each other's territory had been competing in the CPU market for many years.
After AMD acquired ATI at a very high price due to the company's management's decision-making mistakes, the company gradually went downhill and began to be pressed to the ground by Intel.
At that time, Intel's revenue was almost 10 times that of AMD, and its market value was 30 times that of AMD.
Intel, which has a lot of money, often shows its muscles in front of its younger brothers.
On the third day of AMD's acquisition of ATI, Intel released a new architecture Core 2 processor, which is far ahead of the industry in terms of performance and energy efficiency.
Subsequently, Intel beat AMD in a fancy way of updating the chip process for one year and updating the architecture processor for one year.
At this time, AMD had to design and produce, cash flow began to be stretched, and it was already burdened with $5 billion in debt, on the verge of bankruptcy, and once lacked money to the point of selling the company's building.
Even after changing three CEOs in a few years, it did not change the company's decline, and even the chip manufacturing plant was sold at the most difficult time.
When AMD's market capitalization fell to $2 billion, Intel's market capitalization reached the 100 billion level.
For this reason, Intel's CEO directly said: "Don't treat AMD as our competitor in the future, the next one is Qualcomm." ”
At this difficult moment, Lisa Su took over AMD.
In anyone's opinion, this is not a good time, but she says, "There is no point in challenging things that are not difficult."
In the face of a formidable opponent, Su's ambition is unabashed: "I want to win".
Faced with the mess left by her predecessor, Su Ma, who is accustomed to seeing the big world, has an in-depth understanding of the market and quickly sorted out the crux of the problem.
Although AMD has good technology, there are too many products and there is no focus.
To this end, Lisa Su has identified three major development directions for the company in the future: creating great products, deepening customer trust, and simplifying the company's operations.
To streamline company operations, you need to lay off employees and cut projects; It takes money to build a great product, and the company is at the end of its rope.
But this is not difficult for Su Lifeng.
She first removed the heads of several key departments, then brought back the tech veterans, cut down the bloated organization, and then cut 7% of the global workforce to further integrate all operations and create a strong marketing army.
Lisa Su decisively withdrew from AMD's mobile competition, which did not dominate, and instead concentrated its limited R&D resources on computers, laptops, and server processors, striving to develop high-spec chips.
Financing issues didn't bother her either, as the company's most valuable asset at the time was the "Zen" architecture of x86 processor technology.
In order to get the funds quickly, Su Lifeng licensed "Zen" to Tianjin Haiguang in China, and received a licensing fee of 293 million US dollars.
For the first time, a Chinese company obtained high-performance 64-bit x86 processing technology, which also laid the groundwork for AMD chips to enter the Chinese market.
Su Lifeng and Nantong Fujitsu Microelectronics Co., Ltd., a joint venture company for chip packaging and other businesses, gave 85% of the shares to each other, in exchange for the vital $371 million in cash.
It was these two decisions, which were opposed by the majority of people at that time, that allowed Su Lifeng to lead the company through the most difficult 1 year.
Among the electronic products at that time, game consoles were the favorite of the majority of computer gamers, and after Su Lifeng led the R&D team to develop chips for home game consoles, he cooperated with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
She first won the cooperation project with these three companies at a price close to the cost, and then became the largest chip supplier of the three companies.
This move not only gave gamers a better choice, but also made countless otaku willingly call her "Su Ma".
3
In 2017, Su Lifeng sounded the horn of battle.
It took AMD four years to develop a CPU that shocked the world---- the new Zen Ryzen processor.
Compared with the previous old architecture, the performance of this chip has increased by 52%, and it can be on an equal footing with Intel in terms of performance, power consumption, and architecture, but the price is only half of the other party.
Relying on the gradual optimization of this Zen architecture, AMD's stock price has soared, from less than $2 per share in 2015 to $50.11 per share on March 4, 2020, an impressive increase.
AMD is finally back at the main table and can continue to wrestle with old rival Intel.
A few months ago, as the release date of a new Ryzen chip was approaching, a fatal bug was suddenly discovered that could cause the computer to fail to boot.
Su Lifeng decisively decided: "The test must not be delayed".
