There is no eternal king in the world, and this unwritten objective law also holds true in the field of science and technology in the 21st century.
On February 16, 2022, Beijing time, the amD giant in the semiconductor industry, which has just completed the Xilinx acquisition, has harvested another happy event, and the total market value of the company that closed at $121.47 reached $197.75 billion. Not only set a new record since its inception, but also achieved the first time to surpass the old rival Intel, although the AMD stock price has since fallen and is no longer leading, but everyone is excited about it.
Analysts believe that at this moment, AMD has also come to the historical peak of corporate strength: in terms of consumer products, through the combination of architecture and design innovation and advanced processes, it has brought CPUs, GPUs and other products that can compete with major competitors Intel and NVIDIA head-on. The acquisition has brought AMD to the next level in the commercial field, and its product strength and business scope are also comparable to competitors.
Around 2010, AMD was mired in its biggest crisis since its founding, and to mention the people who have made the company change dramatically in a decade, it is impossible to avoid its current chairman and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su. As the helmsman of the enterprise, she has created miracles that are regarded as impossible by countless people, and as a woman and a Chinese, she has come to a height that more people dare not think or dare to do.
Where did Su Zifeng come from, what decisions did she make, and how did it change the AMD and semiconductor industries? This article will briefly talk about the legendary story of this woman who is called "Su Ma" by Chinese PC enthusiasts.
Do not accept the definition of a school bully
Let's go back to the 1960s, when the results of human scientific applications were endless. China completed the development and testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs, and Apollo 11 took humans to the moon for the first time, and science represented the romance and passion of fashion at that time. Intel and AMD, which we are familiar with, were also established in 1968 and 1969 respectively, and the development of the semiconductor industry is about to enter the fast lane.
At the beginning of its establishment, AMD was far less dazzling than Intel, although it obtained military and aerospace certifications with high gold content within ten years of its establishment, but its market share and product strength have long been in the shadow of others. However, from the 1990s to around 2000s, AMD shared with Intel in the PC processor market with cross-licensing, technology investment and cost performance, and even once led.
At the same time, world politics is also undergoing a transformation, and the relaxation of immigration policies in the United States has attracted a large number of intellectuals from all over the world. Born in 1969 in Tainan City, Su Zifeng followed her father, who was pursuing a doctorate in statistics at Columbia University, and the family immigrated to the other side of the ocean. Influenced by her father and mother, who ran the auto repair shop, Su Zifeng showed great interest in technical principles at a young age.
10-year-old Su Zifeng was keen to dismantle and repair her brother's toy car to understand the scientific knowledge behind the toy, and in the cognition of many people, such an experience belongs only to boys and is isolated from girls. Su Zifeng recalls that the same educational standards that her father applied to her children made her realize that gender would not be an obstacle, and also brought the motivation and willpower to continuously absorb knowledge.
When she was a student, Su Zifeng can definitely say that "both styles and styles blossom": she can train herself to attend the piano performance of the top art school Julia, and her mathematics and team leadership are also beyond most of her peers. In 1986, Su Zifeng, who had jumped to junior high school, was still loyal to her scientific ideals, majoring in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and during her eight years at MIT, she witnessed and participated in the advancement of the semiconductor industry.
She received her Ph.D. and worked for Texas Instruments, IBM and Freescale. She promoted the replacement of copper materials for aluminum materials in chip manufacturing at IBM, and also promoted the low-power and high-efficiency improvement of chips, and after becoming the CTO of Freescale in 2007, Su Zifeng led the company to obtain a leading position in embedded chips and communication products that year, providing a boost to the market.
Putting aside all of Su Zifeng's identity tags, such achievements and progress are equally rare in Silicon Valley, where the world's tech elites are gathered, and countless job opportunities are flying towards her like snowflakes, including invitations from AMD.
The first woman to take over the "rotten plate"
The "3A" combination of AMD processor + AMD motherboard + AMD graphics card is recognized as the performance choice of PC enthusiasts today. In the past, AMD did not have such a strong multi-computing power, but it was only a cost-effective candidate in the CPU market. In 2006, AMD acquired graphics maker ATi for $5.6 billion far more than its cash reserves, which was supposed to be a powerful combination, but it entered a decade-long disadvantage.
Familiar with the business story will naturally know that the "snake swallowing elephant" will definitely bring quite difficult indigestion to the enterprise, AMD this meal is very unhappy. Not only was it suppressed by Nvidia in the graphics card field, but the processor products lost the strength to confront Intel in the middle and high-end, and various conditions such as chaotic operation, high costs, and poor sales, at the same time, they found the second oldest in the industry.
