https://youtu.be/hLyQa8m_Kj0
晶片巨頭，其一生的工作處於科技冷戰的中心
92歲高齡的台積電創始人張忠謀不能再繼續生活在陰影之中。
在一間俯瞰著台北市和環繞著台灣首都的山脈的木板辦公室內，張忠謀最近拿出一本印有彩色圖案的舊書。
它的標題是“VLSI 系統導論”，這是一本研究生的教科書，描述了電腦晶片設計的複雜性。92歲的張忠謀滿懷敬意地舉起它。
“我想告訴你這本書的出版日期，1980 年，”他說。他補充說，時機很重要，因為這是他拼湊起來的拼圖中的“最早的一塊”——不僅改變了他的職業生涯，也改變了全球電子行業的進程。
張忠謀從教科書中獲得的見解看似簡單：微晶片作為電腦的大腦，可以在一個地方設計，但在其他地方製造。這個想法違背了當時半導體行業的標準做法。
因此，在54歲的時候，當很多人開始更多地考慮退休的時候，張忠謀卻走上了將自己的見解變成現實的道路。這位工程師離開了他的國籍所在的美國，搬到了台灣，並在那裡創立了台灣積體電路製造公司（TSMC）。該公司不設計晶片，但已成為全球最大的尖端微處理器製造商，客戶包括蘋果Apple和英偉達Nvidia等。
如今，這家部分因教科書而存在的公司已成為一家價值 5000 億美元的巨頭，將最先進的晶片應用於 iPhone、汽車、超級計算機和戰鬥機。其飛機庫大小的晶片工廠（稱為晶圓廠）非常重要，以至於美國、日本和歐洲都向台積電尋求在其附近建造這些工廠。過去十年，中國也投入了數千億美元來重現台積電的輝煌。
張忠謀不可思議的創業之旅幫助台灣成為一個經濟巨人，重組了電子行業的運作方式，並最終描繪了一個新的地緣政治現實，其中全球經濟增長的關鍵位於世界上最不穩定的地區之一。
這讓張忠謀和他創建的公司成為了人們關注的焦點。在他職業生涯的暮年，一個寧願留在陰影中的人反思了他所建立的東西以及不再能夠保持低調意味著什麼。
“這並沒有讓我感覺特別好，”張忠謀說，他於 2018 年退休，但仍然出現在台積電的活動中。“我寧願保持相對默默無聞的狀態。”
最近在辦公室進行了三個小時的討論，張忠謀明確表示自己是美國人——他於 1962 年獲得了美國公民身份——當時他創立的公司正處於美國與美國之間技術冷戰的中心。美國和中國。儘管科技領先地位的競爭愈演愈烈，但他並沒有給中國太多獲得半導體霸主地位的機會。
“我們控制了所有的瓶頸，”說，他指的是美國及其晶片製造盟友，如荷蘭、日本、韓國和台灣。“如果我們想扼殺他們，中國真的無能為力。”
十幾位熟悉張忠謀的人（其中許多人是台積電的同事）表示，他通過一絲不苟、固執、信任他最優秀的員工，建立了這家公司，並在策略上擊敗了三星和英特爾等巨頭。擁有無限的野心，並在正當的時候採取大膽的行動。2008年金融危機後，台積電陷入困境，他在77歲時重新出任總經理。
《晶片戰爭》一書的作者、塔夫茨大學弗萊徹學院國際歷史副教授克里斯·米勒 (Chris Miller) 表示：“他可能是晶片行業中唯一參與該行業創建的人。” 。“他不僅仍然留在這個行業，而且處於這個行業的中心和頂端，這是非凡的。”
要了解科技行業的未來，至關重要的是通過張忠謀的視角了解世界，以及他如何在其他人沒有做出的情況下做出最初的賭注。與當今的科技大亨——例如埃隆·馬斯克和馬克·扎克伯格公開考慮過籠鬥——不同的是，張忠謀表現得更加克制低調。如果說全球科技巨頭之間的競爭是一系列高風險的撲克遊戲，那麼他就是經營賭場的安靜人。
位於台灣新竹的台積電創新博物館。1987年，張忠謀創立台積電時，他的商業典範就很明顯，他計劃讓台積電進軍世界市場。圖片來源：Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
差點進入汽車製造業
張忠謀1931年出生在戰爭邊緣的中國。18歲之前，他曾在6個城市生活過，轉過10次學校，經歷過廣州和重慶的轟炸，並在二戰期間隨家人逃離日本佔領的上海，穿越前線。
1948 年，當他與家人來到香港時，他們已經沒有回頭路了，當時他們正試圖逃離中國共產黨的軍隊。
“我的舊世界隨著大陸的顏色改變而崩潰，一個新的世界尚未建立，”他在1998年出版的自傳中寫道。
