AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su talks new Ryzen 4000 chips and out-performing Intel

Editor-in-chief of The Verge Nilay Patel talks to CEO of AMD Dr Lisa Su at CES 2020 about AMD's new Ryzen laptop chips, the competition with Intel for consumer laptops, and if she is going to take on the high end of Nvidia's GPUs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everyone, I'm Sam from The Vergecast. On this week's interview show, we've got Dr. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD. We had a chance to talk at CES. I gotta say, it's one of the most interesting interviews I've done in a while. Dr. Su is really smart, extremely focused, has a very clear vision of where she's taking AMD. We obviously talked about AMD's announcements at CES, including the new Ryzen laptop chips, how the competition with Intel for consumer laptops is going, and whether she's going to take on the high end of Nvidia's GPUs. We also talked about something I've been doing more of, which is when and where she actually gets work done. It's like my new favorite question. All in all, it was a great conversation. I was really excited to talk to her. Check it out.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  Lisa Su, you're the CEO of AMD. Welcome to The Vergecast.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Thank you. It's great to be here.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  I should actually not say welcome. I'm in your conference room at CES. You're

• 1:43Speaker 03

  We are meeting for the first

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  We are meeting for the first

• 1:45Speaker 03

  How's it?

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  time. Thank you for coming on our show. We were just talking, this is the second time you've done a sort of a big press event at CES. Last year, you were here, you said 2019 is going to be a big year. You obviously had a press conference yesterday. You said the 2020 is going to be even bigger. Tell us why.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so look, we love CES. It's a great way to start the year. We get to see all of our customers and partners and press all at one time. And yes, you know, last year, we were keynote at CES. This year, we did a A press conference yesterday and we do think 2020 is going to be a great year. And it's all about products for us. So we're all about, you know, launching a new set of products. And here at CES, given that it's the consumer focus, we talked a lot about our PC products and what we're bringing for both gamers and creators to the market in 2020. So yeah, we're very excited about the year.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  So the big news obviously is the new Ryzen 4000 series and Athlon mobile chips for laptops. Walk us through this.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you know, when you think about, you know, just the PC market, I mean, it's over 275 million units a year, you know, 180 million notebooks are sold. And, you know, it's really about how do you make this form factor exciting and bring out, you know, new and interesting capabilities. And so we launched yesterday Ryzen 4000 series. It's our first 7-nanometer product for the notebook form factor. It's the first 7-nanometer x86 product for the notebook form factor. It packs a tremendous amount of computing performance. So the idea is if you like to game, or if you like to create, or if you like to do, you know, anything productive on a PC, you want more performance in smaller

• 3:27Speaker 03

  form factors. And that's what Ryzen 4000 allows you to do.

• 3:31Nilay Patel?

  So let's talk about 7-nanometer for a minute. You're saying it's the first 7-nanometer x86 product. There's obviously been a lot of movement in the industry towards 7-nanometer. Does it just get you more performance in a smaller form factor? Does it get you more performance per watt? How are you thinking about that process shift?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, the idea with technology is, you know, you have to make a set of choices, you know, three to five years in advance. And it is what design choices you make and what manufacturing choices you make. And 7-nanometer is just the best manufacturing technology that's available in the industry today. So, and what that helps you with is you get to put a lot more transistors in a smaller space, and that helps you with power efficiency, that helps you with just overall raw performance that you can put. In, you know, given a silicon area. And what that translates into for the user is just more bang for your buck. So if you're going to buy, you know, a thousand dollar laptop, you want it to have the most computing horsepower you can have.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  And seven nanometer gives you more.

• 4:32Nilay Patel?

  So that process shift is something, obviously, your competitor has, Intel has not been able to do for some time. They run, obviously, an integrated company where they do their own fabrication. AMD is now a fabulous company. Are you thinking of that as a, like, a core strategic advantage for AMD that you're firing at manufacturing elsewhere? Are you working with the fabs closely to get to seven nanometer in that way?

