[HN Gopher] Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC
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Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC
Author : rbanffy
Score : 140 points
Date : 2024-12-31 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| wslh wrote:
| He was around 55 years old when he founded TSMC.
|
| Regarding the translation from Chinese to English, I think it is
| a case for community funding. What is the budget required for
| this?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Morris Chang wasn't some rando - he was a Group VP at Texas
| Instruments (reports to CEO) and COO of General Instruments (a
| major CMOS manufacturer from the 70s-90s - found in
| Spellovision).
|
| This is the equivalent of Sheryl Sandberg being tasked by a
| government to found a multi-billion government funded
| competitor of Facebook.
| rmk wrote:
| Sheryl Sandberg does not have a technical background. A
| better analogy would be Eric Schmidt or Adam D'Angelo.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Eric Schmidt sure, but not D'Angelo, as D'Angelo was never
| a C-Suite who climbed the ladder but was one of the
| earliest employees at FB when it was being built.
|
| At the C-Suite level - even at a deeply technical company
| like TSMC - the job is mostly investor relations and
| arbitrating between various business units internally, so
| while a technical background is nice to have, the business
| chops are more critical than technical chops.
|
| Look at Hock Tan at Broadcom for example - he started out
| as a line level EE in the semiconductor space (Malaysia is
| THE packaging and testing hub for semiconductors), but he
| is notorious for being extremely dollar driven (I've heard
| him unironically say "Show me the money" a couple times).
| osnium123 wrote:
| Great question about the budget/funding required. Tyler Cowen's
| Emergent Ventures fund has funded it but I don't know how much
| time/money is required.
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/12/em...
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| You also need permission from the copyright holder.
| klelatti wrote:
| Kudos to Brian Potter for getting hold of a copy of Chang's
| biography and translating it (with some machine assistance)
| himself!
| pm90 wrote:
| > TSMC has a fascinating origin story: it was founded in 1985 by
| Morris Chang, who, after working in the US for Texas Instruments
| for more than 20 years, was enticed to go to Taiwan and help
| develop their high-tech industries as head of Taiwan's Industrial
| Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
|
| How much of this was because of Racism? How many people like
| that, with the right technical, operational knowledge, experience
| and drive are prevented from transforming their American company
| because they don't fit the mold of what Americans consider to be
| "leaders".
| alephnerd wrote:
| > How much of this was because of Racism
|
| From what I heard from peers from that era, not significantly.
|
| Taiwan's ITRI gave Morris Chang a blank check to implement his
| vision, which is something no ambitious person would turn down.
|
| Why become yet another rich but nameless CEO (who remembers
| Bucy at TI) when you can become the next Jack Kilby or William
| Shockley.
|
| China did the same thing for Liang Ming Song (former head of
| R&D at TSMC) at SMIC and India for Randhir Thakur (former head
| of foundry services at Intel and Applied Materials) at Tata
| Electronics.
|
| --------
|
| Stop being so combative to OP - he asked a fair question about
| the bamboo ceiling.
|
| Looking at you Chollida1, next_xibalba, and Cumpiler69 (classy
| name /s)
| ayewo wrote:
| > ... he asked a fair question about the bamboo ceiling.
|
| Apparently the concept of "bamboo ceiling" (similar to glass
| ceiling) has its own Wikipedia entry:
|
| TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_ceiling
| next_xibalba wrote:
| It reads to me like it is you who are being combative by
| calling me out by (screen)name. It was quite reasonable to
| find the GP comment inexplicable given that 1) the article
| doesn't make any explicit or implicit mention of racism, 2)
| Chang rose to group VP at TI after having had his PhD
| sponsored by the same company [1], and 3) as you say, he was
| given an astounding offer by Taiwan. In other words, the leap
| to racism and racial discourse is quite a big one.
|
| Whether or not you view my comment as combative, I utterly
| reject your belief that you have the right to police my
| content or tone. This isn't Reddit.
|
| [1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-
| engineering-h...
| chollida1 wrote:
| Where did you hear that he left because of racism? He worked at
| the place fro more than 20 years and rose pretty darn high in
| the company.
|
| What specific claims of racism has he made?
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| None. It's the modern victimisation mentality.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Morris said it himself that the top execs didn't think he was
| the "right person" for the job and this was the main reason
| he left, as he knew no amount of work or brilliance was going
| to make them change their minds as they clearly saw him as
| lesser.
| magic_man wrote:
| He wanted to be CEO and they said no. He went a different
| American company that said they would let him be CEO, but
| he realized he didn't want to be the CEO there.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wEh3ZgbvBrE
| foobarian wrote:
| OP didn't make any claims, merely asked the question. I don't
| think we can ever know how well this exact person would have
| done with a different racial background.
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| "rose pretty darn high" but not high enough.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > Racism
|
| Huh? How did you make that leap? As others have pointed out,
| Chang was a bigwig at TI.
| etse wrote:
| We don't need to overstate racism, but "bigwig at TI" is a
| down leveling for Morris. Doesn't seem right to limit
| greatness if it's about race and not based on track record or
| other meritocratic signals.
