Chapter 1035: Overtaking in a Corner
Wanwan wants to develop high technology, especially the chip industry.
Basically no chance.
Because basically all chip companies at that time were in the IDM model.
Design and production at hand.
This includes Intel, IBM, and Zhang Zhongmou’s old employer Texas Instruments.
Even AMD has its own production line, but it was sold to a Saudi consortium in 2008 and renamed GlobalFoundries.
Facing the strong first-mover advantage of the big guys, Wanwan manufacturers represented by Zhang Zhongmou scratched their heads and finally came up with a way to overtake in corners.
Leave the design to the customer, do not participate in the design and compete with customers, and focus on chip foundry.
Concentrate more limited resources on one point.
And with chip foundries, chip design companies can design chips at a very low cost.
You only need to deliver the final chip design file to the manufacturer, which greatly lowers the threshold of the design industry.
In this way, chip design is no longer a game only played by giants.
It will inevitably drive more players into this field.
Only when there are more players can we break the monopoly of the giants. As an OEM, Wanwan merchants can also get more orders.
It can be said.
This is the greatest business model innovation in the chip industry!
Based on the above ideas.
The 53-year-old Zhang, who is familiar with the Western IC industry, established TSMC, which focuses on chip foundry.
But.
The first semiconductor manufacturer in Wanwan was not TSMC, but UMC.
And it was there before Zhang Zhongmou came to Wanwan.
United Microelectronics also had a general who later became famous—Cao Xingcheng.
Lao Cao entered the Industrial Research Institute founded by Sun Yunxuan in 1974 and joined the RCA project.
Get the opportunity to study in the United States and become a giant in the semiconductor industry.
In 1982, Lianhua Electronics, the first semiconductor circuit company in Wanwan, was established.
At this time, UMC was engaged in both chip design and chip manufacturing, a standard IDM model enterprise.
Cao Xingcheng, who was still an engineer at ITRI at the time, took the initiative to fight for the opportunity and was appointed as deputy general manager of UMC from ITRI Electronics, and later took over the position of chairman.
When Cao Xingcheng was managing Lianhua, he discovered that doing both IC design and manufacturing was a disservice to both ends.
Under this situation, he suddenly came up with the strategy of focusing on chip foundry, and it is said that he even went to Zhang Zhongmou for advice.
According to him, Lao Zhang, who returned to Wanwan as the dean of the Industrial Technology Research Institute, plagiarized his own chip foundry idea.
Lao Zhang’s memories are another story.
He originally thought that he came to Wanwan to serve as the dean of the Industrial Research Institute.
Two weeks after taking office, Li Guoding came to discuss with him and said that the government wanted to establish a very large semiconductor circuit manufacturing company in the form of a joint venture and asked him to chair it.
Lao Zhang said: The idea of chip foundry was a solution he came up with during the communication with Li Guoding to solve the problem of Wanwan semiconductor.
The father-in-law of the two people is right, and the mother-in-law is right.
But the winner is the king and the loser is the loser.
TSMC has become the number one in the chip foundry industry, which has also made Zhang Zhongmou famous as the "Father of Semiconductors".
It doesn’t matter whether the heroes see the same thing or the brothers are at odds with each other.
In short, a new model has been born.
Famous management scientist Michael Porter concluded: TSMC’s chip foundry model.
“Create your own industry and also create your customers’ industry.”
Lao Cao was very dismissive of the boasting of Zhang Zhongmou and TSMC.
He believes that UMC is the hero who created the current situation, and TSMC is just the hero created by the current situation.
Unfortunately, heroes are judged by success or failure.
Of course, TSMC’s development has not been smooth sailing.
Wafer foundry means building a factory, which involves a series of equipment purchases and a series of material purchases.
The land to build a factory costs money, and the manpower to run the factory also costs a lot of money.
In one word, it costs a lot of money.
Money is the threshold, money is the ticket, money is time.
But where does the money come from?
Lao Zhang won’t pay anyway.
He doesn’t have that much money either.
There is no other way but Li Guoding, the big boss of the Wanwan chip industry, can come forward.
The man behind the scenes is running around for the establishment of TSMC. What he has to do is to persuade people from all walks of life to support the establishment of TSMC.
In a word, it is to raise money.
Li Guoding visited Wanwan entrepreneurs who owed him favors one by one and forced them to invest in TSMC.
These people include Formosa Plastics boss Wang Yongqing, Tainan Gang boss Wu Xiuqi, Lianhua Shentong Chairman Miao Fengqiang, etc.
At that time, Wanwan had rumors that "North Formosa" and "Southern Tainan" were the two richest chaebols in Wanwan.
Wang Yongqing and Wu Xiuqi are the bosses of Formosa North and Tainan Gang respectively.
In this way, Li Guoding provided all the money to build the factory at TSMC, both soft and hard.
Yu Guohua, who was a big boss in Wanwan politics at the time, instructed Zhang Zhongmou to find a multinational semiconductor company as a shareholder in addition to government investment, so that he would have some foreign investment background and appear more international.
The most important thing is to reduce a lot of unnecessary trouble. There is no shortage of fruit pickers in the yamen.
