It's so overbearing, it's shameless. ”
A few days ago, the United States introduced new rules to prevent China from using American technology for artificial intelligence.
According to the report, although the United States originally restricted AMD and other companies from exporting artificial intelligence and high-performance computing chips to China, it still failed to prevent China from improving its own artificial intelligence capabilities.
Chinese chips are once again stuck in the neck by the United States.
As a leading company in artificial intelligence and high-performance chips in the United States, AMD's head is actually Chinese, and she is Su Lifeng, who is known as the "Queen of Chips".
Lisa Su has served as an academician of the National Academy of Engineering, the chairman of the International Semiconductor Alliance, and a science and technology advisor to Biden in the United States.
Since Lisa Su took the helm of AMD in 2014, it took only six years to take the company from the brink of collapse to the second place in the world.
AMD's share price also increased from 1. per share that year$6 has soared to $180 per share today, and the market value has increased more than 100 times, overpowering Intel and becoming the undisputed chip hegemon.
From a super student to a chip boss, how did Su Lifeng do such a fierce life?
Born in Taiwan, Su immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was 3 years old.
Her father, Su Chunhuai, is a top student in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University in the United States, and he began to cultivate Su Lifeng's mathematical concepts since she was a child, and set high goals for her.
Unlike children of the same age, Su Lifeng naturally does not like dolls. She often dismantled her brother's motor toys, and her parents not only did not get angry when they saw it, but also encouraged her.
You can choose some of the more difficult ones and assemble them again after dismantling them. ”
With the encouragement of her parents, Su Lifeng became more and more energetic, and the seeds of science took root and sprouted in her young heart.
With the desire to learn and the wings of exploration, Su Lifeng ran wildly all the way and frequently skipped grades.
At the age of 14, he was admitted to the Bronz Science High School in New York, one of the world's top high schools with six Nobel laureates alone.
In her junior year of high school, Su Lifeng won the "Westinghouse Science Genius Award", known as the "Junior Nobel Prize", on behalf of the school.
Lisa Su's oriental face and outstanding performance have amazed the American technology community. Before the age of 17, he was given priority admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Choose the most challenging areas and solve the most difficult problems. ”
Following her father's advice, Su chose the electrical engineering major recognized by MIT as the most difficult to study.
The profession proved to be very much to her liking.
The first internship in the chip factory opened Su Lifeng's eyes. She didn't expect a chip the size of a fingernail to have such powerful functions and charm.
To this end, she took semiconductor chips as her life track, and continued to study for a master's degree and a doctorate degree in electrical engineering at MIT.
A good educational background is a stepping stone in your life, and I am proud of MIT. ”
Years later, as a distinguished alumnus of MIT, Lisa Su shared this with her younger students.
If Su Lifeng was a shining student when she was a student, then after work, she is more like an energetic supermaster.
In 1994, at the age of 24, Dr. Lisa Su graduated and joined Texas Instruments Semiconductor Center as a technical specialist. A year later, Su Lifeng transferred to IBM and was responsible for the research and development of copper chip manufacturing process.
At that time, chips generally used aluminum as a wire, but due to resistivity and integration, aluminum could no longer meet the evolving performance requirements. Therefore, the industry wants to replace it with copper with better conductivity, but the technical difficulty is that copper materials are difficult to combine with silicon.
Su Lifeng took SOI silicon technology as a breakthrough, led the team to test and improve again and again, and finally overcame the technical problems of copper and silicon combination in one fell swoop, which opened up space for the substantial improvement of chip performance, and was praised by the world"An epoch-making revolution in the chip industry".
With this outstanding contribution, Su Lifeng was promoted to head of the R&D department of IBM, vice president of the R&D center, and was subsequently appointed as special assistant to the president of IBM, Gerstner.
Under the leadership of Gerstner, Lisa Su experienced the magnificent scene of IBM's resurrection, which provided her with rare and valuable experience in the future management of AMD.
