AMD chief executive Lisa Su along with two others notified Cisco that they would like to leave its board of directors. Su joined Cisco's board of directors in early 2020 , but a lot of things have happened since then, which might be a reason why she decided to quit.

"On October 4, 2023, M. Michele Burns, Roderick C. McGeary, and Dr. Lisa T. Su each notified Cisco Systems, Inc. of their respective decision not to stand for re-election at Cisco's 2023 annual meeting of stockholders," Cisco's filing with SEC reads (via Don Clark ). "Ms. Burns, Mr. McGeary, and Dr. Su will continue to serve as directors until the 2023 Annual Meeting."

Neither disclosed reasons for leaving Cisco's board of directors, and we can only speculate about their intentions.

Of the three, Lisa Su is the only leader of high-technology company. When she joined Cisco's board-of-directors in 2020, AMD was beginning to recapture market share in PCs and servers from Intel and expansion prospects were rather foggy. But over the course of three years AMD got a lot bigger.

The company purchased Pensando for $1.9 billion in 2022 to gain data processing units (DPUs), a type of processors that enables connectivity in datacenters and somewhat competes against Cisco's datacenter connectivity products. In addition, AMD recently launched its EPYC 8000-series 'Siena' processors that target communications and edge servers, thus also encroaching on Cisco's offerings. As a result, Su has at least two conflicts of interests when it comes to Cisco.

Keep in mind that at this point that this is mere speculation. Before joining Cisco's board, Su left the board of Analog Devices.