Lisa Su 蘇姿丰 | |||||||||||||||||||
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.jpg) Su in 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su[1] (1969-11-07)November 7, 1969 (age 56) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Education | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS,MS,PhD) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Known for | Semiconductor design,silicon-on-insulator design | ||||||||||||||||||
| Title | President and CEO ofAMD (2014–present) Chair of AMD (2022–present) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse | Daniel Lin[1][2] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Relatives | Jensen Huang (cousin) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Awards | IEEE Fellow (2009) IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal (2021) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||||||||||||
| Fields | Electrical engineering Computer science | ||||||||||||||||||
| Thesis | Extreme-submicrometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFETs (1994) | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 蘇姿丰 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 苏姿丰 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su (Chinese:蘇姿丰;pinyin:Sū Zīfēng; born 1969) is an American business executive,computer scientist, andelectrical engineer who has been the president andCEO of the Americansemiconductor companyAMD since 2014.
Su was born inTaiwan and immigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. After earning three degrees from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she worked atTexas Instruments,IBM, andFreescale Semiconductor in engineering and management positions.[2][4][5] She is known for her work developingsilicon-on-insulator semiconductor manufacturing technologies[6] and more efficientsemiconductor chips[7] during her time as vice president of IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center.[8] Su is also a member ofThe Business Council.[9]
Su was appointed president and CEO of AMD in October 2014,[10][11] after joining the company in 2012 and holding roles such assenior vice president of AMD's global business units andchief operating officer.[12] She previously was on the board ofCisco Systems[13] and is currently on the board of theU.S. Semiconductor Industry Association,[12] in addition to being a fellow of theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Recognized with a number of awards and accolades,[2][12] Su was named Executive of the Year byEE Times in 2014,[12] one of the World's Greatest Leaders in 2017 byFortune[14] and was the first woman to be namedTime magazine CEO of the year in 2014, and a second time in 2024.[15] She also became the first woman to receive theIEEE Robert Noyce Medal in 2021. During her tenure as CEO of AMD, the market capitalization of AMD has grown from roughly $3 billion to more than $200 billion. AMD also overtook Intel in market capitalization for the first time. In 2024, Su was selected the Fellow ofIndustrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).[16] She was named the tenthmost powerful woman in the world for 2025 byForbes.[17] She was named as one of the "Architects of AI" forTime'sPerson of the Year in 2025.
Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su was born in November 1969[18] inTainan,Taiwan.[19] She was born in aTaiwanese Hokkien speaking family.[20] She immigrated to theUnited States[2] at the age of 3 with her parents Su Chun-hwai (蘇春槐) and Sandy Lo (羅淑雅).[19][1] She grew up in theQueens borough of New York City.[21] Her father worked as astatistician for thecity government.[21] Both she and her brother were encouraged to study math and science as children.[22] When she was seven, her father began quizzing her onmultiplication tables. Her mother, an accountant who later became an entrepreneur, introduced her to business concepts.[2]
Su sought to become an engineer at a young age. She recalled, "I just had a great curiosity about how things worked".[2] When she was 10, she began taking apart and then fixing her brother's remote control cars,[23] and she owned her first computer in junior high school, anApple II.[24] She attended theBronx High School of Science in New York City, graduating in 1986.[6]
Su began attending theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall of 1986, intending to major in eitherelectrical engineering orcomputer science. She settled on electrical engineering,[6] recollecting that it seemed like the most difficult major.[2][22] During her freshman year she worked as an undergraduateresearch assistant "manufacturing testsilicon wafers for graduate students"[23] through theUndergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). The project, and her summer jobs atAnalog Devices, fueled her interest insemiconductors.[6] She remained focused on the topic for the remainder of her education,[23] spending much of her time in labs designing and adjusting products.[2]
After earning her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, Su obtained her master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1991. From 1990 to 1994, she studied for her PhD in electrical engineering[2] under doctoral advisors Dimitri A. Antoniadis and James E. Chung.[6][25]MIT Technology Review reports that as a doctoral candidate, Su was "one of the first researchers to look intosilicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, a then unproven technique for increasingtransistors' efficiency by building them atop layers of an insulating material".[6] She graduated with her Ph.D. in electrical engineering[6][12] from MIT in 1994.[6] Her dissertation was titled, "Extreme-submicrometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFETs".[26]