1949年，張忠謀移居美國，就讀於哈佛大學，然後轉學到麻省理工學院學習機械工程。1955年，當他兩次未能通過麻省理工學院的博士學位資格考試時，他決定去看看就業市場。
“多年後，我將未能通過麻省理工學院的博士學位視為我生命中最大的幸運！” 他在自傳中寫道。
其中兩個最好的錄取通知來自福特汽車公司和 Sylvania（一家不太知名的電子公司）。福特向張忠謀提供了每月 479 美元的工作機會，讓他在底特律的研發中心工作。儘管被該公司的招聘人員所吸引，張忠謀還是驚訝地發現這個報價比 Sylvania 每月 480 美元的價格低了 1 美元。
新竹台積電晶片工廠內。“我真的沒有計劃成立台積電，在台灣成立任何公司，”張忠謀說。圖片來源：Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
當他打電話給福特要求提供匹配的工作機會時，原本友善的招聘人員變得充滿敵意，並告訴他不會再多得到一分錢。張忠謀接受了 Sylvania 的工程工作。在那裡，他了解了電晶體，這是微晶片最基本的組成部分。
“那是我半導體職業生涯的開始，”他說。“現在回想起來，這真是一件好事。”
在 Sylvania 的三年時間打開了大門，並鞏固了張先生對半導體的熱情。但西爾瓦尼亞（Sylvania）陷入了掙扎，給他上了一課，告訴他後來如何管理台積電。
“從一開始，半導體行業就是一個快節奏、無情的行業，”張忠謀在自傳中談到西爾瓦尼亞最終的崩潰時寫道。“一旦落後，追趕就變得相當困難。”
1958 年，他跳槽到了一家新興的半導體公司德州儀器 (Texas Instruments)。這家位於達拉斯的公司“年輕而充滿活力”，許多員工每週工作超過 50 小時，並在辦公室過夜。四年後，張忠謀成為了美國人，他認為這是最重要的身份。
“自從我逃離共產主義中國來到美國並於 1962 年入籍以來，我的身份一直是美國人，除此之外別無其他，”他說。
張忠謀成為德州儀器當時舉世聞名的半導體業務的支柱。突破不斷。20 世紀 70 年代，該公司生產了一種可以合成人聲的晶片，從而誕生了著名的 Speak & Spell 玩具，這是一種幫助兒童拼寫和發音的手持設備。
“這就像卡米洛特一樣，但時間並不長，”他說。
20 世紀 70 年代末，德州儀器 (TI) 將重點轉向新興的計算器、數字手錶和家用電腦市場。當時負責半導體業務的張忠謀意識到自己的職業生涯正接近“死胡同”。
是時候做一些不同的事情了。
去年台積電在亞利桑那州工廠舉辦活動時，張忠謀發表了講話。近年來，美國、日本和歐洲紛紛邀請台積電在其附近建造機庫大小的晶片工廠，稱為晶圓廠。圖片來源：Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
將拼圖拼湊在一起
如果說促成台積電創立的第一個拼圖是教科書，那麼第二個拼圖則是張先生在德州儀器公司工作結束時的一段經歷。
20 世紀 80 年代初，德州儀器 (TI) 在日本開設了一家晶片工廠。生產線開始生產晶片三個月後，該工廠的“產量”是該公司德克薩斯州工廠的兩倍。產量是一個關鍵統計數據，指的是生產中產生了多少可用晶片。
張忠謀被派往日本解開產量之謎。他發現，關鍵在於員工，高素質員工的流動率出奇地低。
但儘管德州儀器公司盡了最大的努力，但還是無法在美國找到同等水平的技術人員。在美國一家工廠，主管職位的最佳候選人擁有法國文學學位，但沒有工程背景。先進製造業的未來似乎在亞洲。
1984 年，張忠謀加入了另一家晶片公司通用儀器公司，第三塊拼圖也隨之水到渠成。他遇到了一位企業家，後來他創辦了一家只設計晶片而不生產晶片的公司，這在當時並不常見。他發現了一個被證明具有持久力的趨勢：如今，大多數半導體公司都設計晶片並將製造外包。
這最後一件作品恰逢台灣從勞動密集型重工業經濟向高科技經濟轉型。當台灣官員著眼於發展半導體產業時，他們要求已享有晶片專家聲譽的張忠謀領導一家加速創新的研究所。
因此，1985 年，時年 54 歲的張先生離開美國，前往一個他只通過多次參觀德州儀器 (TI) 工廠才知道的地方。
“我當然沒有計劃在台灣待這麼長時間，”他說。“我以為我可能幾年後就會回去，我真的沒有計劃成立台積電，在台灣成立任何公司。”
