AMD CEO and President Lisa Su joins Emily Chang to discuss Meta becoming her company’s latest customer. She also comments on AMD’s latest chip announcements, the global supply chain crunch and the outlook for the company and the chip industry in 2022.
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Just how big a win is landing Facebook. Or I should say Metta as
a customer for Andy.

Hey Emily it’s great to be here with you and I would say it was
a big day for Andy. We had you know we really talked about a

range of things today in our data center. So we talked about new
products in terms of our new products and our new cheap new

products as well as the fact that now 10 of the largest
hyperscale hours including Metta are using AMD epics. So we’re

extremely excited about it. I think it’s really just goes to say
a little bit about you know sort of our long term focus on the

data center and really wanting to make sure that we are working
and partnering with the most important companies in the world.

This now means as you say you are working with so many of these
hyperscale ers including not just mad about Microsoft and Amazon

and Google. Talk to us give us more color on what it’s taken to
win over these big customers and cut into market share of your

competitors.
Yeah. So this has been our focus over the last four or five

years has been really to build off the capabilities in the data
center. We see the data center as one of the most exciting if

not the most exciting market in semiconductors. You know there’s
this massive need for high performance computing. And each one

of these large hyperscale ers are doing such a unique and
innovative things. So we’re honored frankly to be partnered with

with all of them. I think it says a lot about the technology
that you need and sort of the multigenerational roadmap that you

need. And being able to partner with the best means that you
learn how to make your roadmap even stronger going forward. Now

I do want to talk a little bit about Metta and its bet on the
metaverse. A lot of people still don’t know what the metaverse

is just how big an opportunity. Do you think the metaverse will
be. And do you see. What do you see as AMD’s role in it. Yeah.

So look we’re excited. If I just take a step back Emily and talk
about sort of high performance computing and you know what we

believe and what I believe is that there’s really this mega
cycle around needing more computing and so many different

applications. You know whether you’re talking about
collaboration applications or you’re talking about research

applications or you’re talking about you know just you know
analyzing massive amounts of data. And yes the metaverse is even

the next thing you know on top of it. So we believe it’s a very
large opportunity if you look at high performance computing in

its entirety. I think the metaverse is one of those areas that
that many people are talking about in terms of you know how do

you really bring together you know virtual reality and mixed
reality together with all of the collaboration that we’re doing

now. I think we have new expectations of what life is like post
pandemic.

So it’s an exciting vision and we view it as really an
opportunity where you need high performance you know CPR use or

microprocessors and high performance graphics and GP use and
artificial intelligence and machine learning and visualization

and really bringing all of that together. And you know we’re
unique in the sense that we really do look at sort of the end to

end use cases and really work with our partners on making that
happen. So we view just tremendous opportunity in high

performance computing going forward. You do have new GP you and
CPE offerings and I’m curious why we’re seeing you now. Broaden

out some of your offerings when it’s that focus and execution
that has served AMC so well.

Well you know we’re excited about the data center overall Emily.
And when you really look at all of the expansion it’s really an

area of secular growth. And as the markets get larger you see
more and more specialization. So no question our epic product

family and our general purpose data center server processors
have done extremely well. And we’re gonna continue to be very

very aggressive on that roadmap. But the fact is there are these
large use cases around high performance computing and A.I. and

those need to use and we can put them together in a very
efficient way in a system. We also announced today that we’re

broadening our offerings to include a cloud focused processor
line versus let’s call it a more general purpose line. And again

this is just this expansion of computing really allowing and
enabling us to no one invest more and to really try to taylor

and partner with what we think of our customers and partners are
going to need going forward. How do you see Genoa. Your next

design for data center chips actually shaking up the competitive
landscape cutting into market share for folks like Intel and

users of ARM technology that are also trying to break in.
Well I think the key in this market frankly is execution you

know strong execution generation after generation. You know our
current generation Mahlon processors are fantastic. I mean we’re

very very excited about the adoption. You know we just announced
our third quarter earnings and we doubled our server processors

as well as our data center processor sales year on year. And
that just kind of tells you a little bit about sort of the

momentum we have. General is the fourth generation general is
very very strong. It really builds on top of the capabilities

that we have with with Mahlon. We add a whole bunch of new IO
features. We expand the number of cores in the amount of

performance. And what that should mean to our customers is they
can do more in the same footprint. Data center folks are all

about total cost of ownership and how much can they do in a
given footprint. And so the fact that General ISE is another big

step forward we’re going to use 5 nanometer technology of it as
a lot of new architectural features. We’re excited about