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Well, for us, it's really about knowing what we're really, really good at. And our core competency is in design. And, you know, designing great products, whether you're talking about PC products or gaming products or server products. We partner on the manufacturing. We actually think that's an advantage. Because if you think about it, when you, when you use, you know, sort of a leading-edge foundry, they're actually, you know, working for the industry. And so, you know, things like ramping yields and getting to the best cost points and, you know, really, you know, figuring out the kinks in a technology, we actually get to do it as an industry. And so, you know, we have, we're early in seven nanometer. We've had a lot of products, you know.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  I mentioned yesterday in our press conference that we have, you know, about 20 products, both in production and development, which is a lot for a given technology node. But it's going really well, and so we're pleased with it.

• 5:49Nilay Patel?

  So you on stage yesterday referred to the performance jump of the 4000 series as disruptive performance, which is a great phrase that I like. It implies that I will suddenly use Excel faster than ever. Everything's going to change when I look at Google Docs. But it's, the graph you showed is a pretty huge jump. Inside the 50 envelope of these chips, I think you quoted 59% in GPU performance, 50% improvement. It's faster than Ice Lake, up to 50% faster in some of the measures that you were quoting. How's the battery life when you're looking at performance jump this way?

• 6:20Speaker 03

  The battery life will be very, very good.

• 6:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  The battery life will be very, very good.

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  This is by far the number one question I have people been asking me.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  And you know what, our, our goal is to make sure that you see it. And, you know, as the systems come out over, you know, the next number of weeks, you'll see some of those, those systems and measure the battery life for yourself. In our test systems, very good. And, and we call it all day battery life. All day battery life meaning, you know, you know, we've seen cases up to 18 hours.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Now, you know, obviously you have to see it in your applications, but we feel very good about the battery life.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  So you announced, I think on stage yesterday, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7, which we got to see. There's over 100 laptops coming out with these processors this year. How is that conversation going in, in the sort of the consumer laptop space?

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, it's a, it's, it's one of those things. You know, we've been on a journey with, you know, the Ryzen brand and the Ryzen products in PCs. If you look in the desktop, for example, you know, we introduced the first generation Ryzen, people were happy, you know, second generation Ryzen, they felt, you know, even better about the product. With the third generation of Ryzen and mobile, we've just gotten tremendous traction in the desktop space. And we're looking at something similar in the mobile space, you know, which is, you know, our, our current, our second generation, you know, Ryzen mobile is, is a very, very good product and we've sold, you know, quite a bit of them. We've gained nice a share throughout the last, actually throughout the last seven or eight quarters.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Third generation Ryzen mobile is, is a step function. I mean, it's just a lot, lot better. And so we're very excited to see what 2020 brings. It also means that our partnerships with the OEMs have gotten deeper and so they're designing more for our product. And, you know, you saw that in some of the unique design that Asus has done around our Ryzen 4000 series. You know, you mentioned Lenovo, Dell has a nice design. There are many. Designs that will come out over the next couple of months. So we're very excited about it. And, you know, I think the partnerships with our OEMs are the best they've ever been.

• 8:27Nilay Patel?

  When do you make the sale of a chip? I guess that's like a, it's like, for you, it's like a 101 question, but for the audience, you're announcing the chip now.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  Presumably, all those partners have already seen the chip of their design.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right. You start about a year in advance.

• 8:42Nilay Patel?

  So you're, when you say you're going to see more, or the ramp is getting faster, you're not actually talking about the third generation, you're talking about the fourth generation?

• 8:49Speaker 03

  We're talking about the Ryzen 4000 series.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. So what you're, what you're seeing with, you know, sort of 100 plus platforms, that, all of that work was done, sort of last year. And, you know, it's with sampling, with doing a lot of optimization, there's, you know, there's a lot of work that's, that's done to bring a new system to market. So yeah, we're pretty excited about what 2020 has to offer.

• 9:12Nilay Patel?