AMD is not sitting still: splitting the chip production division into GF (Grofrunds), proposing a convergence plan to integrate CPUs and GPUs, seems extremely correct today. However, several times in a short period of time, the new CEO was replaced, and at that time, it seemed that the decision-making level was in a hurry to go to the doctor, and the hope of pulling the company, which once occupied half of the market, was pinned on the change of coach.
What's more unfortunate is that this series of actions did not quickly translate into returns, and the outside world only saw AMD seeking self-help in various ways, but failed to give the company more confidence, and the stock price once fell to more than $2. It was not until Su Zifeng was promoted to CEO in 2014 that AMD's turmoil eased the trend and re-found the product performance and growth curve that more people can identify with.
When Su Zifeng joined AMD in 2011, she was more like a "CEO reserve", she did not disappoint the management, and promoted a series of technical strategies and management changes, laying the foundation for the AMD we know today. The large order of game console chips with Microsoft and Sony was completed during this period, and the Zen series processor architecture that is now in the limelight also began to be developed at the same time.
After becoming the first woman to lead a large semiconductor company, Su Zifeng was not given too many positive reviews, including the CEO of Intel at the time, who believed that even if she had a strong technical understanding and management skill, it would be impossible to pull the giants on the edge of the cliff back. Su Zifeng revealed in an interview that as a doctor at MIT, she is reluctant to work for an MBA at Harvard and has difficulty accepting stupid decisions.
A "Yes" comes from the strength of rebirth
After the CPU and GPU business has been adjusted and restructured, AMD products have begun to compete, and there is a clearer and more feasible medium- and long-term plan than ever before. The outside world's distrust of Su Zifeng is still manifested in AMD's stock, which has been hovering at a low level in the two years she first took the helm of the company, but fortunately the management is not in a hurry to replace her.
The official product of the Convergence Program, APU, did not show strong general-purpose computing performance, but its powerful graphics performance and super cost performance made both the PS4 and Xbox One achieve huge performance improvements, driving the entire console game industry forward. Low-cost APU solutions have become a new choice for entry-level computers, and consumers are beginning to be willing to choose AMD products for better gaming performance.
The Ryzen Ryzen processor built by Zen architecture has shown performance advantages compared with the same period of Intel processors since 2017, whether it is high-end, terminal or low-end market, AMD processors that are much cheaper than Intel tend to have better performance. Since computers are powerful enough for less money, users naturally fall to the other side of the market.
Of course, Intel technology bottlenecks also provide some opportunities for AMD. The Core series, which once took LinkedIn tel to the CPU market, suffered from iterative disadvantages around 2016, and the subsequent generation of products was upgraded to give priority to competitors to create space. Therefore, when amD Ryzen™ with advantages in terms of price and performance is available, Intel Core is no longer too attractive.
The changes promoted by Su Zifeng also affected AMD's vital graphics computing business, but this is a story that is strong and strong: since the Fury series, AMD graphics cards have regained the top performance performance, and NVIDIA high-end graphics cards in the same period are inseparable, and in the high-end graphics card market in the next few years, the two sides still chase each other and do not open a significant gap.
After the core business gained a foothold, AMD led by Su Zifeng began to eat cake in more markets. Similar to consumer-facing desktop products, EPYC architecture server CPUs have a good strength compared to competitors, and have the ability to eat the procurement needs of the rapid development stage of Internet infrastructure. Cooperation such as joint ventures at the same time also affected the leap in the performance of server processors in China.
AMD's improvement in notebook products is the most obvious. Around 2010, there are only a few AMD solution notebooks on the market, which is convenient for research and development, performance and battery life performance, and Intel chip notebooks are the common choice of manufacturers and consumers, and in 2022, almost all manufacturers have multiple APU notebook product lines distributed in the high, middle, and low end, and consumers also have great enthusiasm.
brief summary
With amD's rebirth, catching up and surpassing, Su Zifeng himself and this professional experience are enough to be called "legendary". In Silicon Valley and the semiconductor industry, which for a long time has been led by people of specific ethnic and cultural backgrounds, it is hard not to be impressed by the emergence of such a great leader and engineer who transcends his own background and gender.
The F1 arena, which symbolizes extreme speed and the frontier of technology, has attracted a large number of sponsorships from technology companies, and AMD, which wants to further consolidate its brand image, is no exception. At the scene of the 2018 China Grand Prix, Su Zifeng was "unfortunately" asked by foreign reporters if she could speak English, and was interviewed in a slightly comical interview, she remained generous and just smiled slightly at the camera: We AMD sponsored the Ferrari team.
As with the pursuit of speed, our constant need for advanced computing power drives AMD and other businesses to stay dynamic and advanced. We also know that this special figure who has led the great company to revitalize it will continue to fight on the front lines.