Su has been on the boards ofAnalog Devices,[27]Cisco Systems, Inc.,[28] the Global Semiconductor Alliance, and theU.S. Semiconductor Industry Association.[12] As of 2016 she has published over forty technical articles[12] and coauthored a book chapter discussing next-generation consumer electronics.[22]
In 1994, Su became a member of the technical staff atTexas Instruments,[29] working in the company's Semiconductor Process and Device Center (SPDC)[12] until February 1995.[30] That month,[8] IBM hired Su as a research staff member specializing in device physics,[31] and she was appointedvice president of IBM's semiconductor research and development center.[8]
During her time at IBM,[6] Su played a "critical role"[7] in developing the "recipe"[2] to make copper connections work with semiconductor chips instead of aluminum, "solving the problem of preventing copper impurities from contaminating the devices during production".[7] Working with various IBM design teams on the details of the device, Su explained, "my specialty was not in copper, but I migrated to where the problems were".[6] The copper technology was launched in 1998,[7] resulting in new industry standards[31] and chips that were up to 20% faster than the conventional versions.[6][7]
In 2000, Su was given a year-long assignment as the technical assistant forLou Gerstner, IBM's CEO. She subsequently took on the role of director of emerging projects, stating that "I was basically director of myself – there was no one else in the group".[6] As head and founder of IBM's Emerging Products division, Su ran aninternal startup and hired ten employees to focus onbiochips and "low-power and broadband semiconductors". Their first product was a microprocessor that improved battery life in phones and other handheld devices.[7]MIT Technology Review named her a "Top Innovator Under 35" in 2001, due in part to her work with Emerging Products.[31]
Through her division, Su represented IBM in a collaboration to create next-generation chips withSony andToshiba.Ken Kutaragi charged the collaboration with "improving the performance of game machine processors by a factor of 1,000", and Su's team eventually came up with the idea for a nine-processor chip, which later became theCell microprocessor used to power devices such as thePlayStation 3. She continued as vice president of the semiconductor research and development center at IBM,[6] holding the role until May 2007.[30]
Su joinedFreescale Semiconductor in June 2007[32] aschief technology officer (CTO), heading the company's research and development[5][12] until August 2009.[30] From September 2008 until December 2011,[30] she wassenior vice president and general manager of Freescale's networking and multimedia group, and was responsible for global strategy, marketing, and engineering for the company's embedded communications and applications processor business.[12][30] As head of the company's networking-chip business,[31]EE Times credited her with helping Freescale get "its house in order", with the company filing for aninitial public offering in 2011.[5]
Su became senior vice president and general manager atAMD in January 2012,[12] overseeing the company's global business units[5][32] and the "end-to-end business execution" of AMD's products.[12] Over the next two years she "played a prominent role"[32] in pushing the company to diversify beyond the PC market, including working withMicrosoft andSony to place AMD chips inXbox One andPlayStation 4 game consoles.[31]
On 8 October 2014, AMD announced Su's appointment to president and CEO, replacingRory Read.[8][33] Su stated that her plan for the company involved focusing on making the "right technology investments", streamlining the product line, and continuing to diversify, also asserting that she wanted to "simplify" the company and accelerate the development of new technology.[11] A number of analysts praised the appointment due to Su's credentials, noting AMD was seeking growth in product areas where Su had "extensive experience".[34]
When Su joined AMD in 2012, about 10 percent of sales came from non-PC products.[2] By February 2015, roughly 40 percent of AMD's sales came from non-PC markets, such asvideo game consoles andembedded devices. In May 2015, Su and other AMD executives presented a long-term strategy for the company to focus on developing high-performance computing and graphics technologies for three growth areas: gaming, datacenter, and "immersive platforms" markets.[35]
In January 2016, Su announced that AMD was working on newFinFET-based chips to create a new line of microprocessors, products, accelerated processing units (APUs), graphics chips,[36] and semi-custom chip designs for unreleasedvideo game consoles.[36][37] AMD's share value spiked in July 2016, when AMD reported strong revenue growth.Fortune attributed the "impressive" statistic to Su, stating she "continues to execute on her comeback plan ... key gains in graphics and video gaming console chips have boosted results and a savvy deal to license server chip designs inChina".[37]