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| not bigwig enough for morris.
| newsclues wrote:
| It's geopolitical not racial.
| etse wrote:
| How? Morris didn't get the job because he was born in the
| wrong country?
| dgfitz wrote:
| Seems curious to me he would make decisions based on racism.
| There is a lot of xenophobia around those parts.
|
| Perhaps you're incorrect?
| rbanffy wrote:
| That's more or less the opposite of what was said - that he
| would be the victim of racism, perhaps not evident as such,
| but, maybe, misconceptions about his ability to perform due
| to his cultural background.
| mfrommil wrote:
| For those interested in the story, this is a fantastic podcast
| episode on the history of TSMC.
|
| https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc
| tyleo wrote:
| Acquired never disappoints. For folks reading this comment,
| there are many episodes which overlap with HN interests.
| asciimike wrote:
| Having recently listened to TSMC as well as Costco, LVMH, and
| Hermes, there's something available to every member of the HN
| audience in every episode, no matter how "unrelated" you may
| think it is.
|
| On the other side of the table, as a former sponsor of a
| season or two: it was the best marketing we (Crusoe) could
| have done. We had more high quality inbound from our audience
| than any other channel, by a long shot. They deeply
| understand their audience and target appropriately. Strongly
| recommend to anyone trying to reach a decision making
| audience (customer and investor).
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's not for everyone. Relative to the length, the level of
| detail is fairly glossy and the narratives about the
| companies aren't complex or surprising. It's frustrating
| already knowing a fair amount if not in the mood for
| entertaining banter.
|
| If they had separate behind-the-scenes episodes with B-side
| detail and research discussion, they'd be the total package.
|
| Not saying it isn't well done! And it's clearly landing with
| an educated audience. I know many fans.
| battle-racket wrote:
| > Eventually Chang is approached by a manager who tells him that
| he could eventually rise to the position of Vice President of
| R&D, but to do so he would need to get a phD, and that TI will
| pay for Chang to get one ... Chang applies and is accepted into
| Stanford's electrical engineering graduate program. He again
| works hard and graduates in 3 years
|
| 3 years for a EE PhD is extremely impressive.
| wslh wrote:
| I think the world unique TSMC 3nm technology is even more
| impressive though.
| creer wrote:
| > 3 years for a EE PhD is extremely impressive.
|
| Sure, but to this day, it depends on the school. At some
| universities that's right out, at Stanford that's common (after
| a Master or two).
|
| That wasn't the case for Chang but I feel that for some foreign
| students, it's due to them simply not recognizing that they
| could actually take their time and enjoy life and the out of
| this world campus and region. Some students feel pressure, of
| funding, of potential missed opportunity, of legal status, of
| acting on a bet that's WAY out of their home professional path,
| etc. Meanwhile some US students with no major funding problem
| often feel that there is all the time in the world, if only the
| university would let them.
|
| For that matter, I bet Chang felt pressure to not be away from
| this career track at Texas Instrument for too long. He was
| doing this PhD as a requirement for a specific promotion.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Many people do enjoy hard work over simple pleasures. It is
| very prominent in Asians I think.
| hinkley wrote:
| At my college if you were rich and driven you could get a
| Masters in around 1/2 or more reasonably 2/3 the normal time.
| The thing was most people were spending half their time on a
| research assistantship, which traded a ton of brain cells to
| a professor's agenda in exchange for a heavy discount on
| tuition. You spent half your time working on the professor's
| ideas and half taking classes.
| rvba wrote:
| That paragraph also sounded a bit like they wanted to get rid
| of him
| hinkley wrote:
| Exploitation can look like rejection if you have self worth.
| barkingcat wrote:
| It's kind of ridiculous that the actual title of the book isn't
| mentioned.
|
| I believe it is Zhang Zhong Mou Zi Chuan Quan Ji (Shang Xia Ce )
| (for both parts)
|
| https://www.books.com.tw/products/0011005571?sloc=main
| geonnave wrote:
| For those interested, "The Complete Autobiography of Morris
| Chang (Volumes 1 and 2)" is the machine translation of the
| above.
| creer wrote:
| > Chang's immense success with TSMC looks obvious only in
| hindsight; nobody at the time [...] saw it that way.
|
| That's fair but we can also recognize the pattern! We are now
| familiar with this one. Chang had noticed the need for fabs as a
| service to all. And he further noticed that it was at the
| intersection of others' needs: Taiwan looking for local industry,
| Philips looking for a local boost, established chips and design
| companies struggling to find the fab space they were ready to pay
| for, his ITRI mandate. There are no sure thing but we can see the
| good call and well done to put all the players together - that
| was plenty as grounds for a new business with good chances.
| hinkley wrote:
| The other pattern we see is the manufacturing ladder, which has
| played out in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and now is
| underway in mainland China.
|
| You can make a factory to make low end products. People copy
| you. Some employees bubble to the top, and can start making
| moderately decent products or quit to start on their own ideas.
| Eventually the low end stops being a good investment of money
| or people and it fizzles out in favor of luxury and specialty
| goods.
|
| LG used to make the bottom shelf VCRs that you would find at
| Best Buy. The VCRs were branded Goldstar, the company Lucky
| Goldstar. When they went up market they rebranded to distance
| themselves from their bargain product lines. Now they have
| fridges that cost more than high end computers.
| lmz wrote:
| The fridges seem to have the reliability of a high end
| computer too:
| https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/consumer/fridge-
| failures-...
| ngneer wrote:
| There is no shortage of material on the topic, but I would
| recommend "Chip War" by Chris Miller as a complementary read.
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