AMD's Li Xinrong: Ten years of hard work, the story of growth continues

Q: Allen, first of all, could you please review the growth history of the entire R&D center on the occasion of the 10th anniversary?

Allen: SRDC was started in two parts in 2006. Before AMD and ATI merged, both AMD and ATI launched their own R&D centers in Shanghai. From ATI's perspective, in January 2006, I acquired a graphics processor design company in Shanghai on behalf of ATI. In the same year, AMD's platform team was established in Pudong. In August 2006, the two companies merged. In January 2007, we moved the ATI design team from Puxi to Pudong. At that time, the Graphics team had nearly 150 people, and the platform team had about dozens of employees, a total of about 200 people.

Since 2007, our team has been increasing year by year. In the first three years after the establishment of the R&D center, the growth rate was relatively fast, with about 200 people added each year. We quickly increased from 2007 to more than 700 people before 2010. One of the main reasons for the rapid growth is that we have a complete and feasible development strategy. At the beginning, although our core leadership team was very young and inexperienced, we set clear long-term goals at that time. We hope to bring cutting-edge projects in VLSI design to China, and the goal is to build a Chinese team capable of executing end-to-end product design and mass production. Because we have such an end-to-end concept and clear goals, we have a complete growth story. The entire team, from managers to engineers, has a high enthusiasm for work. Many employees even join us with an entrepreneurial spirit. For our vision, everyone works together, develops together, and grows together.

In this case, we have grown from two or three departments to 20 different departments now. This growth story has been going on and has not yet come to an end.

Q: How did the R&D center grow from an initial team of 200 people to its current size?

Allen: SRDC becoming the largest R&D center outside the headquarters is a result of the development process. When we first established the R&D center, we had already set a goal, which was to develop SRDC into a R&D center for cutting-edge design.

This laid the foundation for our success. When we first established SRDC, we were determined to do advanced design and bring in advanced technology. This concept gave us a greater chance of success and made us more attractive to talent. In the first five years of our establishment, we can confidently say that the stories we provided were top-notch in the country, and top talents were willing to join us.

Q: How do you measure Chinese talent? What do you think are the differences between Chinese talent and overseas talent? How do you help them grow?

Allen: This depends on my personal background and the evolution of the times. I grew up in Taiwan, left Taiwan in 1983 to study in the United States, then worked in the United States, and came to Shanghai in 2006. Earlier, I had been working in Silicon Valley, and experienced the development of some industries at several key times. There are several major processes in these developments. The first was that Silicon Valley experienced a period of low tide in 1988 and 1989. During this period of low tide, a group of Chinese (most of whom went out of Taiwan) returned to Taiwan to start businesses. After this group of people returned to Taiwan, they created a great development of Taiwan's electronics industry in 1990. This was the first wave of Chinese returnees, the so-called returnees. At that time, I had just graduated for 4 or 5 years. Although some people had invited me, I still felt that it was not the right time. Throughout the 1990s, I grew up with the industry and accumulated some experience in graphics processing.

You just asked me how to measure Chinese talents? When I was studying in the United States, I met the first generation of mainland Chinese students. At that time, all the students were experts and top talents. In class, all the A's were taken by Chinese students. They were amazing!

After 2000, the second wave of opportunities for international students came. Around 2004 and 2005, I felt that mainland China would be the beginning of the next wave of development, just like Taiwan back then, and the first wave of production migration was at that time. I saw that there were opportunities in mainland China at that time - this is also one of the reasons why I did not choose to move to the Canadian headquarters to lead my business department but to start a research and development center in mainland China. Starting research and development in China in 2006 should be about 4 to 5 years ahead of the trend, because at that time most of mainland China was still engaged in manufacturing. It is precisely because no one is doing this end that we started such a research and development concept, we will be ahead, and China has a lot of good talents. We have good projects and good technology, which makes it easier to attract them.

Compared with overseas talents, the learning and technical capabilities of Chinese IC industry talents are comparable, and the depth of experience and technology compared with some senior experts in overseas industries has a lot of room for improvement. I have great confidence in Chinese talents.

Q: The R&D center has been established for 10 years in the blink of an eye. This is also a new starting point. As the leader of the R&D center, what visions do you have for the next 10 years?

Allen: For the next 10 years, the development direction is very clear. We need to further enhance the capabilities of our R&D center and enable our talents to continue to grow. At the same time, we need to use these talents as our foundation and use the talent as a foundation to expand AMD's business in China. These are all opportunities for us.