10 Things You Didn't Know About ... Godfrey Cheng

10 personal questions and 10 personal answers from Godfrey Cheng, AMD’s Director of Product Marketing in the company’s Platform and Gaming Technologies division. He is responsible for AMD’s platform graphics solutions, which includes ATI Crossfire and AMD Game!, and has become one of the most visible personalities in the graphics industry over the past decade. Cheng joined ATI in 1998 and transitioned to AMD when the company acquired ATI in 2006. If you are looking for good conversation about the graphics industry, there are few people that are as knowledgeable and interesting to talk to as Godfrey Cheng. Read on to find out how he answered our questions.

I couldn’t survive without ... broadband Internet. I cannot remember how I got by in the 1980s and 1990s without the world at my fingertips.

The best advice I ever got ... from one of my law school professors: "NEVER do something or enter a career path for the sake of money. Follow your passions and excel at it. You will be happier and money always follows." My lifelong passions have been computers and high performance cars and so far, so good. Law / Banking career not so good.

A person/people I admire ... in addition to my parents, Ayrton Senna and Lance Armstrong. Senna was the paradigm of focus and purpose when he went for the pole position. He was unbelievable and unbeatable. Lance’s struggle with cancer is well documented but his burning desire to win is what I admire in Lance.

If I could go anywhere, or do anything, I would ... timewarp back to the 1980s and win the 24 hours of LeMans and the other classic endurance races with the likes of Derek Bell, Jacky Ickx, Hans Stuck in the Porsche 956 and 962s and then work for BMW’s Motorsport division.

A technology I have no use for ... tofu, which tries to imitate meat and non-religious vegetarians ... wait, are vegetarians a technology? 

The best idea I had ... was to leave my short stint in law and to follow my passions and join ATI Technologies.

Luxury is ... an ice-cold Gatorade and a fold up chair in the shade after some fast hot laps at Mosport or Watkins Glen.

I wish I had invented ... DOS.

My tombstone should read ... the good, the bad, I’m the guy with the gun.

A person/trend/technology to watch ... OLED and the evolution of the PC programming model in the technology space and how car companies are going to continue the horsepower war while reducing emissions and improving fuel economy.