  So when you're out in the market, particularly sort of on the premium laptop end, or Intel's just been dominant, and now you've got a big performance advantage, are you seeing vendors say, actually, we're going to, we're going to make the change? Because you already know for this year, right?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  We, we have seen a lot of good momentum, and I'm excited about that momentum. You know, when you, when you look at it, you know, like I said, it's, it's really a journey about getting people familiar with what AMD is capable of. And, you know, technology is one of those things that, you know, you have to see and touch and feel. So, yes, I feel, you know, very optimistic about what we can do in the notebook space. And, you know, overall, you know, the way we view it is, you know, if you look at the AMD offerings today, you know, we are, you know, it's sort of top to bottom. And that's really, really important, which is you have entry level capability, which, which is important, because

• 10:06Speaker 03

  you're reaching a large number of users. And then you also have, you know, the, the premium level designs, which are really important. And that goes across consumer and commercial. So, you know, our view is, you know, we believe we can address the large portion of the market. And, you know, that's why, you know, this is such an important launch for us.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  Do you need to do consumer marketing to raise awareness and sort of that, that, that zone of very popular entry-level laptops where you have now better performance?

• 10:36Speaker 03

  We, we certainly do need to do consumer marketing. And we do that a lot through our partners and through the retailers. And so, you know, partnerships with, you know, people like Best Buy and JD.com and Dixon's. And I think, you know, the more, you know, it's sort of like success begets success. And so, the, you know, the more sales there are, the more people know about the Ryzen brand, the more people who are building systems with Ryzen, I think that, that also promotes the brand quite a bit.

• 11:06Nilay Patel?

  So, this is a question straight from Twitter, which is, are you committing to better support for the 4000 series of drivers for longer than in the past?

• 11:14Speaker 03

  I would say than longer than in the past is a, is an open-ended question. But I think what you can definitely say is we are committed to very strong ecosystem support. So, the drivers will be supported. You know, actually, even last year, we started offering our, you know, day one drivers that we use for discrete graphics cards, also for our notebook processors. And that, that is what the ecosystem wants, right? They want, they want more access to the leading edge of the capabilities. And so, yes, we are very committed to doing that.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  You're talking a lot about consumer laptops. You're talking a lot about CPU performance in laptops. Is that you're taking shares that market is growing for you? Or is that a market that you think that's going to persist for a long time? The sort of classic Windows laptop?

• 12:00Speaker 03

  You know, we think there's a huge market for, you know, Windows laptops. And, you know, when we think-

• 12:06Nilay Patel?

  There's like one Linux laptop owner right now is like freaking out. And they're like pulled over in their car and they're like sending an email.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Well, look, we, we support, we support Chrome and we support Linux. And so, there, it's not a, a matter of, we're not supporting the other operating systems. But there's a large market out there for Windows. And, you know, our partnership with Microsoft- Has just gotten stronger over the last couple of years.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Has their hardware business helped that? We just had Panos on the show when he was announcing the new Surface devices.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Panos is a great friend. I do think the relationship with Surface has been a key part of, you know, when you look across the AMD relationship with Microsoft, it goes across the Xbox lineup, now Surface, as well as the cloud, you know, Azure and all the stuff with Windows. And it's a very deep partnership. So, yes, we're, you know, very excited about that. We're excited about the work that we've done with Surface. And, you know, we think it'll just get better with time.

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  Has that actually changed the dynamic of sort of the, what you would classically call like the Windtel ecosystem, right? Where they're now making their hardware. They're running up against challenges. You are a formidable competitor. They can help them solve some of their design problems. Has that actually provided an entry point for AMD to come in and say, "Hey, we actually can do some stuff." Why doesn't Windows support this better? And then the ecosystem can grow.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  I think, you know, again, it's back to this notion of success. You know, you build on success. And I think the fact that we have gained share, the fact that the Ryzen brand has gained share, the fact that the products are really, really good. And Microsoft also is so good at system design and integration that together we've been able to build some very special things.

• 13:52Nilay Patel?

  So, that's the CPU side. Well, actually, one more question on CPUs. How much longer do you think sort of the 7-nanometer run is? Right, I mean, this is like the big generational shift. We're seeing it. It already sort of happened in mobile. You're first out the gate with x86. How much longer do you think this particular run has?