Su Lifeng is not only skilled, but also good at negotiation. The game chip business led by her has partnered with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.
She likes to break the mold and challenge the impossible. ”
After 12 years at IBM, Lisa Su gave up the opportunity to be the president of the company and chose to become the chief technology officer of Freescale Semiconductor to challenge the impossible.
During her five-year tenure at Freescale, Lisa Su led the team to develop the popular reader Kindle, helped the company secure super large customers such as Amazon, and assisted the company in participating in IPOs.
Here, Lisa Su's comprehensive capabilities were further enhanced, and her position was also promoted to Senior Vice President, and she was involved in the core management team.
From MIT to Texas Instruments, from IBM to Freescale, Lisa Su has become a leader in the semiconductor industry in the United States.
Her alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is even more proud of her, not only naming her as a "Top Innovative Talent", but also naming a building "Su Lifeng Building", which is the first person of Chinese descent in MIT.
She's achieved beyond my expectations, she's been moving up, I don't know what she's going to be? Su Chunhuai not only understands her daughter's personality, but also understands her ambition.
In 2012, Lisa Su resolutely joined AMD as CEO, causing an uproar in the entire technology community.
At that time, AMD was worried about internal and external troubles, and the wind and rain were turbulent. The internal management is chaotic, the morale of the employees is sluggish, and the technology has no advantage; Externally, it was continuously suppressed by its old rival Intel, and its living space disappeared, resulting in heavy debts and on the verge of bankruptcy.
In order to turn the tide, AMD has changed 4 CEOs in succession, but they are all to no avail.
"We have removed AMD from our competitor list. Intel so openly mocked its former rivals.
In the eyes of the industry, AMD is brain dead, and only its last breath remains. Almost everyone doesn't understand what does Lisa Su want when she gives up Freescale and devotes herself to the dying AMD?
Maybe what she wants is to challenge the impossible.
After taking over AMD, the first thing she did was fly to Beverly Hills to visit AMD founder Sanders.
Coincidentally, AMD was founded in 1969, the same age as Lisa Su. After decades of development, it has gained momentum and emerged suddenly, and was once known as the "chip duo" together with Intel. ”
It was the highlight of Sanders' life. Looking at the American technology giant he built single-handedly, now the river is declining and the future is worrying, Sanders has mixed feelings.
You let it go, and now AMD is yours. ”
Sanders' trust and encouragement gave Su Lifeng great confidence and motivation. At that moment, in Su Lifeng's heart, he began to sketch out the grand blueprint of AMD.
"We want to think of AMD as a different AMD. ”
In Su Lifeng's view, in the past, AMD was too high-minded and ambitious, blindly relying on high-tech, but the result was getting farther and farther away from the market. What needs to be addressed urgently now is not only technology, but also trends and business.
To this end, Su Lifeng tailored a reform plan for AMD and made three major moves.
First, streamline departmental setups.
Serious illnesses require treatment. Although Su Lifeng is a woman, she will not be soft in her decision, cut down departments with redundant functions, and successively cut nearly 30% of employees as planned; In addition, the workflow is optimized, management efficiency is improved, and senior chip designers and architects are hired to develop high-performance chips according to the new cycle.
Secondly, create a fist product.
Practical technology is AMD's core competency to win in the market. Therefore, Su Lifeng concentrated all the company's technical resources, concentrated and went all out to study the ZEN microprocessor. After 4 years and a total of more than 2 million man-hours, a new generation of hard-core technology products ZEN has finally been successfully developed.
Third, enhance customer trust.
One GPU every 12 months and one CPU every 18 months to meet the needs of customers. At the same time, Lisa Su attaches great importance to market feedback and often goes online to understand customer evaluations of AMD products. "Cooperate with customers to create value" has always been the service concept that Lisa Su adheres to.
The unimaginable hardships are so miraculous that they turn the tide.
