Jan 13, 2021 21:00:00

AMD CEO Lisa Su talks about CPU and GPU shortages and the mobile Ryzen 5000 series

Regarding the chip supply shortage issue at major chip manufacturer AMD and the APU '

Ryzen 5000 Series Mobile Processor (hereinafter referred to as Ryzen 5000 Mobile)' series that adopts the Zen 3 architecture announced on January 13, 2020, technology news media AnandTech conducted a telephone interview with AMD CEO and President Lisa Su, and has published the contents of the interview.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su: Interview on 2021 Demand, Supply, Tariffs, Xilinx, and EPYC
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16409/amd-ceo-dr-lisa-su-interview-on-2021-demand-supply-tariffs-xilinx-and-epyc

AnandTech (hereinafter, Q):
Processors using the Arm architecture are appearing in the data center world, such as Amazon's Graviton 2 and Ampere's 80-core processor Ampere Altra . What do you think about this?

CEO Lisa Su (hereinafter referred to as CEO Su):
AMD is focused on high performance and significant generational improvements. x86 is a strong ecosystem in which AMD continues to invest heavily. However, we believe that the presence of custom-designed chips like Arm on the market shows how much computing demand is increasing. AMD believes there is a huge opportunity for customized solutions for specific workloads, which is why we have a strong semi-custom division.

Q:
In November 2020, Apple announced its own Arm-based SoC,

the M1 , which became a hot topic. Apple has long used AMD's Radeon series for its Mac GPUs, and the announcement of the M1 could affect the relationship between Apple and AMD.

CEO Sue:
The Apple M1 shows how much processing power and innovation is available in the market. The introduction of the M1 creates an opportunity to innovate on both the hardware and software sides, and to break away from the traditional instruction set architecture. From our perspective, there is still room for innovation in the PC space. We have a lot of options and the same processor can be used in many different environments, but we expect to see more differentiation and differentiation of processors over the next few years. Even with Apple's launch of the M1, AMD continues to partner with Apple.

Q:
Additionally, even when AMD's products become popular, supply cannot keep up with demand, making it difficult for users to purchase them.

CEO Sue:
This is not a manufacturing issue, but rather a demand-driven environment. Demand is straining the supply chain, which will inevitably put pressure on our console, PC and gaming PC product lines. We are building additional semiconductor production lines to meet this unexpected demand. It will take time for supply to catch up with demand, but this is reality.

Q:
How long will this situation of 'supply not keeping up with demand' continue?

CEO Sue:
AMD is shipping many parts, and all parts are seeing increased volumes. We expect this volume growth to continue through 2021. We expect the first half of the year to be challenging, but we are also shipping to our OEM partners for consumers, and there is real-time prioritization happening between end users and OEMs. We know consumers are asking for more products, and meeting this high demand is high on our priority list.

Q:
AMD has launched a strategy of 'continuing to sell products at low prices,' but I think pricing is becoming difficult due to the US tariff issue and logistics disruptions caused by the new coronavirus.

CEO Sue:
We knew the US

tariff exemption was going to expire and AMD was working in advance towards a more flexible supply chain. We try to price our GPUs as close to retail as possible because that's the only way to be fair to our users. Typically, when a GPU launches, we launch our own branded graphics cards and then we phase them out to make sure our partners have them available. However, with the Radeon RX 6000 series, we are not phasing them out but rather making sure we sell them directly to our customers at the lowest possible price. We are encouraging our partners to do the same.

In addition to tariffs, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased our shipping and freight costs. Once the pandemic calms down, shipping and freight costs should improve. This is also heavily related to the graphics updates we plan to make by the first half of 2021, as many products will be released to the market.

Q:
Regarding the number of CPU cores, some have pointed out that the market limits are 8 cores for notebooks, 16 cores for desktops, and 64 cores for data centers.

CEO Sue:
'We're going to see more cores in the future, and we don't see the current limit. Scaling the rest of the system will allow us to achieve even more core counts. CTO

Mark Papermaster , Senior Fellow Design Engineer Mike Clark, and the team have done a great job. We envision an ambitious roadmap focused on Zen 4 and Zen 5, making us very competitive.'

Also, for GPUs, David Wong , Senior Vice President of Engineering for the Radeon Technology Group, and his team are focused on a long-term roadmap to choose the right mix of risk to gain innovation, performance, and predictability. The die is cast, and we'll just have to see where it goes. For example, we're happy with the power efficiency and overall performance of the RDNA 2 architecture , and we're focusing on a lot of other things with the RDNA 3 architecture that follows. We're investing in areas that are specifically focused on AI, and we plan to add AI capabilities to the CPU and GPU, like the CDNA architecture that was launched in November 2020.

Q:
In October 2020, AMD made headlines when it acquired the American semiconductor company Xilinx for approximately 3.6 trillion yen. This acquisition of Xilinx means that AMD will also compete for data centers and communication base stations.

AMD acquires American semiconductor company Xilinx for 3.6 trillion yen, strengthening data center business to compete with Intel - GIGAZINE

CEO Sue:
We are excited about the AMD-Xilinx deal. This is a big step for AMD to continue to roll out more technology. AMD has made great strides over the last few years, building deep partnerships with customers and trusting them to power our most important platforms. We want large companies to trust AMD as a supplier, and the acquisition of Xilinx will help us do that. The acquisition of Xilinx is a great next step. We have a desire to have a larger footprint, and Xilinx helps AMD's foundational business. Xilinx CEO Victor Peng is part of AMD's business strategy and we expect a seamless transition of the business. This is what you want from a leader, and we have to grow broad and big. AMD can do both.

Q:
Radeon RX 6000 and EPYC Milan also began shipping at the end of 2020. Also, the Ryzen 5000 Mobile series was announced on January 13, 2020, and laptops equipped with the Ryzen 5000 Mobile series are scheduled to be released during the first quarter of 2021 (January to March). What plans does AMD have for this?

CEO Sue:
The Ryzen 5000 Mobile series, or Cezanne generation APUs, had to be produced for shipment in early 2021. It was important to have the first production lots ready in Q4 2020 in order to launch products in the first quarter or first half of 2021. AMD chooses the timing of hardware production to fit its product flow.

There is no set formula for choosing the timing of hardware production. It's all about making the right bets to forecast the market for demand, sometimes months in advance. For example, we had to enable millions of console APUs for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, where demand was much higher than we expected. Working with OEM partners like Sony and Microsoft means we can play different strategies.

CEO Sue:
AMD has announced that more than 150 models of Ryzen 5000 Mobile will be available by the end of 2021, which is 1.5 times the number of Ryzen 4000 Mobile models. This includes deployment in commercial systems, and AMD is committed to realizing security solutions on the Ryzen Pro platform. A new initiative for Ryzen Pro is also planned.

In the business division, we are expanding our focus on EPYC, our data center processors, which means providing business solutions targeted at different

vertical markets . This will enable customers to adopt AMD's solutions more quickly. As a precursor to this, we started shipping EPYC Milan to our OEM partners in Q4 2020. We will talk more about this when we officially launch EPYC Milan in Q1 2021.