張忠謀抵達後幾週內，被稱為台灣科技發展教父的政府官員李國鼎要求他使國家主導的晶片專案商業化。
台積電位於台南科學園區的辦公室。張先生的創業歷程和成功幫助台灣成為經濟巨人，並重組了電子行業的運作方式。圖片來源：Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
當張忠謀評估台灣的優勢和劣勢時，他感覺到了一個機會。“我的結論是，台灣與日本比與美國相似得多，”他在談到他在德州儀器日本工廠的經歷時說道。
1987年，張忠謀創立台積電。他的商業模式很清晰：台積電將為其他公司製造晶片，而不是設計它們。這意味著它只需要贏得業內人士的支持，然後專注於它最擅長的領域——製造業。
張忠謀從一開始就計劃讓台積電進軍全球市場。他在公司引進了台灣少見的專業管理體系。為了營造國際化環境，內部溝通均使用英語。
事實證明他的願景是有預見性的。隨著半導體的生產變得更加複雜和昂貴，只有少數公司有能力嘗試。製造晶片涉及數百個步驟，這些步驟利用先進的雷射和化學操作來為電子信號創建微小的路徑，從而為電腦進行最基本的計算。成本是天文數字。
多年來，張忠謀一直堅持下去，而其他人則退出了。如果台積電能夠吸引足夠的客戶，利用規模經濟，它就有機會擊敗英特爾和三星。
1997年，張忠謀聘請了新的研發主管蔣尚義。他告訴蔣尚義將台積電與行業領導者英特爾進行比較。
“我們的目標是成為第一，不惜一切代價，”張忠謀說。
蔣先生很驚訝。“要成為第一，你的花費必須是你的下一個競爭對手的三倍，”他回答道，暗示領先地位將是一個過於崇高和昂貴的目標。
“可能是三倍，但我確實想花足夠多的錢，讓我們成為第一，”張忠謀說。即使在 2005 年辭去台積電總經理職務並繼續擔任公司董事長之後，他也準備保持耐心。
拿下蘋果訂單
2009 年 4 月，憤怒的台積電員工——其中許多人最近被公司解僱——在台北安靜的大直住宅區的一個綠樹成蔭的操場上建立了一個抗議營地。他們就在張忠謀的高檔公寓樓的街上。
天黑後，抗議者在滑梯和叢林健身房旁邊推出睡袋，用一塊寫著“台積電謊言謊言謊言”的大牌子遮住自己。縱觀台積電二十多年的歷史，台積電從未裁員。然而2008年金融危機之後，張忠謀的繼任者蔡力行開始解僱員工。
當時 77 歲的張忠謀決定不能再袖手旁觀。他收回了自己的工作，重新聘用了蔡力行解僱的人才，並將台積電的支出增加了一倍多。
2008年金融危機後，張忠謀的繼任者蔡力行開始裁員。2009年，時年77歲、退休四年的張忠謀收回了自己的工作，並重新聘用了蔡力行解僱的人才。圖片來源：Sam Yeh/法新社 — Getty Images
由於該行業正處於艱難時期，此舉並未得到投資者的讚賞。台積電前投資者關係負責人孫又文(Elizabeth Sun)回憶起她對這個消息的反應：“當我聽到這個消息時，我想用頭撞牆。”
但賭注得到了回報。2010年，張忠謀接到了電話，這將推動台積電的增長，並鞏固其對三星和英特爾的領先地位。蘋果公司高級副總裁傑夫·威廉姆斯(Jeff Williams)通過張忠謀的妻子張淑芬(Sophie Chang)取得了聯繫，她是蘋果最大組裝商富士康創始人郭台銘的親戚。
這次通話導致他們四人在周日共進晚餐，第二天就變成了談判。蘋果曾與三星合作生產其為 iPhone 設計的微晶片，但它正在尋找新的合作夥伴，部分原因是三星已成為其在智能手機的主要競爭對手。台積電不與客戶競爭，因此在該合同中處於有利地位。
討論持續了幾個月。“合同本身非常複雜，”張忠謀說。“我們還是第一次遇到這種事。”
蘋果一度宣布暫停談判兩個月。張忠謀聽說英特爾可能會介入。
由於擔心，張忠謀飛往舊金山會見蘋果公司首席執行官蒂姆·庫克，庫克向他保證了這一點。在 2013 年的一次採訪中，時任英特爾執行長的保羅·歐德寧 (Paul Otellini) 表示，他拒絕了為 iPhone 製造晶片的機會，因為蘋果不會支付足夠的費用。
張忠謀不會犯同樣的錯誤。蘋果要求比其他公司更好的條款和更低的價格，但他明白合同的規模將有助於台積電超越競爭對手。這是他從比爾·貝恩那裡學到的教訓，比爾·貝恩在德州儀器公司創立了諮詢公司貝恩公司。