When Su took over AMD, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and its share price fell to 161 yuan. After 4 years, Su Lifeng has almost bet on the company's entire net worth to engage in research and development, and if she is not careful, the company will collapse.
What to do if you don't have money?
Su Lifeng is good at dancing with long sleeves, so that AMD and Tongfu Microelectronics cooperated to establish a joint venture company, and licensed ZEN technology to the joint venture company in order to transfer 85% of the equity to Tongfu Microelectronics in exchange for 6$600 million in life-saving money.
What if there are no customers?
Su Lifeng used the contacts accumulated over the years to charge into battle and work tirelessly to introduce products to them. Once, she personally drove for more than 4 hours, braving torrential rain and hail, to visit Antonio, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Technology.
"It started out as an inconspicuous thing, but through her perseverance, AMD is now our most important partner. ”
Google Cloud CEO Thomas commented on Su Lifeng.
With the tenacity of not admitting defeat and the belief that he will never fall, Lisa Su dragged AMD out of the brink of death step by step.
In March 2017, AMD's first processor based on the new ZEN architecture was unveiled, and its excellent performance and superior cost performance won praise all over the world.
Users began to re-recognize AMD, and it was generally believed that its technical level was no less than that of Intel, the chip overlord at that time.
After ten years, AMD finally turned a profit, and Lisa Su did what the previous 4 CEOs did not do.
While the iron is hot, AMD has successively launched Ryzen series PC chips, EPYC series server chips, and Radeon series GPU chips, which have been applauded by users every time, and their market share has been rising.
In addition, as the only manufacturer in the world to produce both CPU and GPU, AMD creatively combines the two into a single chip, which greatly saves space and weight, so the chip is deeply favored by laptop manufacturers.
ADM, which continues to innovate and improve, has gradually won important partners such as Huawei, Lenovo, Google, Sony, Tencent, Cisco, and so on.
In contrast, Intel rests on its laurels, lacks innovation in its products, and lacks performance updates, to the point of losing a big customer like Apple.
In February 2022, AMD successfully counterattacked, surpassing Intel in market value for the first time.
Lisa Su made AMD, and AMD made Lisa Su too.
Su Lifeng, who has reached the pinnacle, has not only won a series of honors such as the chairman of the Global Semiconductor Alliance, the world's best CEO, and the world's most influential business woman, but also has become the world's most gold-absorbing head with an annual salary of more than 400 million.
Our job is to challenge the impossible. ”
Under the fame, Lisa Su was not satisfied, but led AMD to join the new track, successively developed a new generation of artificial intelligence chips, and led the global AI trend.
It is said that science has no borders, but the United States has repeatedly launched a scientific and technological war against my country under the pretext of *** and chips as ***, and Su Lifeng cannot stay out of it.
In order to seize the commanding heights, AMD has invested a lot of manpower and financial resources in the research and development of AI chips in recent years. The original plan was to launch a super artificial intelligence MI300 accelerator chip by the end of 2023, but now due to the export restrictions of the United States, this plan is facing failure.
The move has resulted in a significant increase in AMD's stock price and will have a profound negative impact on AMD's future. I don't know how long the United States can hold out on to this chip war that harms others and is not beneficial to itself.
In today's era of the Internet of Everything, from mobile phones, computers, and automobiles to medical care, finance, and even national defense, every link needs massive chips as basic support.
In recent years, China is investing heavily in chip development with the strength of the whole country, and has put forward the goal of achieving a localization rate of 70% by 2025.
The rise of "China Chip" is inseparable from the cultivation and introduction of top talents. In July 2023, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai, and special guest Su Lifeng gave a wonderful keynote speech.
It is hoped that the Chinese people around the world will work together to break the scientific and technological blockade between the United States and the West on China as soon as possible, and jointly witness the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
-end-
Reference: Xinzhixun: The United States has made another ruthless move! Restrict Chinese companies from training large AI models in U.S. data centers.
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Author: Maizi.
Editor: Willow Leaf chatter.