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Speaker 1:

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the Consumer Technology Association for a virtual Masters of Leadership series events. Please welcome Rich Montoni, the Chairman of NBTC and the Vice-Chairman of MAXIMUS.

Rich Montoni:

Well good afternoon. I am delighted to welcome you to our virtual event today. We have an exciting program with Advanced Micro Devices President and Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su, and Consumer Technology Association President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Shapiro. First before we get started, a couple housekeeping rules. Everybody has been muted and during the question and answer portion of our event today, if you would like to ask a question it's pretty simple. Use your Q&A button to write your question for the speakers. That Q&A button is located in the middle of the bottom bar on your screen. This series is made possible by our co-producer, Consumer Technology Association, our premier sponsors CoreSite and SAP, and our support sponsors who include American Systems, Amazon Web Services, CGI Federal, CNSI, Cresa, Iridium, Micron Technology, Morgan Stanley, Raymond James & Associates, Transformation Systems, Inc., and Verite, Verite Group Inc., also known as VGI.

Rich Montoni:

Thank you all for your support. If you would like to join them as a sponsor, please connect with Yolanda Lee at NVTC today. The next three events in this series will be as follows. On June 11th we will have the Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James. Next on June 23rd we will have Florida Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy at 2:00 pm. Finally on June 30th at 11:00 am we will have the US House Majority Whip, James Clyburn. Registration is open for all three of these next events on the NVTC website.

Rich Montoni:

Now it is my honor to introduce today's moderator, Gary Shapiro. Gary is a NVTC board member and he is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Consumer Technology Association. CTA is the U.S. Trade Association which represents more than 2200 consumer technology companies and which owns and produces CES, a global stage for innovation. It is through his New York Times best-selling books, television appearances, and as a columnist who has more than 1000 opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Washington Post, that Gary has direct policymakers and business leaders on the importance of innovation in the U.S. Economy. He is considered an influencer on LinkedIn and has more than 300,000 followers. Please welcome Gary Shapiro.

Gary Shapiro:

Thank you Richard and thanks to the NVTC for partnering us, it's a great organization that represents the tech industry so well in the northern Virginia area. The largest tech association and regional association of which I'm aware and it's an honor to sit on the board and be a partner with them. I'm really thrilled to have Dr. Lisa Su with us today. As Richard says, she's been the President and CEO of AMD since 2014, but that doesn't tell the real story. I mean the story is she has changed things radically there and hit such grand slam home runs that the growth in the company stock is quadruple digit. I had to really check that out but the stock growth is phenomenal.

Gary Shapiro:

We are also very fortunate she was a keynote speaker at CES in 2019, and to give you a little bit of flavor of what's happened since she was the keynote speaker: 2019, what a year. The Bloomberg 50 list, the NYSCI Distinguished Leadership Award, the Top 100 Best Performing CEOs in the World according to Harvard Business Review, CNN Risk Takers, the World's Best CEOs of 2019 Barrons, the Most Powerful Woman in Business according to Fortune, Business Person of the Year Fortune Magazine. Those are a few of the many, many awards that Dr. Su has gotten. But she's had quite a life even before she got to AMD. She held senior positions at Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, and Texas Instruments, and she received Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate Degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. She's published more than 40 technical articles and was named a Fellow of the IEEE in 2009.

Gary Shapiro:

What a amazing career she's had. She serves on a number of boards, including she's elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science. She serves on the Board of Directors of Cisco, and chairs the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association as well as active on the board including having chaired the Global Semiconductor Alliance. Welcome Lisa, so good to see you.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Gary, it's great to be here, thank you so much for having me.

Gary Shapiro:

We're absolutely thrilled. It's such an important organization and it's a very critical time. Can you start out by telling us a little bit about how you started personally, where you grew up, what you did before the successful corporate years.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, absolutely.

Gary Shapiro:

- and then on through those.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah absolutely Gary. Look, I was born in Taiwan and my family immigrated to New York when I was two, so I would say I'm a New Yorker at heart. Always a little bit involved in math and science and very interested in engineering and so that was most of my schooling. Look, I've been an engineer for 25 years. I'm lucky right now that I'm running an important company in technology for us, but at the end of the day I love building things and really pushing the envelope on technology. That's been my focus.