General. Now with all of these new products you seem to be
planning for a much bigger M.D.. Can you get the supply to match

these ambitions and help you carry them out.
Yeah. So no question. We are planning for a bigger M.D.. The

thought if we look at our trajectory the last two years have
been tremendous growth. We’ve just guided two thousand and

twenty one to sixty five percent. You’re on your growth. You
know when we started the year sort of in January we thought it

was 37 percent. So we’ve been able to add a lot of supply as
well as there’s just very strong demand for AMG processors right

now. We are working very very closely with all of our supply
chain partners. There’s an incredible amount of work going to

ramp up overall supply chain capacity and we feel very good
about the trajectory of what we see going into 2022 and beyond.

And these are all long term partnerships anyway. So it’s really
about how do we plan with our customers and our supply chain

partners not just for this quarter next quarter but for 2020 to
2023 and beyond to make sure that we can meet all of this

incredible demand that’s out there. Still the chip shortage and
supply issues seem to be a continuing crisis for everyone else.

And I’m curious how long you think we’re going to see the ripple
effects of this. Is this something that you think will continue

to reverberate across industries for years potentially.
Yeah. You know I get asked that question a lot. I think you’ve

asked some questions of me a few times. I will tell you that I
think the environment is such that there’s a lot of capacity in

a lot of investment that’s being put online. So that’s positive.
You know like I said we saw more more growth and more capability

in towards the end of 2021 than earlier in the year. I think the
first half of twenty two is still going to be pretty tight but

we’re going to see improvements as we go into the second half or
22. And I feel confident that the semiconductor industry is

going to respond to the challenge. And every quarter it’ll get
incrementally better going forward. It’s hard not to keep asking

because the situation seems to be continuing and keeps changing.
So I do appreciate you giving us an update every time you come

on the show. You know you did have a strong quarter great third
quarter as you look into 2020 to what’s really going to be what

are going to be the defining trends and defining trends that
will drive AMD’s growth through the next year.

Yeah sure. Emily so I think as we look forward you know the most
important thing is we are in the right markets. I mean it’s a

very exciting world in this high performance computing world.
You know if we looked at the town where the total market size

just you know maybe 18 months ago we might have sized it at
about 80 billion or so. We now see that market size or that

market opportunity upwards of 100 billion. So there’s a lot of
need for computing and computing capability. And from an M.D.

standpoint I think our product portfolio is the best it’s ever
been. And it’s only going to get better. I think we’re excited.

We have a whole slew of products that we’re launching in 2022
and we’ll talk more about that over the coming months. And you

know our goal is to continue to partner with the best the best
brands in the in the industry and make sure that we’re providing

them the best solution. So I think it’s a great growth
environment for us. We’re going to continue to work hard at

satisfying all the demand out there. But I think we’re very
optimistic about about 2022. It’ll be interesting to see just

how much the metaverse proper is part of that growth. I’m
curious if you have an idea of when you think we will see this

new universe if you will really come alive especially for the
mainstream.

Yeah I think people are doing you know a lot of experimentation
in the area. Emily and you know as I said you know there are

announcements from a number of companies out there and we’ll see
things come come together incrementally over the next few years.

But I’d like to think of the metaverse. It’s not going to be
like one big bang that you’re going to see everything come out.

You’re going to see really a product’s building on each other
and capabilities building on each other. And the fundamental

underneath that is unique you know great high performance
processing technology which is which is what we’re working on.