AMD's Dr. Lisa Su Named One of World's Best CEOs
The US-based financial newspaper Barron's recently released its list of the "World's Best CEOs of 2019," in which AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su is included and prominently featured on both the online publication and on the front page of the physical magazine (which also has the subtitle "How Lisa Su engineered a stunning turnaround at chip maker Advanced Micro Devices"). Lisa Su is placed on equal ground with CEOs such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Disney's Robert Iger, and Microsoft's Satya Nadella.
Barron's added Su to the list due to AMD's recovery in the market. After having been appointed CEO of AMD in 2014, it took some time for Su put AMD in the position it's in now. Under her leadership, AMD has seen the successful release of its CPU architecture Zen and its GPU architecture Polaris, both of which had been planned before her appointment as CEO. The imminent launches of Zen 2 based CPUs and Navi based GPUs mark the first products that an AMD under Su's direction is responsible for. Zen 2 in particular has been praised thanks to its potent combination of the new 7nm node from TSMC, vast architectural improvements, and utilization of chiplet technology.
Su's engineering background is one of her keys to success. “I love spending time with the engineers, going into the lab, and getting a feel for what the real challenges are, because it just helps me make better decisions on the business,” Su said to Barrons.
Describing AMD as now a "genuine threat [to Intel]", Barron's expects the company to see great gains in the coming years. It's not hard to see why: AMD has scored several deals on supercomputers such as Big Red 200 and Frontier, its X570 motherboards for Ryzen 3000 have been getting a premium treatment from AMD's partners such as ASUS and MSI, and AMD's future architectures for both its CPUs and GPUs are promised to keep the pressure on both Nvidia and Intel.
Speaking of Nvidia, Barron's actually removed Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang off of its "World's Best CEOs" list because the company "has disappointed on new Turing graphics chips, key to its gaming business." With 7nm and Navi based GPUs on the horizon, AMD is continuing to advance on gaming consoles, mobile devices, and displays with its FreeSync technology. It seems that the worst case for AMD is that Navi succeeds everywhere but the desktop.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.
-
ezst036 I agree. What she has been able to do with the technology and capabilities at AMD and turning the company around to be yet again a CPU powerhouse is quite phenomenal.Reply -
alextheblue I think Navi will do fine even on the desktop. It certainly won't come close to the throne, but if it dishes out genuine competition in the higher-volume segments it will still see some substantial success. I'd actually like to see smaller Navi variants too, for more affordable desktop and mobile scenarios, but that certainly isn't the initial target.Reply -
mihen Robert Iger really isn't a good CEO. Disney has been making a lot of purchases lately of established IPs that are on the decline. Their political climate has had a negative impact on these IPs.Reply -
vider Change of heart, Lisa Su has done wonders within her position to provide potential security for her company's employees and investors. Realising that the majority of the profit is within the hands of the many and not the few (High-end market vs. the medium-to-entry level market) and within those looking to optimise their business without having to fork an arm and a leg for it. Well done.Reply -
Ninjawithagun What I really like about Dr. Lisa Su is she is all professional. No personal or political issues mire the clear waters of success she has been able to create. From the ashes, AMD has ryzen...thanks in part to Dr. Su. Amazing achievement!Reply -
Ninjawithagun Replymihen said:Robert Iger really isn't a good CEO. Disney has been making a lot of purchases lately of established IPs that are on the decline. Their political climate has had a negative impact on these IPs.
This ^^^ Agree 110% (y)