Gary Shapiro:

Could you talk about your various positions you held at other companies and how you ended up at AMD and what you started as?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah absolutely, so as I said I'm a New Yorker at heart, and so after spending eight years in Boston at MIT I ended up spending a large portion of my earlier career at IBM in the Yorktown and the Fishkill areas, up in the Hudson Valley and it was a great experience. I mean again, in semiconductors and microelectronics and building microprocessors. At some point, the opportunity came to go to Freescale Semiconductor so I moved to Austin and I live in Austin right now. Then eight years ago I joined AMD. The thought process was: there are so few companies in the US that are really doing high performance microprocessor design. For those of you who are less familiar, think about billions of devices on a small microchip the size of a dime or a quarter that can really power some of our most important applications.

Dr. Lisa Su:

I started in that area and I've always wanted to be a semiconductor CEO, so in some case AMD's my dream job and it's really been a fun experience for me.

Gary Shapiro:

You say you always wanted to be a semiconductor CEO. You don't really mean always, I mean at what point did that realization occur?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Well I guess you could say my freshman year in college, I did my first stint as a undergraduate researcher in one of the semiconductor labs at MIT and so I was doing basically grunt work as any undergraduate would do, but I was actually making small devices and it was amazing to me that you could actually do that. Since then, semiconductors has been my passion, and as an engineer, you always think, "boy, could I make a better business decision or is there a technology that can really change the world and change the dynamics?" That's what's really been my interest in semiconductors is how can we use the technology to do a lot of good in the world?

Gary Shapiro:

Well that's great. Usually engineers go in a technical direction and they stay as engineers. How did you get the people skills and the business management skills to rise up?

Dr. Lisa Su:

It's interesting, so at IBM when I was relatively, let's call it, new in the company, I was two or three years in the company. I was dealing with senior fellows like Robert Dennard who's largely considered the father of scaling and I would stop by his office and I thought to myself, "I could never be as smart as him." That could never happen. I would have to build my career on the technical management front and I had a lot of opportunities to do that. I think one of the things that is so interesting about engineering leadership is the power of bringing people together. What you can do as a single person is great, but what you can do when you can bring 10 smart people together, or 100 smart people together, or 10,000 smart people together, aligned on a vision, it's incredible. That's really how I got into management and got into really building teams that can do really seemingly impossible tasks around technology, but once you put the effort and the thought process into it you can really do something special.

Gary Shapiro:

How did you get the accounting skills, all the skills, management, the people skills, all the parts of the organization that aren't technical? Marketing, sales, where did you... Did you learn that along the way when you had the jobs, did you have different mentors? What was it? This is a discussion and a focus on leadership. How do you get to be a leader I guess is what I'm asking, if you start in one specific area in leading across an organization.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, Gary, I didn't get an MBA or anything like that. I think the advice that I was given, which I actually give to people now, which is actually very good advice is to try many different things. One of the opportunities that I received early in my career is about every two or three years after finishing a project I would get a chance to try something new. I was doing deep engineering work but I had an opportunity, for example, to really spend a lot of time with customers on a large customer opportunity, that's how I learned about customers.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Then I ran my first business, and by the way, I didn't do such a great job running my first business, but I made a lot of mistakes and I learned from that and then you get a chance to run larger organizations. The opportunity with great mentors is to have the opportunity to try different things and to learn on the job and to learn things like accounting and the balance sheet, but fundamentally I would say there's a lot of on-the-job training. Being able to have the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, correct, and do better the next time.

Gary Shapiro:

Do you learn from your mistakes or your successes?

Dr. Lisa Su:

I absolutely learn from my mistakes. I absolutely remember my mistakes. It's much, much harder to remember successes because as fun as they are in the moment, they go, but boy, I remember very, very well the first really large business mistake I made or the first... You just do and those things stay with you actually and that's what I tell people is I have this philosophy that you really learn by examining what could you have done better the next time?

Gary Shapiro:

I couldn't agree with you more, but since you raised it a number of times, do you want to share with us one of those big mistakes?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Oh yeah sure. The very first business I ran, this was many, many years ago. It was middle sized business, couple hundred million dollars. Within the first three months I had missed my plan by 50%, 50% within three months. I was an engineer turned business person and I had to learn that there's all kinds of judgment and skills and how you put together plans and execute towards plans. I remember that very, very well I must say.

Gary Shapiro:

What is it that you had done wrong though in terms of missing your plan? Was it the plan wasn't right or is it you did something wrong?

