Tech. Cars. Machines.

Tech. Cars. Machines.


48. Mark Papermaster, CTO and EVP at AMD

February 12, 2025

AMD’s Mark Papermaster, CTO and EVP, talked with me about his background, AMD’s history, and how the company came to position itself as a “bankable supplier” with one of the most diverse semiconductor portfolios fpr the ag of AI: CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, accelerators, custom development, and with rack-scale systems with the pending acquisition of ZT Systems.  A focus on performance and open-ness are AMD’s guiding lights.  Needless to say, we discussed DeepSeek AI, too.  


Note the “skip to” audio time stamps below.  You can read the related article here in 3 minutes.     


Host: Ali Tabibian of GTK Partners.  


On some podcast players you can click to jump to the timestamps below. 


(0:00) Introduction to AMD 


(7:23) Mark’s background and lessons from the iPhone and iPod 


(15:10) The whole banana, or a comprehensive solution suite   


(23:32) DeepSeek AI and the benefit of constraints 


(27:37) Software and an open approach 


(32:30) Balancing investing in innovation and margins