去年，蘋果公司執行長蒂姆·庫克（左）在鳳凰城與張忠謀共同舉杯。圖片來源：凱特琳·奧哈拉/彭博社
貝恩先生當時是波士頓諮詢集團的顧問，他在張忠謀旁邊的一間辦公室里工作了近兩年。他分析了德州儀器公司的生產和銷售數據，並認為該公司生產的產品越多，其業績就越好。
與蘋果公司的交易完成後，張忠謀借了 70 億美元來建設生產數百萬個 iPhone 晶片的產能。
隨後幾年，蘋果再次短暫轉向三星生產 iPhone 晶片，但台積電成為其主要晶片製造商。蘋果現在是台積電最大的客戶，約佔營收的20%。
即使現在，張忠謀對台積電客戶的言論仍然持謹慎態度。在他的辦公室開始講述有關蘋果的故事後，他想知道自己是否說得太多了。
“我不認為我已經超出了蘋果公司對告訴你的內容的限制，”他說。
蘋果現任營運長威廉姆斯在一份聲明中表示，張忠謀“將半導體行業推向了新的領域”。
2018年，86歲的張忠謀再次退休。那時，台積電已經在其他公司落後的地方取得了成功，大規模生產了帶有DNA雙螺旋大小的電子通路的晶片。這讓張忠謀相信他已經實現了台積電的一個關鍵宗旨：技術領先。
推動人工智能革命
張忠謀台北辦公室的牆上掛滿了與世界領導人的獎項和合影，其中一幅漫畫描繪了他與晶片公司英偉達Nvidia創始人黃仁勳的密切關係。
如果說蘋果推動了台積電的發展，那麼張忠謀則幫助英偉達成為全球最重要的人工智能晶片設計商。漫畫講述了這個故事。20世紀90年代中期，當英偉達還是一家初創公司時，黃仁勳致信張忠謀，詢問台積電是否會生產其晶片。與黃仁勳通話後，張忠謀同意了。
“我喜歡他，”張忠謀談到黃仁勳時說道。
張忠謀抓住了這個機會，幫助推動了美國的人工智能革命。憑藉台積電的製造，英偉達成為全球最重要的AI晶片設計商。像生成人工智能這樣的突破依賴於大量的 Nvidia 晶片來尋找大量數據中的模式。
在 2018 年張忠謀退休聚會上的演講中，黃仁勳表示，如果沒有台積電，英偉達（現在價值 1 萬億美元）就不會存在。黃仁勳送給張忠謀的漫畫上有一段題詞：“你的職業生涯是一部傑作——一部貝多芬的第九交響曲。”
去年，張忠謀（左）與英偉達執行長黃仁勳在鳳凰城。如果說蘋果推動了台積電的發展，那麼張忠謀則幫助英偉達成為全球最重要的人工智能晶片設計商。圖片來源：Ross D. Franklin/美聯社
對於張忠謀來說，這部傑作的最後一個音符尚未演奏。對於一個九十多歲的人來說，他很健康，儘管幾年前在他的心臟中植入了支架後，他就不能再抽煙了——這曾經是他在照片中的標誌。
在他的辦公室裡，他仍然保留著一台彭博終端。他還定期在台灣各地公開露面，討論全球政治和經濟。和許多人一樣，他擔心美國和中國在台灣問題上可能發生衝突，儘管他認為發生這種對抗的可能性很低。
“我認為中國入侵台灣、兩棲戰爭以及所有類似的可能性非常非常低，”他說。“某種形式的封鎖，我想我仍然認為可能性很小，但這仍然是一個機會，我想避免這種情況。”
張忠謀表示，他並不擔心美國的政策阻止中國企業獲得尖端半導體技術。
“我認為這還是可以的，”他說，不過他指出美國公司將失去業務，而中國將找到反擊的方法。
隨著談話的結束，張忠謀表示，由於台積電面臨地緣政治挑戰，他對自己無法掌握主導權感到有些遺憾。但他表示，他在 2018 年退休的時間是合理的，這是由技術而非政治驅動的。
“我確實確信我們已經取得了技術領先地位，”他當時說道。“我不認為我們會失去它。”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/technology/the-chip-titan-whose-lifes-work-is-at-the-center-of-a-tech-cold-war.html
The Chip Titan Whose Life’s Work Is at the Center of a Tech Cold War
At 92, Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, can no longer stay in the shadows.