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Well, 7-nanometer is a big node.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  So, you know, you can expect that we're going to be on 7-nanometer for quite some time. But we're always looking at what's next as well. So, at the appropriate time, we'll transition to the next generation. But 7-nanometer is a big node with a lot of capabilities. So, you're going to see it for a while.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  So, you think the future of sort of big performance jumps is tied to process improvements?

• 14:32Speaker 03

  I think process improvements is a piece of it. It's not the biggest piece of it, but it's an important piece of it. And so, my view is that with a process node transition, you want to be, you know, at sort of the leading edge, like within, you know, let's call it... You know, six months or so, and that gives you the foundation to build on top of it and to build great design and great product and great systems on top of it. And so, you know, I view it as important, but not the determining factor.

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  So that is for the CPU side. You mentioned Microsoft and the Xbox a little bit. You've, obviously you're growing share in sort of the classic laptop chip with Ryzen. You've got these really big sort of integrated wins with the PS5. We saw the logo yesterday. Amazing press event to see the PS5 logo. I really enjoyed. It looks like a PS4 logo. I don't know if you saw it. They changed the four to a five. You've obviously got the Xbox. On stage yesterday, you showed off Apple's sort of Mac Pro launch event. You've got chips in there. Is there a crossover between how you're designing those integrated products or working on those integrated products and what you're doing with the more traditional side? Do they feed off each other or are they totally separate?

• 15:40Speaker 03

  No, they're very integrated. I mean, the way to think about it is, you know, we invest in the foundation and graphics is a very, very important foundation for us. You know, under the Radeon umbrella, you know, with our new architecture, our DNA, that is, you know, going to be core to our PC business, our discrete graphics, sort of add-in board business, as well as to these big partnerships, as you state, with Microsoft and Sony and Apple and others. And, you know, I view it as just, you know, you can take that same technology and bring it across, you know, many different markets. So we're very excited about graphics. You know, gaming is core to our heart and, you know, we're excited for the consoles that

• 16:24Speaker 03

  come out later this year. And we're also excited for our own discrete graphics chips that will come out. You know, yesterday, we launched the 5600 XT for 1080p and I know that, you know, I got a few Twitter comments about, hey, where's the big Navi?

• 16:39Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  And my comment is, look, big Navi is coming, so, you know, we'll have, you know, certainly a high-end, you know, chip in the discrete graphics area as well. And it's all part of the portfolio.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  So when I put out the call for questions, number one question.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Big Navi?

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, maybe not so specific, but all this focus on 1080p and 440p gaming. We're at CES, there's like 8K TVs everywhere you go. You actually talked about 8K and say yesterday. Are you thinking about the high end of the graphics market? Why the focus on 1080p gaming right now?

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Well, I think the way to think about it is, when we put together a roadmap, you know, we put it together in a very deliberate way. And so I think we have a great roadmap around 1080p, 1440 with our 55, 56, 5700 series, and they've gone very well. That was the first incarnation of our, our DNA architecture. And you should expect that things only get better with time. And that's the way it was with our CPU roadmap, and that's the way it will be with our GPU roadmap as well. And so, yeah, you'll see, you know, larger graphics capability from us as we go through the year, and we're excited about that.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  But that's kind of, I don't want to say it's sort of the inverse of how you would traditionally think about it, right? You traditionally start with the highest horsepower part and it comes down. You're talking, we're at 1080 and we're going to go up.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  I don't know if there's a traditionally in any particular, in any particular market. I mean, there are a lot of people who are still gaming in 1080.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they're making a huge mistake. They should be buying high-end graphics cards from you.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I hope they do. I hope they do. It's all a matter of time. It's all a matter of time.

• 18:22Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so on the graphics side, you also announced FreeSync Premium. I actually think variable refresh rate is, it's sort of an underappreciated technology. On the gaming side, people obviously like it and care about it, but across sort of every display, I would like to see more variable refresh rate. What's your thought on the state of that market? Is it going to become a more mainstream consumer offering that your graphics cards enable? Is it something you see demand for? Is it something that you lit up and it's there?