To this end, she urgently set up a team, and she also lived in the laboratory, tackling key problems with everyone day and night, and finally solved the problem before the release date.
Some people say that she is lucky, but others do not know how hard she works.
A success may depend on luck, but in this male-dominated industry, success after success again and again definitely depends on confidence.
And hard work is Su Lifeng's greatest confidence.
With the rise of its peer NVIDIA, AMD began to face new challenges, NVIDIA's GPUs and artificial intelligence AI gradually occupied the market, and AMD could only quickly adjust the pace to cope with the crisis.
Su Lifeng and Nvidia's founder Huang Jenxun are both from Taiwan, and the two have a pivotal position in the industry, and it is rumored that the two are still somewhat related.
One is known as the "Godfather of AI", and the other is known as the "Queen of Semiconductors", but this does not prevent Su Ma from wrestling with this old watch.
Under Su Lifeng's strategic adjustment, the company has carried out industrial restructuring, and with the ability to continue to innovate and the spirit of never admitting defeat and never giving up, she has once again led AMD to break a path.
The company first partnered with semiconductor leader TSMC to launch an upgraded version of Ryzen processors.
This cheap and powerful chip was a huge success in the market as soon as it was launched.
In 2019, AMD unveiled a number of new products at New Horizon Premier, including artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing powertrain (APU) accelerators.
At the new product launch event in June 2023, Lisa Su, Chairman and CEO of AMD, personally explained the latest research results of the AI chip, CPU 300, to customers.
This processor is 1.8 times faster than the same Intel processor, and as soon as it came out, it was coaxed by Microsoft Open, and the data center business soared by 43% quarter-on-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2023, becoming AMD's first source of revenue.
The Ryzen series on the consumer side is also equipped with AI engine NPU, which has improved performance by 60% compared with the previous generation Ryzen 7000 series, and has begun to be launched in large quantities.
To promote it, AMD has installed a comparison program on its website.
Users can choose any AMD chip and compare it with Intel's chip. From the price, speed, power consumption, TCO to compare, users can pick the product, pick the parameters.
This kind of thing, the insider looks at the doorway, and the layman looks at the humiliation, which is not very hurtful, but extremely insulting.
Intel doesn't squeak one by one.
With the release of new products, it marks that AMD can keep pace with NVIDIA in AI technology, and it also marks that in Silicon Valley, where technology giants gather, Lisa Su, who has an annual salary of 400 million, is already the world's most profitable "United States chip queen".
She also won the Robert · Noyce Medal, known as the "Nobel Prize in Semiconductors", for her outstanding personal ability and achievements in the field of semiconductors.
In 2020 and 2021, Su Ma was named the Most Influential Woman in Business by Fortune magazine for two consecutive years, and in 2022, she became the chairman and CEO of AMD.
From the verge of bankruptcy to the peak, AMD's stock price has increased 100 times in just 10 years, reaching a market value of $300 billion, almost twice that of Intel.
04
From a technical specialist to a chip queen, Su Lifeng relied on her extraordinary ability to fight her own way in Silicon Valley, a place full of talents.
Despite being in the United States, Su Lifeng has always been close to her homeland.
She has published scientific research results on major platforms in the field of domestic chips for many times, discussed and exchanged with experts in the industry, and shared her experience and skills.
Her patriotism and sense of responsibility have won her more respect and recognition in the field of international science and technology.
In today's rapid development of science and technology, we need more high-tech talents like Lisa Su to promote technological innovation and development.
I believe that she can lead AMD and contribute more wisdom and strength to the development of the technology industry.
Resources:
1. Netease News: "United States Chip Queen" "Su Lifeng: She turned out to be Chinese
2. Sohu.com: "Otaku gods and goddesses"? Mom is the queen! Su Ma and her path to meditation
3. Phoenix News: AMD Lisa Su; AI will be ubiquitous in the next five years, and we are still optimistic about the PC market
4. The Paper: The "Nobel Prize" in the semiconductor industry ushered in the first female winner, AMD CEO Lisa Su
The author of this article: The Wind on the Other Side
Editor in charge: Lao Lu
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