In a wood-paneled office overlooking Taipei and the jungle-covered mountains that surround the Taiwanese capital, Morris Chang recently pulled out an old book stamped with technicolor patterns.
It was titled “Introduction to VLSI Systems,” a graduate-level textbook describing the intricacies of computer chip design. Mr. Chang, 92, held it up with reverence.
“I want to show you the date of this book, 1980,” he said. The timing was important, he added, as it was “the earliest piece” in a puzzle that came together for him — altering not only his career but also the course of the global electronics industry.
The insight that Mr. Chang gained from the textbook was deceptively simple: the idea that microchips, which act as the brains of computers, could be designed in one place but manufactured somewhere else. The notion went against the semiconductor industry’s standard practice at the time.
So at the age of 54, when many people begin thinking more about retirement, Mr. Chang instead put himself on a path to turn his insight into a reality. The engineer left his adopted country, the United States, and moved to Taiwan where he founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC. The company does not design chips, but it has become the world’s biggest manufacturer of cutting-edge microprocessors for customers including Apple and Nvidia.
Today, the company that partially exists because of a textbook is a $500 billion juggernaut that has put the most advanced chips in iPhones, cars, supercomputers and fighter jets. So critical are its airplane-hangar-size chip factories, called fabs, that the United States, Japan and Europe have courted TSMC to build them in their neck of the woods. Over the past decade, China has also invested hundreds of billions of dollars to recreate what TSMC has done.
Mr. Chang’s unlikely entrepreneurial journey helped Taiwan become an economic giant, restructured the way the electronics industry worked and ultimately charted a new geopolitical reality in which a linchpin of global economic growth lies in one of the world’s most volatile spots.
That has thrust Mr. Chang, and the company he created, into the spotlight. And at the twilight of his career, a man who has preferred to remain in the shadows reflected on what he has built and what it means to no longer be able to stay under the radar.
“It doesn’t make me feel particularly good,” said Mr. Chang, who retired in 2018 but still appears at TSMC events. “I would rather stay relatively unknown.”
Over a recent three-hour discussion in his office, Mr. Chang made it clear that he identifies as American — he obtained his U.S. citizenship in 1962 — at a time when the company he founded is at the center of a technological Cold War between the United States and China. Even as the rivalry for tech leadership intensifies, he does not give China much of a chance for semiconductor supremacy.
“We control all the choke points,” Mr. Chang said, referring collectively to the United States and its chip-making allies such as the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. “China can’t really do anything if we want to choke them.”
More than a dozen people familiar with Mr. Chang, many of whom knew him as a colleague at TSMC, said he built the company — and outmaneuvered giants like Samsung and Intel — by being meticulous, stubborn, trusting his best people and, crucially, having boundless ambition and making daring moves when justified. When TSMC stumbled after the 2008 financial crisis, he returned as chief executive at age 77 to take over again.
“He’s probably the only person left in the chip industry who was present at the creation of the industry itself,” said Chris Miller, the author of the book “Chip War” and an associate professor of international history at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “That he’s not only still in the industry but at the center and top of it is extraordinary.”
To understand the tech industry’s future, it is crucial to understand the world through Mr. Chang’s eyes and how he made that initial bet when others didn’t. And unlike today’s tech moguls — such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who have publicly considered a cage fight — Mr. Chang has shown more restraint. If competition between the global tech giants is a series of high-stakes poker games, he is the quiet man who runs the casino.