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's a, it's a great point. I think, I do agree with you. I think the display environment is underappreciated. I think we've been focused on FreeSync across all price points for a while, and we expect it to become, you know, even more prevalent. So we have over a thousand displays now that support FreeSync, and we'll, you know, continue to, to build that ecosystem.

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• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  Back to the sort of high-end GPU side. Another very popular question I got was, you know, Nvidia has its high-end GPUs are used a lot for sort of off-the-shelf machine learning, off-the-shelf AI. You don't have that focus quite as with as much emphasis, I would say. Is that something you're thinking about as well? Or do you just not have the parts yet?

• 20:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we have actually a number of machine learning AI parts as well. So, you know, last year we launched what we called the MI50 and MI60. I think it's fair to say that our machine learning and AI efforts are more targeted at large cloud customers with the idea that they will bring that technology, you know, into the industry. But, you know, for those who want to use them, I think they're certainly, you know, it's certainly an important market and you'll see more parts from us in the future.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  But like the sort of like TensorFlow's of the world are not open CL, right? They're...

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Well, actually you can run TensorFlow on AMD Radeon GPUs today.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  And you think you have the performance?

• 21:13Speaker 03

  I think the performance is competitive. I think the performance will get better. And, you know, again, I think the the idea of, you know, sort of where we focus. So we are, you know, very much on the, you know, partnering with, you know, large customers to get the technology out there. And, you know, that's our, you know, that's our view in the data center GPU space. So if you look at... You know, some of the the large wins that we've announced, like, for example, Google Stadia is using AMD GPUs. And, you know, that's, you know, very much, you know, based on some of our cloud gaming efforts. You know, we're also working, as I said, on TensorFlow. We're working with some of the other large cloud players as well with enabling our machine

• 21:57Speaker 03

  learning capabilities.

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  Do you think that's a market at the scale of the opportunity in consumer laptops or in high-end gaming?

• 22:04Speaker 03

  I do think it is a market that will continue to grow over time and is one of the larger growth markets. I would say it's still, you know, relatively early, you know, sort of in its incarnation. But yes, I do think it's a large market.

• 22:16Nilay Patel?

  Because when you talk about AMD and high-performance computing, that's so often what people think about is massive machine learning AI deployments.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  But it's not, you don't think it's mature enough for you guys to enter yet?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no, I wouldn't say that. I would just say that our entry point is with large customers. Like, for example, if you look at, you know, some of the large wins that we have, for example, we're in the Oak Ridge National Lab's supercomputer. So their next-generation supercomputer that comes out in 2021 is using a combination of AMD CPUs and AMD GPUs. That's, you know, as high-performance computing as you can get, right? From a supercomputing standpoint, I think the the horsepower there is is key. Those are examples of, you know, sort of large investments that we've made. They're not exactly consumer investments yet.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  But they're examples of where we're taking sort of the best that we have in CPUs and the best that we have in GPUs and putting them into a system that just has tremendous horsepower.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  So sort of on that note, just take the long view here. Like, these are the chips you announced yesterday. There's going to be laptops tomorrow. On sort of the 10-year arc, do you still think people are going to need this amount of local processing performance in their lives, that all's all going to live in a cloud? Like, what is a vendor of chips? What keeps you up at night about where the industry might be going?

• 23:41Speaker 03

  So I think what's exciting for us is that people will continually need more horsepower, and they will need it in both places. They will need it in the cloud, sort of in the back office, because there's a lot of processing that you can do there. But we are all inherently impatient people, and we all like, you know, sort of our desk-side support. And if you really think about that... You know, what you need, you know, sort of, you know, whether you call it the edge or whether you call it, you know, sort of, you know, sort of, local. You want more capability because, you know, if the network is down, if there's latency in the network, if there's ABC, you still want to have that computing capability, you know, personally as well. And so I think you're going to see growth on both sides.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  We're putting a huge focus into the data center because we think that there's actually a lot of opportunity as the workloads change, that you will see significantly new technology in the data center. But, you know, like I said, you know, this week is CES, so we talked about what you'll see on the consumer side. But both sides are going to need a lot of computing. So as a, as a tech person, I think there's plenty for us to do for the next 10 years.

