Rising Woman of Influence: Suzanne Plummer

2019 Nominee

Suzanne Plummer

Corporate Vice President of Design Engineering
AMD

Suzanne Plummer is a corporate vice president of Design Engineering at AMD. In this role, she is responsible for the design of AMD discrete GPU products, including the newest Radeon products based on the RDNA Architecture. She leads a team of over 800 full-time engineers and contractors in China, Canada and the United States.

Since joining AMD in 2002, Plummer has led several design teams behind AMD’s most innovative technologies, including the low power x86 microprocessor used in the world’s first APU and the x86 microprocessor powering all of AMD’s game console wins. Plummer also directed the teams that designed the Zen and Zen 2 architectures – which power AMD’s new microprocessors and drove the company’s re-entry into the high-performance x86 market.

In addition to her work in x86 processor development, she was the Engineering Lead and interface for all products developed for Microsoft in the Semi-custom business unit.

Previously, Plummer worked in performance modelling and design engineering at Alchemy Semiconductor, a MIPS-based processor start-up company acquired by AMD in 2002, where she helped develop the AU1000 MIPS microprocessor.

Plummer started her career in applications engineering at Motorola Semiconductor before transitioning to design engineering, where she held various roles across architecture, performance modeling, RTL design and design management.

Plummer was the lead for the AMD Austin site for two years and is the Executive Sponsor for the AMD Pride organization, supporting AMD’s LGBTQ community. She has been involved in the AMD Women’s Forum and with AMD’s Learning and Development Organization, helping to design and lead technical leadership training classes.

Plummer has a BSEE from Rice University and has worked in the semiconductor industry for 30 years.