“BLOCKCHAIN TECH IS HERE TO STAY”

In a little over three years,

Lisa Su, 48, President and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), has changed the fortunes of the semiconductor company that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. When she took over AMD in 2014, the company was bleeding and reported losses of $403 million in FY2014 on revenues of $5.5 billion. In

2017, it clocked a net profit of

$43 million on revenues of

$5.4 billion. Su, a recreational boxer who also loves playing golf, has landed quite a few punches on competitors as she scripts a turnaround story. On a recent visit to India, which accounts for over 1,500 of the company’s

9,500 employees, she spoke to Deputy Editor Venkatesha Babu about how the turnaround story is likely to accelerate. Edited excerpts:

When you laid out the three-year roadmap, nobody believed AMD would be in the position where it is now. Is growth sustainable over the longer term?

A: It is an exciting time to be in the semiconductor industry and our speciality is high-performance computing. Everywhere you look, people need more compute capability. I believe we are building something very special because the foundation is good. For several years, my focus has been to build a strong foundation around intellectual property. The IP that we have for the central processing unit (CPU), the microprocessor and the graphics processing unit (GPU) is unique in the industry. We have been patiently building the pieces of the foundation.

In 2017, we launched over 10 product families. The market response has been positive, but I view it as the beginning. When you talk about sustainability, the foundation is the core product for a technology company like us. We have to build great products; we have to be dependable in delivering promises to our customers and end users. We have demonstrated that we can do it. But yes, there are sceptics and we need to keep demonstrating success for the next few years.

When you joined in 2012, almost all revenue came from the PC business. But you have focussed on getting market share from other areas. Do you see this shift accelerating?

A: Yes, over 90 per cent of our 2012 revenue was from the PC market. Today we get about 50 per cent from PC and the rest from the non-PC segment. We have done very well in gaming. Game consoles and high-performance PC gaming happen to be a key focus area for us. But the No. 1 growth opportunity over the next few years is cloud data centres. As computing is very important, data centre growth is a key area. When you look at AMD three years from now, you will see our mix change. Right now, the data centre is a small piece of our business, but that will change.

Intel tried to morph and provide solutions for mobile computing with little success. You have perhaps consciously tried not to take that route. Will you be addressing that market in the near future?

A: We are a high-performance computing company and I think we should focus on our strengths. Others may find mobile to be a key market segment, but we have many opportunities in our current market segment, and that is where we want to focus. Apart from cloud data centres, automobiles will be an interesting market going forward and so will be the overall machine learning and the artificial intelligence space.

Mobile computing players like Qualcomm and ARM are pushing into the traditional PC business. How do you view them?

A: For us, there is still a lot of growth opportunity in the PC market. I do not view the new entrants as competition per se. I think they are trying to add something to the market and if they bring value to end users, the latter will pick it up.

What is the thinking behind your re-entry into the server space? How do you intend to go ahead?

A: The server industry is very different today. Earlier, it used to be mostly enterprise customers. Now it is split between enterprise and cloud customers. Our solutions are very competitive. Our new server product line launched last year is called EPYC. The most important thing in the server business is to have a strong multigenerational roadmap. We know what we are going to do in the next five years and we will work closely with customers to help accomplish their goals.

We are focussed on both enterprise and cloud customers, and believe there is a growth opportunity for us in this space. Our share today is about 1 per cent and our inter-

“The India team is highly involved in our overall business. The talent here is quite exceptional”