The TSMC Museum of Innovation in Hsinchu, Taiwan. When Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987, The business exemplary was clear in his caput and he had plans for TSMC to pat into a world market. Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
Almost an automaker
Mr. Chang was born in 1931 in a China on the brink of war. Before the age of 18, he lived in six cities, changed schools 10 times, experienced bombings in Guangzhou and Chongqing, and crossed the front lines as his family fled Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II.
When he made it to Hong Kong in 1948 with his family, who by then were trying to get away from the Chinese Communist Party’s advancing army, there was no going back.
“My old world crumbled as the mainland changed its color, and a new world was yet to be established,” he wrote in his autobiography, which was published in 1998.
In 1949, Mr. Chang moved to the United States, attending Harvard before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study mechanical engineering. In 1955, when he twice failed a qualifying exam for a doctoral degree at M.I.T., he decided to test out the job market.
“Many years later, I considered failing to be admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Ph.D. program as the greatest stroke of luck in my life!” he wrote in his autobiography.
Two of the best offers arrived from Ford Motor Company and Sylvania, a lesser-known electronics firm. Ford offered Mr. Chang $479 a month for a job at its research and development center in Detroit. Though charmed by the company’s recruiters, Mr. Chang was surprised to find the offer was $1 less than the $480 a month that Sylvania offered.
Inside a TSMC chip factory in Hsinchu. “I really had no plan to set up TSMC, to set up any company in Taiwan,” Mr. Chang said. Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
When he called Ford to ask for a matching offer, the recruiter, who had previously been kind, turned hostile and told him he would not get a cent more. Mr. Chang took the engineering job with Sylvania. There, he learned about transistors, the microchip’s most basic component.
“That was the start of my semiconductor career,” he said. “In retrospect, it was a damn good thing.”
Three years at Sylvania opened doors and cemented Mr. Chang’s passion for semiconductors. But Sylvania struggled, teaching him a lesson that would inform how he later ran TSMC.
“From the beginning, the semiconductor industry has been a fast-paced and unforgiving industry,” Mr. Chang wrote of Sylvania’s eventual collapse in his autobiography. “Once you fall behind, catching up becomes considerably difficult.”
In 1958, he jumped to a buzzy new semiconductor company, Texas Instruments. The Dallas company was “youthful and energetic,” with many employees working over 50 hours a week and sleeping overnight in the office. Four years later, Mr. Chang became an American, an identity he considers primary.
“Ever since I fled Communist China and went to the United States and became naturalized in 1962, my identity has always been American, and nothing else,” he said.
Mr. Chang became a pillar of Texas Instruments’ then world-beating semiconductor business. Breakthroughs were constant. In the 1970s, the firm produced a chip that could synthesize the human voice, which led to the famed Speak & Spell toy, a hand-held device that helped children with spelling and pronunciation.
“It’s just like Camelot, but it was not a long period of time,” he said.
In the late 1970s, Texas Instruments turned its focus to the burgeoning market for calculators, digital watches and home computers. Mr. Chang, then in charge of the semiconductor side, realized his career there was approaching a “dead end.”
It was time for something different.
When TSMC held an event at a plant in Arizona last year, Mr. Chang delivered remarks. The United States, Japan and Europe have in recent years courted TSMC to build hangar-size chip factories, called fabs, in their neck of the woods. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Putting the puzzle pieces together
If the first puzzle piece that led to TSMC’s creation was the textbook, the second was an experience that Mr. Chang had toward the end of his time at Texas Instruments.
In the early 1980s, Texas Instruments opened a chip factory in Japan. Three months after the production line began churning out chips, the plant’s “yield” was double that of the company’s factories in Texas. Yield is a key statistic that refers to how many usable chips emerge from production.
Mr. Chang was dispatched to Japan to solve the yield mystery. The key was the staff, he found, with turnover surprisingly low among well-qualified employees.
But try as it might, Texas Instruments could not find the same caliber of technicians in the United States. At one U.S. plant, the top candidate for a supervisor job had a degree in French literature and no engineering background. The future of advanced manufacturing appeared to be in Asia.
In 1984, Mr. Chang joined General Instrument, another chip firm, where a third puzzle piece fell into place. He met an entrepreneur who later started a company that would only design chips without also making them, which was then uncommon. He spotted a trend that would prove to have staying power: Today most semiconductor companies design chips and outsource manufacturing.