• 24:52Nilay Patel?

  So that kind of brings me to where consumers are now. We have not really talked about mobility outside of laptops. Are you interested in making more mobile processors? Are you interested in doing smartphone chips? Have you ever thought about taking the ARM license and just going for it?

• 25:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, look, we've certainly thought about all those things, but one of the things that I'm, I'm very clear about at AMD is, look, let's be clear at what we're good at. We're just very, very good at high-performance things. And, you know, the more compute you need, the better our value proposition. We're not a smartphone company.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  We're not a smartphone company. I think there are other people who are, who are better at that. We do partner, like, for example, we partner with Samsung on their mobile phones, and they're using our graphics, or they're, you know, we're co-developing some graphics.

• 25:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  For the mobile phone market. But I don't think you're going to see AMD chips in mobile phones anytime soon. And I think that's good. You know, we're, we're, we're into big things.

• 25:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  And we'll go from laptop, you know, to supercomputer. That's, that's our range.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  But let me, like, sketch out a scenario. Let's say there is, like, a dominant operating system in the world, and it was tied to a single chipmaker who had kind of hit a performance ceiling, and a challenger brand could come in with a better performance part, worked a little bit better, that enabled new form factors. That would seem like an opportunity for AMD just historically. And right now, you kind of have the exact same thing happening with Android and Qualcomm. Right? You don't see that as the same kind of opportunity?

• 26:22Speaker 03

  You know, I look at, there's a confluence of events that are important. And you need the market to be good, no question. And the market is important. And that's why we're so excited about our markets. You know, our markets, whether you talk about PCs or gaming or data center. We think, add that up, that's over $75 billion of market. So there's plenty of market to go after. You add smartphones, that's another, you know, many, many billions. So there's a lot to go after. But you also have to be, you know, all technology is not created equal. Right? So to make, you know, large x86, you know, chips that will do, you know, teraflops and exaflops of computing is different from, you know, doing an IoT chip or doing, you know, something like that.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  And so I think you need both market and then you need, you know, sort of, you know, real technology expertise. And like I said, we're very confident in our roadmap around high-performance computing. And there's plenty of market for us to go after.

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So on that side of things, you have recently led what I would call like a pretty furious sprint to overtake Intel and CPU performance especially. How did you make the changes to the company to accomplish that? I'm always interested, particularly when I talk to CEOs about, quite honestly, how you manage change and how you manage goals like that?

• 27:41Speaker 03

  So I think, you know, for us, it's really a couple of things. I think it's clear focus on what we're trying to do. So we said on the CPU performance side, we knew it would take us at least five years.

• 27:54Nilay Patel?

  Where did you say that? Obviously in public, but in what? Did you like have an all-hands meeting with everybody at AMD and be like, here's what we are now all going to say together? Did you have a smaller meeting where you said, we're pivoting the company? How do you, how do you implement a decision or a vision like that?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  What's, I think all of the above. So you do it in, you know, small forums with, you know, sort of the inner circle. You do it in large forums. You do it in board meetings. You do it in all kinds of forums. But the key is to put your money where your mouth is. Right? And, and so the investments have to be very focused. And our investments have been very focused on CPU leadership and GPU leadership. And you know that and and and people can see that.

• 28:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  And so and the other thing is you also have to realize that you know good technology takes time. And so you know Zen one was a very, very important first step. You know Zen two is amazing and we're extremely proud of where Zen two, you know, sits in the market today. And then, you know, we're working on Zen three and Zen four and Zen five. And so it's it's a it's a journey.

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  Chipmakers, I think, are different from the companies I usually talk to in that your lead times are way longer, your bets are bigger, your risks are higher, you have to work on a much longer timeframe. Where where do you sort of manage the risk? Where do you say, we're actually going to go left instead of right? And we we might get it wrong, but we think we've we think over the course of the three years of this particular development that we're actually going to get it right, or we think we have opportunities to iterate as we go.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Yes, they are definitely three to five year investments and we decide, you know, way ahead of time, hey, when are we going to use seven nanometer? And what is the first chip? And what is the second chip? And what is the third and the fourth and the fifth? And and those decisions are bets. And so you have to, you know, you have to be, you don't have to be right all the time, but you have to be right, you know, a good portion of the time. I think for tech companies, it's you have to make long bets, but then you have to check very often.