After the initial launch ofZen chips inquarter two 2017, AMD's percentage of theCPUmarket share surged to nearly 11%.[38] Ryzen CPUs have received favorable reviews from a variety of news outlets, specifically highlighting their highthread counts at prices drastically lower than those of Intel's, especially in thehigh-performance computing market with AMD'sRyzen Threadripper line of workstation processors.[39][40][41][42][43] Su is the first woman ever to top theAssociated Press’s annual survey of CEO compensation, with her 2019 pay package being valued at $58.5 million.[44]
In February 2022, Su became chair of AMD after completing a reported $49 billion acquisition ofFPGA and programmablesystems on chip makerXilinx.[45][46]
In 2023, Su's total compensation from AMD was $30.3 million, representing a CEO-to-median workerpay ratio of 238-to-1.[47]
Su has been recognized with a number of awards throughout her career. In 2002 she was selected as one of the "Top 100 Young Innovators" byMIT Technology Review,[7][48] and the following year theYWCA gave her an award for outstanding achievement in business.[22] In 2009, Su was named a fellow of theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), having published more than 40 technical articles. Su was named "2014 Executive of the Year" at theEE Times andEDN 2014 ACE Awards.[12]
In 2015,SFGate nominated her for their inaugural Visionary of the Year award, which "salutes leaders who strive to make the world a better place and drive social and economic change by employing new, innovative business models and practices".[2]
In 2016, she was named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Technology" by the National Diversity Council[49] and "Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business" with the Pinnacle Award by the Asia American Business Development Center.[50]
In 2017, Su was named "People to Watch" by HPCWire, "Top Ranked Semiconductor CEO", by Institutional Investor Magazine and "World's Greatest Leaders" byFortune.[14] Su was again named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Technology" by the National Diversity Council.[51]
In 2018, Su received the UPWARD "Women of the Year Award", "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Greater Austin Asian Chamber,[52] elected to the National Academy of Engineering,[53] Fortune's #6 "Businessperson of the Year",[54] Global Semiconductor Alliance "Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award",[55] andForbes America's Top 50 Women In Tech.[56] She was also appointed as Board of Directors Chair of the Global Semiconductor Alliance.[57]
In 2019, Su was named one of “The World's Best CEO of 2019” byBarron's,[58] Fortune's #44 "Most Powerful Women in Business",[59] Harvard Business Review's #26 "The Best-Performing CEOs in the World",[60] and Bloomberg Businessweek "The Bloomberg 50".[61]
Su was the highest-paid CEO for 2019 of any company on theS&P 500 index of the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies.[62] The annual review, published by A.P. and Equilar since 2011, reported that Su received $58.5 million in 2019. The figure is mainly due to a one-off stock reward.
She was the 2020 recipient of theSemiconductor Industry Association's Robert N. Noyce Award.[63] Also in 2020, she was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[64] She was the 2020 Technical LeadershipAbie Award Winner.[65] She was the recipient of the Spirit of Silicon Valley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. She was also ranked as #2 on the Fortune Business Person of The Year.[66] In 2020, Su was named byCarnegie Corporation of New York as an honoree of theGreat Immigrants Award.[67]
In 2021 Su was named as a Member of the U.S.President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,[68] and inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame.[69] Su was subsequently awarded theIEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal, becoming the first woman to receive this prize,[70] and named as #49 on theForbes 100 Most Powerful Women, credited for the 25-fold increase to AMD's stock since she became CEO in 2014.[71] In 2022 Su was awarded the International Peace Honors Honoree "for her achievements in revolutionizing high performance computing, the donation of supercomputing power for infectious disease research, and inspiring people from all backgrounds to pursue careers in STEM".[72]
In 2022, MIT named its new building 12, dedicated fornanotechnology research, under her name.[73]
In 2023, Su ranked 49th inForbes' list of "World's 100 most powerful women".[74] She rose to tenth in 2025.
She was ranked 12th onFortune's list of Most Powerful Women in 2023.[75]
Su was included inTime's 2024 list of the "100 Most Influential People in AI" and in theFinancial Times' list of the 25 most influential women in 2024.[76][77] She was also namedCEO of the Year byTime in 2024.[15] In 2025, she was named as one of the "Architects of AI" forTime'sPerson of the Year.
Su and her husband, Daniel Lin (Chinese: 丹尼爾‧林),[2][78] are based inAustin, Texas.[18] Su’s mother andNvidia co-founder and CEOJensen Huang arefirst cousins.[79][80] Su's maternal grandfather is the eldest brother of Huang's mother.[81][82]
After she became CEO of AMD, Su got into the habit ofboxing regularly with a trainer.[21]
As of 2024, Su had an estimated net worth of more than $1 billion.[83][84]
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| Business positions | ||
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| Preceded by | CEO,AMD 2014–present | Incumbent |