This final piece coincided with Taiwan’s transition from a labor-intensive and heavy industry economy to a high-tech one. When Taiwanese officials set their sights on developing the semiconductor industry, they asked Mr. Chang, whose reputation as a chip expert was established, to lead an institute for supercharging innovation.
So in 1985, Mr. Chang, then 54, left the United States for a place he knew only from several visits to a Texas Instruments factory.
“I certainly had no plan to spend nearly so much time in Taiwan,” he said. “I thought I was going back in maybe just a few years, and I really had no plan to set up TSMC, to set up any company in Taiwan.”
Within weeks of Mr. Chang’s arrival, Li Kwoh-ting, a government official who became known as the godfather of Taiwan’s tech development, asked him to make the state-led chip project commercially viable.
The TSMC office in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. Mr. Chang’s entrepreneurial journey and success helped Taiwan become an economic giant and restructured the way the electronics industry worked. Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
When Mr. Chang assessed Taiwan’s strengths and weaknesses, he sensed an opening. “I concluded that Taiwan was a lot more similar to Japan than the U.S.,” he said, referring to his experience with the Texas Instruments’ factory in Japan.
In 1987, Mr. Chang founded TSMC. The business model was clear in his head: TSMC would make chips for other companies and not design them. That meant it just had to win over those inside the industry and then focus on what it could do best — manufacturing.
From the get-go, Mr. Chang had plans for TSMC to tap into a global market. He introduced professional management systems, which were uncommon in Taiwan, at the company. To foster an international environment, internal communications were in English.
His vision proved prophetic. As semiconductors became more complex and expensive to produce, only a few firms could even afford to try. Making chips involves hundreds of steps that pull on advanced lasers and chemical manipulations to create tiny pathways for electronic signals that do the most basic calculations for a computer. Costs were astronomical.
Over the years, Mr. Chang kept going as others dropped out. If TSMC could attract enough customers, leveraging economies of scale, it had a chance to take out the kings: Intel and Samsung.
In 1997, Mr. Chang recruited a new head of research of development, Chiang Shang-yi. He told Mr. Chiang to benchmark TSMC against the industry leader, Intel.
“Our goal is to be No. 1, barring none,” Mr. Chang said.
Mr. Chiang was surprised. “To be No. 1, you have to spend three times as much as your next competitor,” he replied, implying that being in the lead would be too lofty and costly a goal.
“It may be three times, but I do want to spend enough so that we become No. 1,” Mr. Chang said. And he was prepared to be patient, even after stepping down as TSMC’s chief executive in 2005 and staying on as the company’s chairman.
Closing the Apple contract
In April 2009, angry TSMC employees — many who had recently been let go by the company — set up a protest camp at a leafy playground in Taipei’s quiet residential neighborhood of Dazhi. They were down the street from Mr. Chang’s upscale apartment building.
As dark fell, the protesters rolled out sleeping bags next to a slide and jungle gym, covering themselves with a large sign that read “TSMC lies lies lies.” Throughout its more than two-decade history, TSMC had never laid off employees. Yet after the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Chang’s successor, Rick Tsai, began letting employees go.
Mr. Chang, then 77, decided he could no longer stay on the sidelines. He took back his job, rehired the talent Mr. Tsai had let go and more than doubled TSMC’s spending.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Rick Tsai, Mr. Chang’s successor, began letting go employees. In 2009, Mr. Chang, then 77 and four years into retirement, took back his job and rehired the talent Mr. Tsai had laid off. Credit...Sam Yeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Coming at a tough time for the industry, the move was not appreciated by investors. Elizabeth Sun, TSMC’s former head of investor relations, recalled her reaction to the news: “When I heard it, I felt like banging my head against a wall.”
But the bet paid off. In 2010, Mr. Chang got the call that would turbocharge TSMC’s growth and clinch its lead over Samsung and Intel. Jeff Williams, a senior vice president at Apple, reached out through Mr. Chang’s wife, Sophie Chang, who is a relative of Terry Gou, the founder of Foxconn, Apple’s largest assembler.
The call led to a Sunday dinner with all four of them, which turned into negotiations the next day. Apple had worked with Samsung to produce the microchip it designed for the iPhone, but it was looking for a new partner, partly because Samsung had become a major smartphone competitor. TSMC, which does not compete with its customers, was in pole position for the contract.
The discussions stretched on for months. “It was very complicated — the contract itself,” Mr. Chang said. “It was the first time we ran into this kind of thing.”
