Intel chip architect Su Fei returns to China after 20 years in the US
The award-winning engineer with a reputation for mentorship has taken up an endowed chair professorship at Tsinghua University
Su Fei, a veteran engineer in chip testing and semiconductor reliability, is now the Xing-Hua endowed chair professor at his alma mater’s school of integrated circuits, according to the faculty webpage.
A scroll through Su’s social media profile reveals that he also helped to shape global standards in chip design, guided research at US universities to address practical engineering challenges and received multiple industry honours for his work.
Su, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), said he was “profoundly motivated” by opportunities to bridge the gap between academia and industry – a theme that has run through much of his career.
“I find immense fulfilment in mentoring and guiding young students and professionals as they navigate the ever-evolving computing and semiconductor industry,” he wrote in a 2023 statement as a candidate for the IEEE Computer Society board of governors.
Born and educated in China, Su earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University before completing a PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Duke University in 2006.
He joined Intel as a staff engineer that year, developing testing methods for low-power smartphone chips. He went on to help design key systems for wireless connectivity and cameras.
Su later led efforts to make chips more self-aware and able to monitor their own health in real time and stay resilient under stress.
His research centres on building chips that can detect faults, recover from errors and maintain stable performance throughout their lifespan. These efforts have led to several international patents and contributions adopted in commercial products.
One such patent, granted in 2020, describes a machine-learning system for spotting unusual behaviour in analogue chips – often used in cars and industrial machinery – that could prevent system failures in safety-critical settings.
Su contributed to the development of several IEEE standards and served as an industry mentor for multiple academia-industry research projects through the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).
In 2021, the SRC – a major US research consortium connecting university labs with industry partners – honoured Su with the Mahboob Khan Outstanding Industry Liaison Award for his leadership in student mentoring, research collaboration and technology transfer.
He has also received several best paper awards, including from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration Design.