Are We in an AI Bubble? AMD’s Lisa Su speaks out in Taiwan 【Taiwanology Ep.60】

**Liu Guangying** (0:02)
This is the Taiwanology Podcast from Commonwealth Magazine, where we discuss Taiwan matters and why they matter to you. Coming to you from Taipei, the capital of the freest nation in Asia.
Welcome back to the Taiwanology Podcast. This is your host, Liu Guangying, from Taiwan's Commonwealth Magazine. Today, we are going to present to you a very special live recording, a conversation with Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD, which is one of the most influential leaders shaping the global AI and semiconductor industry. In this exclusive session, Dr. Lisa Su joins Yishan Chen, the Editor-in-Chief of Commonwealth Magazine, for a wide-ranging conversation on AI, computing, and Taiwan's critical role in the future of technology. This discussion also carries a personal dimension, as Dr. Su's family roots actually trace back to Tainan. Let's dive right in the conversation.

**Yishan Chen** (1:16)
I think the audience can understand how nervous I am, because my major is economics. My major coverage in the past 30 years is economics and finance. Right now, I just learn within one month to learn everything about semiconductor industry. It's so hard.

**Lisa Su** (1:35)
It's very impressive. Thank you.

**Yishan Chen** (1:38)
So maybe we can start from your newest press release. Yesterday, because you announced one is you are going to invest 10 billion dollars in advanced packaging companies in Taiwan. Another is adopting TSMC's two nanometer process technology.
So I think the people want to understand, could you elaborate more about your two announcements?

**Lisa Su** (2:04)
So first of all, it's great to be here this morning. Thank you to Commonwealth Magazine and for everyone to be here. It's always so exciting to come to Taiwan.
I always feel that there's so much energy and there's no other place in the world that has so much semiconductors in a small, very, very small area. But yes, it's been a very exciting week for us and we're in this time right now where the semiconductor market and the AI market has never been growing faster. Every month, we're surprised by how much growth there is. And every time we look at the usage of the technology, we're convinced that this is the most, the highest growth time for the market. And as a result, for AMD, our strategy is to lead in high performance and AI computing. And to do that, we must have a very strong supply chain, and we must have very strong partners. So we've been working very closely with all of our partners here in Taiwan.
Yesterday, we hosted a customer symposium with over 150 of our partners, and many are in the room today. And our announcements this week are two. The first announcement is around the progress that we've made with TSMC.
So TSMC has been a tremendous partner for AMD, and I would say is a very key reason that we have been so successful. And what we wanted to be was the first to really ramp 2 nanometer HPC technology. So we're happy to announce that our newest CPU chip, Venice, has started its production ramp here in 2 nanometers. So it was very exciting for that.
And then the 2nd piece is around the supply chain. So I think all of us in the industry recognize that this is the time we have to invest, because we need to have enough capacity for the next 1, 2, 3 years. But it's a lot of investment that's required. So AMD is partnering with a number of companies here in the Taiwan ecosystem. Because we are leading in advanced packaging and we're leading in high performance computing, we are co-investing to build both the technology and the capacity about over $10 billion for, if you think about all of the advanced packaging, substrates, test capacity, rock scale integration. And first of all, it's a big, big vote of confidence for this is the place where the technology is the best. And it's also very, very important for AMD's long-term growth. So thank you for all of the incredible support here.

**Yishan Chen** (4:57)
So Dr. Su, I want to follow up with some journalists. Let me clarify, you say you want to collaborate with the advanced packaging. So how will you participate? Is it a share the cost research course or?

**Lisa Su** (5:12)
Yeah, we do. So if you look at our technology, we have been very aggressive in the use of 25D technology, co-host technology, EFB technology.
We're also very aggressive in using 3D technology. And for all of those technologies, we are very often the first time, the first user to use it at volume. So we collaborate with the ecosystem and we ensure that we're making investments up front to have the capacity available as we ramp over the next several years. And as we have seen, the demand keeps going up. And so we're asking our partners to ramp faster and we should absolutely share in that investment.