• 29:59Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  And make sure that you're still on track for what you said you were going to do. And there are times that we have to make changes and make pivots, you know, like, hey, that that idea was a really good idea, but you know, it's taking too long or it's costing too much area or we're not getting the performance and we have to pull back on that idea. And you know, that happens from time to time. So we make really long roadmaps, but we check very often.

• 30:23Nilay Patel?

  Where does that happen for you to see it? Like if a problem of that scale gets to you, it's like, I'm assuming it's a big problem. Where are the checks sort of, I mean, AMD is a big company. Where do you see the sort of invention at the lower scales versus what comes to you?

• 30:36Speaker 03

  I I like to believe that we're a big company, but that we operate like a medium sized company.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  You're like, you're not going to lie to me and say you're a startup?

• 30:44Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  Many big companies will be like, we're a startup. Like you're Microsoft.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  No, we're not a startup, but we're not like huge.

• 30:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  And I got to tell you, I do get frequent updates on the most important products.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  And that's, you know, that's the way it should be.

• 30:59Nilay Patel?

  And so do you think like? When you're setting out the big goals, is that coming from sort of the mid-tier of your engineering management? Is it coming from you waking up one day and saying, "We're going to this way and we're just implementing it"? How does that work?

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we have, we have a group of people that includes sort of our most senior technical people. So, you know, we call them corporate fellows. We have about six of them and, you know, they're specialists in their areas. So it's people like, you know, Mike Clark, who's the head of our CPU architecture, you know, Mike Mantor, who's the head of our GPU architecture, you know, Sam Nafzinger, who runs Power. And these are like really, really smart guys. And they sort of look at a lot of the input of what's happening in the industry and what's happening in our roadmap. And, you know, they make a set of recommendations. And then, you know, at, you know, with myself and some of our staff,

• 31:57Speaker 03

  we really do look at the roadmaps, you know, very often and make sure that we're making the right bets at the right time.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  So you're describing a group of people who make decisions. How is sort of AMD broadly organized around that stuff? Like, I'm always interested in how companies are managed from that perspective?

• 32:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, again, we have sort of, you know, long lead time IP. Think of it as the core CPU IP is, you know, run by our CTO, Mark Papermaster. You know, their goal in life is to make sure that, you know, for the next five-plus years, that roadmap is extraordinarily competitive. And that is their goal in life. And, you know, there's, you know, thousands of people underneath that, but there's no question that that's, you know, between Mark and Mike and that team, they have to do that. And then on the GPU side, we have someone named David Wang, who does the exact same thing. His job is to make sure that the GPU roadmap is extremely competitive. And so those are the foundations.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  And then we have product people who decide, okay, well, let me take, you know, when do I take Zen 2 into the products? When do I take Zen 3? You know, those types of things on the product side.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  Which of those two sides, which has the most surprises? My guess is that the GPU team has dealt with more surprises over the past few years in terms of where the market's going versus CPU team, but I'm curious.

• 33:18Speaker 03

  I think it is true that the GPU side has had, the market moves a little bit quicker. When you look at the requirements that come in gaming, whether you're talking about PCs or consoles or cloud, or you're talking about machine learning, I think there's been just an explosion of requirements on the GPU side. But that being the case, I think, you know, both, both teams are, are very clear on what their goals are and they're very focused on what their goals are.

• 33:49Nilay Patel?

  All right. So last set of questions, my, my New Year's resolution, 2020 Vergecast, I'm going to ask everybody this question.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Because it is the hardest question. I don't have an answer for it. When do you actually do work?

• 34:01Speaker 03

  [laughing]

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  Because I, hopefully someone can tell me and then I can start to.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  When do I actually do work?

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like here, here at CES, you've got 10,000 meetings. At some point, you have to like sit down and write an email and communicate or...