Dr. Lisa Su:

I was inexperienced, I was inexperienced, and so what I had done was I had taken a lot of input without inserting judgment, really understanding the risks involved, doing risk management, and really trying to figure out what is the outcome of not every single thing had to go perfectly but there was a way to assess what a more probable answer was. It was complete inexperience but something that frankly, I think for all of us, it's when you're running a large company it's not much different. You have to take a lot of input and make some decisions about where you want to take risks and where do you want to make sure that you have very strong execution plans.

Gary Shapiro:

Today in your position when you see someone making a mistake in your company, do you try to help them avoid it or do you empower people and try to caution them but let them make the mistakes and learn from them?

Dr. Lisa Su:

I think it's a little bit of both. I mean our philosophy is on how do we put together business processes and milestones so that we can catch things before they happen. My goal is always to yes, we want to make sure that people learn along the way, but we also want to make sure that we protect the business. It's a little bit of both and what you learn is they're actually... People are really hungry and want to do the best that they can, and so we have this statement within AMD that I use and it's called the next 5%. What I say is, "Hey, there's always the next 5% that we could do a little bit better," and this is not about was it a good result or a bad result but you could always do a little bit better.

Dr. Lisa Su:

When we think about it in that particular way I think people get really motivated about doing things a little bit better, serving our customers a little bit better, insuring that that product is just a little bit faster, and how do we put the processes in place to enable that to happen? Yes, there's a lot of that in the leadership philosophy.

Gary Shapiro:

Now you're heading AMD, so what was your secret sauce, your success the last six years it has gotten so quickly so fast and so amazing. What is it you did right?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Well I would say there are some fundamentals. First of all, AMD has a storied history. We actually just turned 51 as a company a few weeks ago, and so we've been around for a long time. If you look at the foundation of the company it was ingrained around technology and entrepreneurialism and really innovation. I think over the last five or six years, what we've brought, and this includes my leadership team, is that spirit of we are an innovation leader, we have to take the right risks, so this is about making big bets, but it's also about knowing what you're really good at.

Dr. Lisa Su:

What we're really good at is high performance computing. We're really good at putting an incredible amount of computing horsepower in people's hands, and so it takes time, it actually takes many years to build that foundation, but we took the time to build that foundation and that's core in our beliefs. The number one thing I tell people every day is we're here to build great products and that really emanates in the decisions that we make.

Gary Shapiro:

In terms of the areas that you've seen growth in, I was looking up some of the company, and you talk about things frankly I don't understand in terms of your company. I am not an engineer and I don't even try to fake it that I am, but categories or products I understand and it seems to be you've been very successful with cloud and video games and you've called 2020 the year of the notebook. I'm curious to see, especially given changes this year, how you've seen that. If you still have that view. These are three and I know that there's probably other areas, data centers for example that are in graphics that you're very big on as well. Which are the areas you see as strong today and which of the areas do you see strong in the future?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, so if I talk about the market size and the market opportunity, computing is really important in large and a few markets. In PCs, for example, PCs is a $30 billion plus market, data centers it's another $30 billion plus and growing, and then you look at gaming and game consoles and all that content, another $10, $12 billion market. Really large opportunities that are out there, and they all require more computing horsepower. I'm very excited about where high performance computing is going in the future. If you take a look at where we are today and the events around COVID-19, it's been a very difficult time across the world, but when you look at what has helped us, what has helped us is the power of computing.

Dr. Lisa Su:

The fact that we're doing this video cast today, it's collaboration tools that require computing horsepower in the cloud. It's people needing PCs at home so that they can effectively work from home. It's kids needing PCs for schooling, and so you have schooling at home. I think this is an example of why computing is so important. It's a place that we've always believed. We've always believed the foundation of high performance computing could do amazing things, both in terms of solving difficult problems, as well as making our everyday lives different, and then we're seeing some of that. It's a very exciting time to be in the computing market.

Gary Shapiro:

Well this year, 2020, is not the way we anticipated it when we met in early January in Las Vegas at CES. We've had two big things and we started out with a roaring economy and then we were hit with COVID-19 and then even since we spoke last week, it seems that things have dramatically changed in our country in the area of race relations. I'd like you to talk about both of those. Let's start with the really big one of the moment, if you don't mind. What is your view of what's happened in the last week in terms of where we are as a nation and where we can go?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, if you think about the events over the last week I think it's fair for all of us, they're shocking, they're extraordinarily disturbing. I think it's a combination of feelings, no matter who you are, between anger and frustration and sadness as to where we are. My view on these things is obviously this has to be addressed. I think the social inequality has to be addressed. I think the racial divide has to be addressed. I think if you talk to most people, everybody feels that way. The key for us as a nation is to figure out how to affect change, and it's an opportunity for us I think to affect change. I mean, I think the way I view it personally is first, there is what we each have to do within our sphere of influence and insuring that we help our employees and friends and families and communities process and make sense of where we are.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Then it really is an opportunity for us to think about what will enable us to have systemic reform in this area. I mean I think Gary you said it, the world has changed quite a bit and it's our opportunity as leaders to address it, but it's a big issue for us to address.

