IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007 - 22

01mwie01-keller3.qxd

1/4/08

1:54 PM

Page 22

BY
JULIA C. KELLER

Chip Off the Old Block
IBM'S LISA SU GETS HER GAME ON

T
A summer internship
making chips for
X-ray lithography
spurred Su's interest
in semiconductors.

PHOTO COURTESY OF
FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR

Take heart all you Tiger Woods-wannabe golf hackers out there; Lisa Su can commiserate with you.
"I'm not an expert gamer, but I like to play," says Su, senior vice president and chief
technology officer for Freescale Semiconductor and former vice president of the semiconductor research and development center at IBM. "I play Tiger Woods [PGA Tour],"
she adds, qualifying that despite owning two Sony PlayStation3 consoles and being
video games' technology queen, "I can't compete with these teenagers."
Of course, the majority of teens do not possess Su's skills in overseeing the development of the chip microprocessor technology that brings Tiger and PS3 to gamers. The
journey from blank-slate idea to full-blown PlayStation action has been one of the most
rewarding of her career.
"I've seen it through the whole process from when there was nothing on the
piece of paper to when we're making tens of millions of chips," says Su. Though
the cell microprocessor chip is rewarding from a technological standpoint, Su
says teamwork is the most gratifying aspect of the five-year, US$400 million
collaboration between IBM, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Toshiba.
"We put together a team of three companies that, when we started, each
had our own hat," explains Su. "The team really came together and put out
something that no one company could have done. The sum is better than each
of its parts."
Synergy skills are just a part of the overall package that makes Su a leader
in microprocessor chip technology. She also has the science skills to back it up.

X-Ray Vision
Su's parents fostered her interest in science and math. Growing up in Queens, New
York, as the older of two children, Su says her father, a mathematician, encouraged her
to ground herself in some "hard skills" in math and science. "When I was a kid, my
father used to quiz me on my multiplication tables," says Su. Parental influence is key
in developing skills, says Su, "They can't make you do well, but they can certainly
encourage you to do well." Her parents' encouragement and support fostered her as she
took classes at the magnet school, Bronx High School of Science.
From the Bronx, Su left New York for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that if you were going to MIT you
should do something in engineering," Su says.
But class wasn't the motivator for Su, who admits she was never a straight-A student.
Instead, her hands-on work as a summer intern making chips for X-ray lithography galvanized her interest in semiconductors. "I knew nothing about semiconductors," says Su

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

WINTER 2007/2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007