AMD President and CEO Lisa Su expects the current chip shortage to improve over the next year, she said this week at the Code Conference.
The current supply challenge has come about because “the pandemic has taken demand to a new level” across every industry, Su said. We’ve seen shortages before, but “this time is different” because every industry is asking for more chips.
Su noted that the PC market had been seen as a flat to declining market, but grew during the pandemic as people found they needed PCs with the shift to remote work. But for any given product, you may need thousands of chips, and any one of them being unavailable can cause a shortage, she said.
There has been a tremendous amount of investment, with 20 new factories coming online this year, and another 20 in process, but it usually takes 18 to 24 months to build a new plant. The semiconductor industry has been here before, Su said, and “it will be solved,” but that improvement is expected to be gradual in the next few quarters.
Sticking to the Vision
Much of the discussion—moderated by Code producer Kara Swisher and CNBC’s Jon Fortt—was about the turnabout AMD has seen under Su’s leadership, which she ascribed to focusing on high-performance computing products the company wants to release five years in the future, hiring the right team, and sticking to the vision.
That team had to be people who love what they do, because it takes time, and “you can’t rush semiconductors,” Su said. One lesson we all can learn from the pandemic is that “you have to think about the long term.” We need to think about the various contingencies required, because all the things we thought would never happen, happened.
There was a lot of discussion about American competitiveness and the recent CHIPS Act, which she described as dealing with both the national interest and supply resiliency. Su noted that six or seven years ago, everything was focused on economic growth, but now we need to think about how we can protect national security as well as still participate in free markets.
She agreed that some technologies may have to be kept more proprietary, and that national security and IP protection are very important, but she’s not in favor of decoupling. The world and supply chains are intertwined, and innovation is encouraged when people from different viewpoints interact, so she wants to work with government to find the right balance.
“The way to win is to run faster,” she said, whether competing with another company or another country. “The US is the leader in semiconductor design today and we want to stay that way.”
Asked by Fortt about security in a global market, Su said we need to trust the chips we are building and buying. It’s something the industry is working on, she said, citing the cooperation among players in areas such as cloud security and software security.
Su talked about the need for deep “co-optimization” among chips, software, and system makers, saying that if you do those things independently, you’re not going to be as good.
“Consolidation is inevitable if you want to make a big impact,” according to Su, who said she’s excited about AMD’s pending acquisition of Xilinx, which is expected to close by year’s end and is part of making AMD a bigger player in the industry.
She also talked about supercomputing technology and how AMD is designing chips for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for what she hopes will be the fastest computer in the world. “When you have the fastest supercomputer, you can think about how many of them can you build.”
The next big push is for more heterogeneous computing, using different kinds of technology such as CPUs and GPUs, a concept AMD has been talking about for years. She compared these to hybrid cars that can run on either electricity or gasoline, saying AMD wants to build a system that will know what you’re trying to do and use the best computing for your needs.
The Evolution of Server Chips
In a question-and-answer session, I asked about the evolution of server chips, as the market has moved from lots of end-user buyers to one where a few large cloud vendors buy over half the servers. Su said that large cloud companies are pushing the envelope on servers, and can move extremely quickly, with the things like customization. But “we’re all living in hybrid world,” and there will be cloud systems and plenty of individual servers on the edge.
After the session, I asked Su to clarify, and she said she expected that in the near future, 10 to 15% of the market will consist of systems with custom silicon (probably designed to run specific workloads in hyperscale data centers), but the bulk of the server market will remain general-purpose designs, with minor customization, such as additional cores or some features turned off.
On other topics, Su said cryptocurrency mining is a very small part of AMD’s business and a volatile market. AMD is also working hard to get more products to gamers. And Su was passionate about the need for more diversity in the semiconductor space. There aren’t enough women in tech, she said, and though it is getting better, she’d like to see more.
One thing everyone can appreciate about engineering, meanwhile, is that it is “black and white – either it works or it doesn’t,” Su said.