Gary Shapiro:

I agree, it is a big issue and it seems we're united as a country on three basic principles. One is is that murder of Floyd was horrible, tragic, wrong, everything as were similar instances, and the second I think we're united on is that there's nothing wrong - in fact, it's an American cherished right to express your anger, to demonstrate, to do everything. The third thing is a principle that I think everyone also agrees upon that when it comes to violence and mayhem and looting is horrifying to see. You put all those three together, and the fourth one is the overall, in my view, the role of the police it's a very important one and the vast majority of them are good people and putting their lives at risk. You have all those four principles together, which I think most people would agree on all four of those, most Americans I should say. I don't know about other countries but we have an issue and it does boil down to the fact that it's tough to be black in America because of our system and there's no denying that, I mean it's tragic.

Gary Shapiro:

I don't think there's answers but I think we can agree on the problem. That's where I think we are, and it's good to see people like yourself and other corporate leaders stand up and say, "This is important. It's important because we're Americans, it's important because we have employees, we have customers, and we have a country that we believe in." Your parents came here to give you a better life I assume. My wife's an immigrant and I talked to her parents about it and this is the land of the free and that should be free for everybody. I didn't mean to make a speech. That was supposed to be a question. I'm not sure-

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah no look Gary, I think you said it very, very well and I think we all feel it and we all feel a responsibility to do our part and make something good come out of what was such a horrific situation.

Gary Shapiro:

We can be hopeful and we can try to all make something good come out of it. On COVID-19, which there's the enemy that we can all agree upon if you want to find an enemy, AMD is, and you've stepped up early on, you've done a lot of things, you've even gotten together with competitors and you want to talk about some of those things?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah absolutely, so again I don't think any of us could have predicted or imagined the impact of COVID-19 across the world. I think we have a global company so we saw the beginnings of this in China early in the first quarter and we worked through that. Our first and foremost priority has always been the health and safety of our employees and making sure that we provide the right environment for that. Then very close second was providing the needed products and capabilities for our customers as they were going through it. Then our health and association with the community.

Dr. Lisa Su:

All three have been top of mind. I can tell you I think every single day since early in the first quarter we've been thinking about it, but I do believe that there are some really good things that we've been able to do. I feel good about where our employee community is, we're mostly work from home. We are starting the process of returning to the office but we're mostly work from home today. The team has done great and I'm really proud of them for everything that we've been able to accomplish. I think for our customers, it is about providing the needed capacity, so when you think about cloud data centers and the back office of that. We're running on this Zoom meeting or if you're running on Microsoft Teams, you may be running on AMD Epic server processors, and that's been one of the areas where we've really tried to build up capacity in the cloud over the last couple of months.

Dr. Lisa Su:

We have seen a large interest in notebook PCs. The idea that you used to have maybe one PC per household, that's changed and people realize that this is now one of the fundamentals of communication and productivity. That's been a positive in terms of working with our customers. Then on the community front, I'm actually really excited about what computing can do to help accelerate solutions to some of these problems. COVID-19, some of the vaccine research, a lot of the transmission science, the work that's being done requires high performance computing, and so we've been participating with the White House High Performance Computing Task Force. We've also actually just this week donated some super computing clusters to MIT, NYU and Rice University. Very, very exciting opportunity to try to, again, use what is a very difficult situation but make sure that we're better as we come out of it. That's certainly been our focus.

Gary Shapiro:

Well you certainly talked about how the industry has stepped up and your company's stepped up and the value that technology has played in this. How about for you as a leader and your leadership team? How has it affected your relations, your customers, your ability to communicate? You think it's better? You think some things have gotten better or is it more difficult because of the lack of human contact?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah Gary, I would say I think nobody would say that it's a wonderful situation. I mean, it's hard. I mean, it's hard for so many people to be sheltered at home. But that being the case, we're making the best of it and I think we're making the best of it in a good way. I do think that our employees are extremely productive and we're doing everything that we can to help them with all aspects of dealing with COVID-19 beyond the work aspects but the mental health aspects, the stress aspects, and all that stuff that need to be addressed.