• 34:15Speaker 03

  I have to say, I do quite a bit of work in the morning, you know, before like, you know, for example, this morning I was up at 4:00 AM. You know, it's easy, right? Um, yeah, this is specific time. I live, I live in Austin, so it was easy to be up at 4:00 AM. But yeah, there's a, there's a lot of think time, you know? That's what planes are for. That's what downtime is for.

• 34:36Nilay Patel?

  I was told planes are for watching bad movies.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no. Planes are for thinking.

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Planes are for thinking.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm very impressed. I cannot do anything on a plane except stare out the window and maybe watch a movie. So you're, you're basically finding in between times?

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Yes. Yes. I, I think, look, we are, you know, it's a very fast-paced world that we live in and, you know, every minute of the day, something changes. But I have to say, that's what, that's what makes it exciting.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  That's what makes it exciting.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  You're not one of these CEOs that needs to like spend 48 hours in complete silence before you issue a world-changing memo?

• 35:08Speaker 03

  That is not me.

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  I've met a lot of those.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Have you really?

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think particularly software CEOs, they want to spend a lot of time just like walking and talking.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  And then they want to issue a memo about how Yahoo's going to take over the world or something.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  No, no. Yeah, look, I wake up every morning wondering, hey... What's in the news today? What's going on? Because, you know, we are in a very, you know, although we're talking about five-year roadmaps, a lot happens on a daily basis. And it's all about, you know, making sure that we are responsive and doing the right things and on the right path. And every minute counts.

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  Do you think of yourself as more, I mean, that what you're describing, I've asked this question a lot. So I'm like very curious how people think of this stuff. That is sort of a reactive posture. But AMD is obviously a sort of forward-thinking company. How do you think of that split?

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't, I don't view it as reactive. I view it as responsive.

• 35:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  And, you know, one of the, the things that I think is most important is that you don't, I learned very early that if you're too inwardly focused, that's where you lose. Because, yes, you can set out a five-year roadmap, but if the world has changed, you know, it's not the right roadmap. And so I think it is really, you know, about, you know, for, for me, it's about technology. It's about our customers. It's about the market and ensuring that we're very responsive to, you know, what we see is happening on a daily basis.

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  So you wake up, you're focused, you, I guess when I think of work, work is like a lot of things to a lot of people. Some people think of going to meetings as work. I mean, like, you're actually alone and thinking and like writing or reading, that's the morning for you.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And, and I do think work is meetings, too.

• 36:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm, I'm not a huge fan of meetings.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Well, no, no. But, you know, you realize that, you know, people need to formulate their thoughts. And so when you have, you know, sort of the idea that you have, you know, people coming together and saying, hey, this is what we want to do.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  We actually spend time saying, hey, does that make sense? And so, yes, there's, there's a lot of alone time, but there's also a lot of making sure that the team feels that, you know, we're in this together.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Okay, last question. You're obviously.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  You said the last question was the last question.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, I want to end on AMD, not just the, the value of alone time.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  That's why you're the CEO. That's why you run a good meeting. You're like, this meeting was over five minutes ago. No, but in terms of AMD broadly, obviously the big consumer push here. What do you think people should be looking for across the next five from AMD? What do you think the big focus is beyond just iterating the generations of processors we have now?

• 37:41Speaker 03

  You know, I think we are very focused on being a mover of the technology landscape. And I know that that sounds very lofty, but you know, the way I look at it is there are lots of decisions to be made in tech and we are a big player in that. And so the fact that, you know, let's call it, we're in high-performance CPUs and high-performance GPUs and they can be in the largest supercomputers in the world. I think that's a place that we feel very good about. And so, you know, we want to be driving that direction of technology over the next five years.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. It was really great.

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Super. Thank you.

• 38:19Nilay Patel?

  Okay. My thanks to Lisa Su, CEO of AMD for being on the show. I love your feedback on these interviews. You can tweet at me, I'm at Reckless. Tell me what you want to hear about, who you want me to talk to. That's always really good information for me to get. We'll see you later this week with the chat show and again on Tuesday with the interview show. We're back at it. 2020 is here. Let's do it.

• 38:39Speaker 07

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