If it was a failure I wouldn't attribute that to Lisa Su either. Because AMD's success kinda started around the time Lisa Su joined, the products they came out with at the time certainly didn't have much to do with Lisa, technology wise or strategy wise.

There are definitely many cases where CEO should bare responsibility for the company's success or failure, but definitely not in the case of AMD.

Dr Su became AMD CEO in 2014 when they were deep in the ruinously awful Bulldozer CPU architecture.

The first Zen products didn't launch until 2017 - that is when their "success kinda started" at least in the CPU market.

Here's a quote from Suzanne Plummer, senior director of the Zen project, in September 2015: "This is the first time in a very long time that we engineers have been given the total freedom to build a processor from scratch and do the best we can do."

You could make a reasonable argument that supplying the GPUs for PS4 and Xbox One, both of which pre-date Dr Su's appointment, is their "success kinda start[ing]", but one could also argue that AMD was really the only vendor capable of providing the APUs needed.

CPU development cycle is definitely longer than 3 years, especially for a big change like that. Zen architecture design certainly started before 2014. So I think it's fair to say that she started around the time AMD became successful.

It's not, though. Zen didn't launch until 2017, she started in 2014. Early work began in 2012, yes, but it was on track for 3 years under her before launch, she deserves a lot of credit as leader to bring that project to fruition.

Technically it was somewhat under her from its inception - she was a VP and general manager of AMD from like January 2012, months before Jim Keller was hired.

I dug up an old interview from Anandtech that I'd forgotten about when I first wrote my comment above, which has this quote from Dr Su:

"If I put credit where credit is due, Mark Papermaster had incredible vision of what he wanted to do with CPU/GPU roadmap. He hired Jim Keller and Raja Koduri, and he was very clear when he said he needed this much money to do things. We did cut a bunch of projects, but we invested in our future."

Thanks for the quote, that's a great leader.

"Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (attributed to former DEC CEO Robert Palmer)

Zen started in 2012. But it might have been a total disaster if it weren't for Su. We simply don't know. At the very least Suzannes quote hints at Su having at least a very significant impact.