Dr. Lisa Su:

I do think it brings people closer together. I mean, it brings customers closer together. I mean, we have a common goal, which is to help each other through a difficult situation. I think it brings a community closer together. I mean I can't tell you how many calls that I've been on from various associations, whether it's our semiconductor group of CEOs that we hang out. We used to talk once a quarter, now we talk every two weeks on a Zoom call. In Silicon Valley, we're involved in the Silicon Valley Recovery Council where we're working with the mayor and a group of industry and public private sector leaders to talk about how do we reopen the Silicon Valley economy. I do think it's brought out the best in everybody because we all are aligned along this common goal. As you said, whether you're a partner, a competitor, a acquaintance, or someone in the community, this is our opportunity to help each other and I think we've all taken it very seriously and to heart.

Gary Shapiro:

Do you think some of the changes because of COVID will be lasting? Do you anticipate, for example, that your employees will be working more remotely, it'll change the demographics in terms of where people live. Do you see changes that are permanent as a result of this experience we've had for almost three months now?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, Gary I do think there will be some changes. I think we all talk about what the new normal might be. I think some of the changes are perhaps more clear than others. For example, we're all not going to travel as much, I mean, that's factual. We've now learned that we can do a lot through all of these virtual collaboration tools. It's not quite the same, but it's pretty good. I do think that there will be some employees that will want more flexibility to work remotely and I think that will be okay.

Dr. Lisa Su:

I do think that there is a point where we enjoy being together. I think human beings enjoy being together. I enjoy coming to the office if not just for seeing people in the halls and being able to interact. I do think once we get through this period and there's better testing and we make progress on the therapeutics and the vaccine that we will swing back to let's call it more of the where it used to be, but there will be some things that are different. I think we've all learned a bit about ourselves and a bit about what our businesses can withstand through this experience.

Gary Shapiro:

Do you think younger people are more likely to start traveling more quickly?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Let's see, that's a good question. I think what we see is that I think younger people are more apt to want to get back to interacting. We see that. As we surveyed our employees, we actually surveyed our top sites very recently and what we saw is that the younger employees, for a number of reasons, are more anxious to come back into the office, for example. I think that's partly due to mindsets, that's also partly due to probably some personal situations where it may be difficult to work from home. But yes, I do think there's a divide in how people think about this. Our philosophy has been look, let's leave it to the employees to decide what makes them comfortable. Our job is to make sure that we create an environment that's very safe and also very flexible, and that's what we're trying to do.

Gary Shapiro:

Do you think that COVID and the experience in the last week have put a greater premium on empathy and understanding and communication skills that didn't exist six months ago?

Dr. Lisa Su:

That's a good question. I would say that it's made all of us realize that there's a lot more than the straight products and P&L and the business. I think that's absolutely true, Gary. The amount of time that we spend on things that you wouldn't imagine. How many people should be in the elevator to make sure that it's safe, for example. That's important, right? Yes, we want to make sure that we've thought about every detail. As for the events of last week, what do we do? I mean, I'm really big on making sure that we're not talking about a topic, but we're actually doing something about a topic, and so my conversation with some of my team is what do we do that we're adding to it and not just talking about something. I think we all feel that responsibility.

Gary Shapiro:

I think that's a very tech industry approach actually. We can solve this problem technically. It's one of the reasons, actually, California has a lot of interesting laws is because they think every problem can be solved by government. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. They have some good laws and some that are not so good. That is definitely how we think in our industry. Let's take a problem and let's solve it. I think that's almost an American cultural thing as well that we'll think outside the box and we'll solve some. Let's be hopeful.

Gary Shapiro:

I want to switch this up a little bit. It's in a diversity category. Your company's been recognized by Bloomberg and the Human Rights Campaign and others that you're a good company obviously. But you yourself, I mean you set a record last year in that you're the first woman to top Associated Press CEOs pay analysis, so you're at the top.

Dr. Lisa Su:

You are not supposed to talk about that, Gary.

Gary Shapiro:

Oh I asked you if I could talk about everything and I thought you said I could.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Just kidding.