Lao Zhang, who has been together for half his life, also knows these things very well.
Relying on the contacts he had accumulated during his half-life in the United States, he approached Intel and his old employer Texas Instruments, but these two companies were not interested at all.
In the end, only Dutch manufacturer Philips agreed to invest.
The core reason is that the chip foundry model impressed Philips. If it were an IDM, investment might not be possible.
It is precisely because of this investment that TSMC has gained a crucial ally.
ASML, a Dutch lithography machine manufacturer.
ASML used to be a laboratory of Philips, and later Philips and ASM established a joint venture to form ASML.
In 2004, TSMC and Asmail, a small Dutch factory at the time, jointly developed wet lithography technology.
TSMC not only achieved technological breakthroughs, but also helped Asmail defeat industry giants such as Canon and Nikon and rise rapidly.
Since then, Asmail and TSMC have become brothers fighting side by side in the trenches.
While Lao Zhang was leading TSMC to success step by step, UMC led by his old enemy Cao Xingcheng also became the second largest wafer foundry in the world.
In 1999, Cao Xingcheng suddenly announced the merger of his four semiconductor foundries and integrated them into a "five-in-one" operation with UMC.
This move caused UMC's stock price to rise sharply, and customers also heard about it.
After the merger, UMC's output value is second only to Intel and TSMC, becoming the world's third largest semiconductor company, and its market value ranks fourth in the global industry.
How do you say that, when the boss fights with the second child, it is the third child who dies.
The two powers compete for hegemony, bringing disaster to the world.
The founder of Shida Semiconductor is Zhang Rujing.
In April 2000, Zhang Rujing, who sold World Semiconductor, resolutely came to Shanghai with a team of 400 people and established China's most advanced chip factory, SMIC.
We need to talk about Samsung here.
In 2005, Samsung only entered the foundry industry.
Different from TSMC’s market positioning, Samsung OEM products are mainly aimed at high-end chip products.
However, the overall situation of the foundry industry has been decided, and it is difficult for Samsung to do anything.
At this time, TSMC has won two tough battles technically.
Copper interconnects and immersion lithography.
Became the overlord of the foundry industry.
In 1997, IBM disclosed copper interconnect technology.
Copper wire's conductive resistance is about 40% lower compared to aluminum, which dropped a bombshell in the technology industry.
In 2000, in the battle for the 130nm copper process, TSMC developed the most advanced 130nm chip one year ahead of IBM and achieved mass production. Technical leader Liang Mengsong became famous with this battle.
TSMC won the first battle. If copper interconnect is still competing for mass production capabilities, then immersion lithography is completely TSMC’s leading innovation.
In 2002, the global chip industry entered a bottleneck period, and Moore's Law came to a standstill.
TSMC Lin Benjian was invited to attend a seminar in the United States. Originally, Lin was invited to discuss the 157nm process.
As a result, Lin Benjian directly put forward the argument that "using water as the 193nm infiltration medium can exceed the dry 157nm".
Everyone suddenly realized.
So it’s still possible to play like this?
In an instant, it seemed as if the two channels of Ren and Du were opened.
High school students all know that water changes the refractive index of light.
Add a layer of water between the lens and the silicon wafer. After refraction, the original 193nm laser will directly cross the 157nm barrier and reduce to 132nm.
Doubts arise?
Will water produce bubbles?
Will water contaminate the equipment?
Should it be waterproofed?
Water will expand when heated and its refractive index will change. How to solve this problem?
The problem raiser becomes the problem solver.
The immersion lithography technology proposed by Lin Benjian began to give it a try with the strong support of TSMC executives Zhang Zhongmou and Jiang Shangyi.
The god of technology favored TSMC, and TSMC succeeded.
ASML, which has advanced and retreated with TSMC, has also succeeded.
But Nikon, which has been slow to transform, has fallen behind.
In 2006, Zhang Zhongmou was 75 years old. Lao Zhang appointed Cai Lixing as CEO and he only served as chairman. He began his retirement plan. Cai Lixing became TSMC's successor.
Cai Lixing is undoubtedly a very suitable candidate. At that time, Cai Lixing had worked at TSMC for 20 years, starting from the factory director, and was the right-hand man trained by Zhang Zhongmou.
On September 14, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. At the same time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government, and the global financial crisis officially broke out.
At that time, there was a joke in the world.
The United States saved the "second wife" but not the "brother." It can be seen that the status of the second wife is much higher than that of the brothers.
The damage and devastation caused by the financial crisis to the economy is global and affects the entire industry chain. The semiconductor industry is not immune, and neither is TSMC.
In the first quarter of 2009, TSMC's performance shrank significantly and was on the verge of losing money.
At the critical moment, CEO Cai Lixing adopted conventional contraction tactics, cutting expenditures and laying off employees.
Due to too many and drastic layoffs, some employees and their families at TSMC triggered a fierce backlash. Some family members of employees wrote letters of love to Zhang Zhongmou, and some people blocked Zhang Zhongmou’s residence to plead in person.
Facing the crisis.
Lao Zhang personally went into battle and once again served as the CEO of TSMC at the age of 78.
(End of this chapter)