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TBPN · 2 min · Jul 23, 2026

AMD must speed up roadmaps built years in advance

Lisa Su says semiconductor roadmaps are decided three to five years ahead, while AI adoption is changing much faster. That mismatch is making faster execution a customer demand.

Lisa Su

Lisa Su is chair and CEO of AMD.

  • John Coogan, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Co-founded Soylent and Lucy; OpenAI bought his show TBPN in April 2026.

  • Jordi Hays, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Founded Branded Native; co-founded fintech Capital, which Rho bought.

About this segment

Lisa Su says semiconductor roadmaps are decided three to five years ahead, while AI adoption is changing much faster. That mismatch is making faster execution a customer demand.

From “AMD CEO Lisa Su Live on TBPN”, Jul 23, 2026. Watch the full episode

“we're in a business where you make decisions, you know, three to five years in advance on your technology road maps.”
Lisa Suat 1:34:04 · TBPN1:34:04

Takeaways

  1. AI adoption is moving faster than normal chip-planning cycles.
  2. AMD makes roadmap decisions three to five years in advance.
  3. Customer demand for compute is pushing the company to move faster.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 39:05Most AI compute is lost to poor scheduling and low utilization3:54
  2. 1:37:06Claude is helping AMD accelerate hardware development3:59
  3. 1:40:58Different workloads need different kinds of compute4:23
  4. 48:48Reinforcement learning scales when experiments give clear feedback3:06
  5. 54:20Spent nuclear fuel retains most of its potential energy3:18
  6. 9:00World models should learn broadly before task-specific tuning3:54
  7. 29:58Design customers need on-prem models to protect product IP2:55

  8. 1:32:43AMD must speed up roadmaps built years in advance2:25

Up next · Lex Fridman PodcastEmperors stayed honest because nearly half were overthrown5:39

Transcript

From the transcript TBPN publishes with the episode.

  1. 1:32:48

    Take us back to 2014. How is 2026 different? Just a little bit different. Not just in terms of the AI boom, but as a leader, emotionally, is is this a more stressful time because everything's happening so fast? Or is this just a more exciting time? Like, what is your life like as CEO of AMD right

  2. 1:33:11

    Well, I have to say, when I think about this entire arc Yeah. Of 2014 until now Yeah. The thing that has been perhaps most interesting to me, it's like the world's like a different place. Yes. Like, every year, like, every two years, you see the tech trends are different. You see, you know, the customer, you know, sort of needs are different. Mhmm. You see the marketplace changing. And that's what just kept it really exciting for me because it's one of those

  3. 1:33:35

    things where, like, you're never gonna get bored. Yeah. Yep. It is certainly not less stressful, so I can tell you that. I think what's different about AI right now, I think the rate and pace of change Mhmm. Is actually much, much faster. I mean, semiconductors has always been a fast paced environment. But the rate and pace of change of the adoption curve of AI, and then how the technology is changing, and then, frankly, how the ecosystem is changing has has us constantly on the, hey, we gotta go faster.

  4. 1:34:05

    Yeah. I mean, that's the the primary thing is we have you know, we're in a business where you make decisions, you know, three to five years in advance on your technology road maps. Yeah. And you realize, man, we can even go faster. Yeah. And that's what the market wants. What is this?

  5. 1:34:20

    And I think there's so much more external pressure in a way that the computing industry and the technology industry in general just hasn't had.

  6. 1:34:29

    Well, I view it as actually a really good thing. I mean, people ask me that from time to time. And, you know, the reason I view it as a good thing is, look, you know, we're in a place where everybody needs compute. Yeah. Everybody wants compute. You know, every country wants compute. Every hyperscaler wants compute. You know, all of us are using it. And so it is not, you know, where the the components under covers were actually, you know, helping drive, you know, sort of how technology is being consumed.

  7. 1:34:58

    And so I think that's the difference. Right? So it's it's much more front and center, you know, versus just something that only techies know about.