Gary Shapiro:

We want to know what's the key to your success, and actually if you're giving advice to women or even men for that matter, who aspire to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, what advice would you give them? Being a woman, are you willing to talk about any of that? Have you had any challenges? Congratulations, by the way, it's good to break through those barriers and I think it's strong. We've also seen more women running Fortune 500 companies, that's an all time high right now and we're in a right trend that way. I want to know if you got any views on any of those comments.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Dr. Lisa Su:

Our goal, from a company standpoint, my personal philosophy on this is this is all about opportunities. I mean there are a lot of really smart people in this world and the fact is you need to not just be smart, but you also need to be in the right place at the right time with the right circumstances. You can improve your odds by being in the right field, where you go to school, what you major in, what your first jobs are, but you also need a little bit of help in that. Our job as senior leadership, as management, as executives, is to give good people good opportunities.

Dr. Lisa Su:

I can say that for myself. I was very, very lucky. I had mentors who gave me good opportunities and I was able to capitalize on those opportunities. When you look at the diversity aspect of it, again clearly we haven't done enough. I mean as much progress as there has been, there's still not enough women, there are not enough underrepresented minorities in leadership positions. I really believe that that's because the opportunities have not necessarily been presented in such a way. That is I think more work for us to do, but again it's an area where people are very cognizant of it, it's a conversation that's very in the moment around diversity and equality and all of those things.

Gary Shapiro:

I agree with that. You're also a competitor in a pretty interesting field where almost half the world production is from U.S. Companies like yours, but one of your competitors is Nvidia and I have to ask about this because there's conflicting stories on the web. First of all, tell us about the partnership you have, but also Jensen was also born in Taiwan. There's stories on the web that he's a relative to your grandfather's cousin. Is he a relative and what's the deal there? Sorry to ask it, I have to.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Let me answer the first question first and I'll come back to the second one if I remember, how's that Gary? Look-

Dr. Lisa Su:

I think Nvidia's a great company. I mean, there's no question from the technology capability that they have demonstrated over the last decade has led the industry to some of the key areas in AI and so on and so forth. I am actually proud of the fact that in their most recent AI system they have chosen AMD, and I've been asked, "Well why do you think they chose AMD?" I think they chose AMD because we have the best product in the marketplace today, and so I feel really good about that.

Dr. Lisa Su:

It is a competitive world so there's no question that we compete hard, but it's also a world where you also have to partner with your competitors from time to time. Our CPUs work with Nvidia GPUs, in PCs, in data centers and in a whole host of applications. That doesn't mean we're not going to compete hard in gaming. We'll continue to do that. Since you're a friend, Gary, and since you asked me and I try to answer questions, we are distant relatives.

Gary Shapiro:

Okay.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Distant relatives, so some complex second cousin type of thing.

Gary Shapiro:

Got it, thank you. The subjects of what it takes to go forward with the economy, The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Semiconductor Industry Association is seeking $37 billion for subsidies to construct United States chip factories. On the website you're listed as a chairman of the SIA. Could you tell us anything about this proposal?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yes, I'm actually not the chairman of the SIA so that's actually Keith Jackson from ON Semiconductors as chairman. I am a member.

Gary Shapiro:

Oh I apologize.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Of the SIA board but I wanted to make sure that that was clear. The SIA represents about 95% of the semiconductor industry. We have spent time on this topic of U.S. Domestic manufacturing. I actually think it's a broader conversation, Gary, and the broader conversation is really around U.S. Leadership and technology. The fact of the matter is the U.S. Is a leader in technology, in high performance computing, and our goal is to continue that particular leadership. With that comes a need for some secure supply chains and so that's part of the conversation is around how do we make sure we have secure supply chains in manufacturing? Another part of that is to insure that we continue with real leading edge R&D and insure that we are able to do that across the industry. I think that's important to the semiconductor industry.

Dr. Lisa Su:

We want to maintain our leadership. One of the things that I'm most proud of as CEO of AMD is that we've been selected to be the computing horsepower behind the two largest exascale supercomputers that the Department of Energy has awarded. If you think about the Department of Energy and what we do with our national labs at Oak Ridge National Labs and Lawrence Livermore National Labs, they need the best computing on the planet and we're proud to be the supplier of that, and we want to continue to do that. This is about U.S. Leadership in semiconductors for the next 10 years and how do we insure that that it's funded correctly, that it's funded both internally. When I say internally, both within the semiconductor industry, as well as in these very important public private partnerships across the US government and the industry.