At one point, Apple announced a two-month pause in talks. Mr. Chang heard Intel might have intervened.
Worried, Mr. Chang flew to San Francisco to meet Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, who reassured him. In a 2013 interview, Paul Otellini, then Intel’s chief executive, said he had turned down the chance to make the chips for the iPhone because Apple would not pay enough.
Mr. Chang would not make the same mistake. Apple demanded better terms and lower prices than others, but he understood the contract’s scale would help TSMC rocket past competitors. That was a lesson he learned from Bill Bain, who founded the consulting firm Bain & Company, back at Texas Instruments.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, left, shared a toast with Mr. Chang in Phoenix last year. Credit...Caitlin O'Hara/Bloomberg
Mr. Bain, then a consultant for Boston Consulting Group, had worked in an office next to Mr. Chang for almost two years. He had analyzed Texas Instruments’ production and sales numbers and argued that the more the company produced, the better it would perform.
When the deal with Apple was complete, Mr. Chang borrowed $7 billion to build the capacity for making millions of chips for the iPhone.
In the ensuing years, Apple briefly turned to Samsung for iPhone chip production again, but TSMC became its primary chip maker. Apple is now TSMC’s largest client, accounting for about 20 percent of revenue.
Mr. Chang remains cautious about what he says about TSMC’s customers even now. After beginning a story about Apple at his office, he wondered whether he had said too much.
“I don’t think I have exceeded Apple’s limits of what to tell you,” he said.
In a statement, Mr. Williams, now Apple’s chief operating officer, said Mr. Chang had “pushed the semiconductor industry to new frontiers.”
In 2018, Mr. Chang, at 86 years old, retired again. By then, TSMC had succeeded where others lagged, mass producing chips with electronic pathways the size of a DNA double helix. That gave Mr. Chang confidence that he had achieved a key tenet for TSMC: technological leadership.
Spurring the A.I. revolution
Among the awards and photos with world leaders that stud the walls of Mr. Chang’s Taipei office, one is a framed comic portraying his close relationship with Jensen Huang, a founder of the chip firm Nvidia.
If Apple turbocharged TSMC, it was Mr. Chang who helped make Nvidia the world’s most important designer of artificial intelligence chips. The cartoon tells the story. In the mid-1990s, when Nvidia was a start-up, Mr. Huang sent a letter to Mr. Chang asking if TSMC would make its chips. After a call with Mr. Huang, Mr. Chang agreed.
“I liked him,” Mr. Chang said of Mr. Huang.
By taking that chance, Mr. Chang helped spur the A.I. revolution in the United States. With TSMC’s manufacturing, Nvidia became the world’s most important A.I. chip designer. Breakthroughs like generative A.I. rely on huge numbers of Nvidia chips to find patterns in vast amounts of data.
In a 2018 speech at Mr. Chang’s retirement gathering, Mr. Huang said Nvidia — now worth $1 trillion — would not exist without TSMC. An inscription on the comic, which Mr. Huang gave to Mr. Chang, reads: “Your career is a masterpiece — a Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
Mr. Chang, left, with Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, in Phoenix last year. If Apple turbocharged TSMC, it was Mr. Chang who helped make Nvidia the world’s most important designer of artificial intelligence chips. Credit...Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
For Mr. Chang, the final notes of that masterpiece have not yet been played. He is healthy for a nonagenarian, though he can no longer smoke a pipe — once his trademark in photos — after he had stents put into his heart a few years ago.
At his office, he still keeps a Bloomberg terminal. He also makes regular public appearances around Taiwan to discuss global politics and the economy. Like many, he worries about a potential conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan, though he believes the chance of such a confrontation is low.
“The chance of China invading Taiwan, amphibious warfare and all that stuff, I think that’s a very, very low probability,” he said. “A blockade of some kind, I think I still put it as low probability, but it’s still a chance and I want to avoid that.”
Mr. Chang said he was not worried about U.S. policies that have cut off Chinese firms from access to cutting-edge semiconductor technology.
“I think it’s still OK,” he said, though he noted U.S. companies would lose business and China would find ways to fight back.
As the conversation wound down, Mr. Chang said he had some regrets that he could not be in the driver’s seat as TSMC faces geopolitical challenges. But he said the timing of his retirement in 2018 made sense, driven by technology and not politics.
“I was literally sure that we had achieved technology leadership,” he said of that time. “I don’t think we’ll lose it.”
