#067 - How AMD Plans to Win The AI Era with AMD CTO Mark Papermaster

This week on GAEA Talks, Graeme Scott sits down with Mark Papermaster - Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of AMD, former Apple Senior Vice President of iPhone and iPod Hardware Engineering, four-decade semiconductor industry veteran, and newly elected member of the National Academy of Engineering.Mark's career reads like a history of modern computing itself. Beginning at IBM in 1982, he spent twenty-six years driving microprocessor and server technology development before being hired by Steve Jobs to lead iPhone and iPod hardware engineering at Apple. He went on to lead silicon engineering at Cisco before joining AMD in 2011, where he and CEO Lisa Su have transformed the company into one of the world's most formidable forces in high-performance and AI computing. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Vermont in electrical engineering, Mark was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in February 2025.In this episode, recorded live at HumanX 2026 in San Francisco, Mark takes the audience inside four decades of computing revolutions - from the birth of the PC era through the iPhone moment with Steve Jobs, to the AI infrastructure race reshaping every industry today. He reveals what it was like going back and forth with Steve Jobs on the angle of the FaceTime camera, why AMD's open ecosystem approach is essential for the security challenges ahead, and why the democratisation of AI compute is a societal necessity. This is essential listening for anyone making decisions about AI infrastructure, edge computing, or the future of distributed intelligence.What you'll take away from this conversation:- The full arc of computing revolutions - from mainframes to PCs to mobile to AI - told by someone who built the hardware behind each one- What Steve Jobs taught Mark about maniacal focus on experience - and how that drives AMD's chip design culture- The FaceTime story - why Jobs obsessed over the camera angle and what that reveals about trust in new technology- Why AI compute will be aggregated, not centralised - running in the cloud, on your PC, your phone, and embedded all around us- AMD's confidential compute - how businesses can run AI on the cloud while controlling the encryption keys- Why the lack of security standards for agentic AI processes is a critical gap the industry must address- How AMD's open software stack runs from the world's top supercomputers down to consumer PCs- The Strix Halo revelation - AMD's PC chip running hundreds of billions of parameter models at retail- AMD's target of a 20x improvement in AI compute efficiency in the data centre by 2030- Why democratising AI computation is a societal imperative - and how the divide is already forming- The culture of execution Mark and Lisa Su built at AMD- The collaboration imperative - why no single company can solve the AI security stack aloneAbout Mark Papermaster: Mark is CTO and EVP of Technology and Engineering at AMD since 2011. He leads development of the Zen CPU family, high-performance GPUs, and Infinity Architecture. Previously Apple SVP of iPhone and iPod Hardware, VP at Cisco, and 26 years at IBM. He holds a BSc from UT Austin and MSc from the University of Vermont in Electrical Engineering. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025.GAEA Talks is the enterprise AI podcast for leaders navigating the age of artificial intelligence. Subscribe for weekly conversations with the people shaping the future of business, technology and society.AMD: https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/leadership/mark-papermaster.htmlGAEA AI: https://gaealgm.ai#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GAEATalks #EnterpriseAI #AMD #Semiconductors #AICompute #EdgeComputing #DistributedAI #SteveJobs #iPhone #FaceTime #HumanX #HumanX2026 #ConfidentialCompute #DemocratiseAI #FutureOfComputing #DataCentre #GPUs #CTO #Leadership #TechPodcast