Gary Shapiro:

Well it seems that both presidential candidates at this point seem to be in favor of encouraging U.S. Manufacturing so you probably will have somewhat of a sympathetic ear for that, or the SIA will in terms of Congress.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, well again I think it's one amongst many of the items that we think are important to continue U.S. Leadership in this area.

Gary Shapiro:

Any others you want to share?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Well as I mentioned, I think the R&D aspect is very important. In addition to that is the training of new researchers. If you think about what's gotten us where we are, it's we have these great universities that have a... Really are the training ground for the next generation of technology leaders. All of that is important as we think about the future leadership.

Gary Shapiro:

Should we be doing something differently at the pre-university system with schools? If some of the parents listening say, "I want my kid to go into the semiconductor industry," what should they be doing in high school, for example?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Well I think the foundation... There's a couple things. One is we need people to want to go into the semiconductor industry. For a long time the sexy parts were software and internet and that stuff. We're trying to say, "Hey, semiconductors are pretty sexy when you think about what we can do with them." Yes, when you think about high school education or junior high education, it's really a propensity towards math and science, it's really about problem solving, not being afraid to solve problems is what I would like to say. Sometimes they call it the hard sciences versus some of the softer skills. I think you need both. I like to believe that my training as an engineer, I like to say, is really about how to solve problems and how can you very analytically solve a problem and I think we should make that fun. That is one of the key parts of making STEM interesting, especially to women and underrepresented minorities.

Gary Shapiro:

Well I see we have a question from the audience. One of them is: given everyone works remotely, how do you see growth for employees? How do you keep tabs per se without that face to face interaction? What would show you leadership potential in today's work from home environment?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah great question. We really believe that this is about managers and leaders providing direction, motivation, inspiration to their employees through unconventional means. It's really about thinking outside of the box in terms of how you solve a problem. Yes, normally you get into a room and you white board and now you can't white board so you get on a Zoom call or a Microsoft Teams call and you have to collaborate together in that way.

Dr. Lisa Su:

I do believe that it is about personal initiative, and so I've seen some really great examples of that. There are lots of people who are doing unconventional things, these online happy hours or I heard a story yesterday about someone doing a cooking class with their employees so that they had a chance to interact that way. We're all about getting the best out of our products, and so even in this time we've been very, very creative on what we're able to do in our labs with very few people because we have all these remote abilities to monitor progress.

Dr. Lisa Su:

I think from a management standpoint, at the end of the day it is about results and so we're going to measure people on the results, but you might have to get those results a slightly different way than you did before.

Gary Shapiro:

Can I ask you a question from the most productive reporter I think I've ever met, I think he produces over 1000 articles every year - Dean Takahashi. Are you exploring the VR collaboration?

Dr. Lisa Su:

How are you doing Dean? Thanks for joining us. We do have some VR collaborations. VR and AR collaborations. I think they use graphics cards and graphics horsepower well, so yes we do have some collaborations with a few lead customers.

Gary Shapiro:

I'm going to channel Dean for a second and say, "Do you want to be more specific?" He's interviewed me so many time I know he will always do the followup.

Dr. Lisa Su:

If you're asking specifically are we doing more VR collaborations as a result of COVID-19 I would say not particularly, not particularly. If you're asking again do we have overall VR collaborations, are we doing specialty hardware and software? We are doing some specialty hardware and software.

Gary Shapiro:

Thank you. Back to one of the leadership questions, which I think as a CEO is something we all wonder about. How does one develop and exercise good judgment when the future is unknown and not all the facts are in?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, great question, great question. I would say that if I think about the past few months and what's on the minds of some of my peers and what we think about, the world is changing very, very quickly. The best that we can do is, number one, make sure that we have very good signals, and when I say very good signals I mean signals about the business, signals about frankly the medical and health situation locally, as well as signals about our employees and our customers. We've increased that rhythm and that valuation of these signals to extend that, every week we're paying a lot of attention to the data. I think that's the best that we can do because it is an environment that's changing so quickly, and we make adjustments as necessary.

Dr. Lisa Su:

On the local health situation, I mean, you can see it across the regions. On the business situation we track sales at all of our large partners across the world so we can see what's happening in China, versus what's happening in Korea, versus what's happening in Italy, versus what's happening in the U.S., And that gives you a set of information. You're not going to be able to predict the next five years, it's hard to predict the next five years, but we set very ambitious goals but make sure that we're optimizing based on what we're seeing in the market on a very active basis.

Gary Shapiro:

Another audience member says, "How do you expect to see gaming continue to grow and shift in the coming years?"

Dr. Lisa Su:

Yeah, so gaming's a pretty exciting area. If you think about it we've talked about maybe billions of gamers, it could be two billion gamers if you think about the mobile phone form factor, PCs, game consoles, and now gaming in the cloud. I think gaming continues to grow. I think when you look at online gaming it's another way for us to interact. I used to think it was unusual that so many people enjoyed online gaming, now it's like boy e-sports is the next sports phenomena and people are very, very avid in that.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Our goal is to give as much realism into that gaming experience as possible. We build very, very complex graphics processors so that you can look at the microscopic wind going through someone's hair. It makes it more real, it makes the whole experience more entertaining, more photo realistic in that realm, and I think that gaming ecosystem is going to continue to get better. I mean this year is going to be very exciting with some of the game consoles that will be launched by Microsoft and Sony. A lot of people interact with gaming through game consoles, and so we're going to continue to see growth in the gaming sector.

Gary Shapiro:

Ian King of Bloomberg asks, "The issues that you talked about related to U.S. Competitiveness and the role the semiconductor industry plays have been on the agenda of the SIA for many, many years. Has anything changed? Any reason for hope that those able to make changes are listening? Thanks."

Dr. Lisa Su:

Ian, it's true. I think there's no question that the semiconductor industry has been thinking about these issues for a long time. I do think there are some changes. I think the changes are around one, both the recognition of the importance of the semiconductor industry. I think that it's become more clear to all of us that leadership in semiconductors are important, and I do also think that there is a new view of supply chains that people are understanding. I agree, it's been on the docket for quite some time, but I do think that there are some shifts in thinking.

Gary Shapiro:

I know we're shifting gears but I know you're very flexible mentally so this shouldn't be a challenge, but what is AMDs take on the five nanometer chip set and how much advantage does it have to AMD compared to seven? When will the five be out?

Dr. Lisa Su:

Well that does sound like we're shifting gears Gary. There's someone who's an avid watcher of technology. Look, five nanometers is going to be important. Today we're on seven nanometer, seven nanometers leadership in the industry. We will be going to five nanometer in the next couple of years. I'm not ready to talk about details yet, other than to say that ,as far as we can see, it's progressing well and it will go a long way to continuing our momentum around pushing the envelope on technology. Gary, if I try to take a step back that's really what we're trying to do, right? We actually believe that technology's empowering. It's empowering to companies, it's empowering to people, it's empowering to industries, and so our goal is to provide those foundational building blocks, and so five nanometers, one of those important elements in pushing the envelope on technology.

Gary Shapiro:

It's a great way but there's a personal question to end this, this will be the final question I ask you and it's one I often wonder about when I see strong leaders. Do you find yourself falling into leadership roles in things you do outside of work, hobbies and such? Do you automatically take over in a room when you're in a meeting in a volunteer thing? When you go to one of these Association Leadership things where it's a bunch of other leaders are you a listener, are you a talker, or do you give equal time to everyone?

Dr. Lisa Su:

It's funny, when you ask personal questions it takes me longer to answer than when you ask business questions. I am perhaps less of a talker than you might imagine. I have this philosophy of you should say something when you have very profound to say and not just talk to fill a room. I do find though that as we've advanced, as AMD has done better, that we have more of a responsibility in the industry and so I think the talking, as you say during the volunteering, as you say is part of our responsibility as an important member of the industry and of the community. But talking extemporaneously is not my thing, so I appreciate your questions because they keep me talking but in general I would say I'm more of a listener.

Gary Shapiro:

Well you've only given me one answer which I disagree with and that is your final statement that talking extemporaneously is not your thing. Thank you so much for sharing thoughts on a very, very wide range of issues today. You've been very generous with your time and your insights and it's not just about the technical aspects, which we barely touched upon, but it's your leadership, it's what your company's done, it's some of the societal issues we're facing now. Thank you Lisa, it's been really terrific and I know I'm speaking on behalf of everyone listening when we appreciate you giving us an hour of your time.

Dr. Lisa Su:

Gary thank you very much, really appreciate you having us and look forward to talking again.

Gary Shapiro:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Lisa and Gary for that fascinating discussion. The upcoming events in this series are Kay Coles James on June 11th, Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy on June 23rd, and the U.S. House Whip James Clyburn on June 30th. Registration is open on the NVTC website, NVTC.org. We hope to see you there. In the meantime, please stay safe and health, and have a great rest of your day.