TSMC, a top presence in the chip semiconductor industry. We are in the chip manufacturing industry to provide chip foundry services, allowing many American companies to obtain the world's leading chip processor.
Behind all these achievements, they are actually inseparable from TSMC’s founder Zhang Zhongmou . Zhang Zhongmou has retired, and his entrepreneurial story is still being told.
What kind of legendary experience does Zhang Zhongmou have? Why did Zhang Zhongmou, who was admitted to , Harvard University, choose to go to Taiwan when he returned to China to start a business?
chip king - Zhang Zhongmou
Zhang Zhongmou changed the world. This sentence is not an exaggeration at all. Without Zhang Zhongmou, there might not be the current semiconductor industry structure, and it is even more impossible to develop top 5nm and 4nm chip technology in the field of chip manufacturing.
Maybe other chip manufacturing companies can do this, but they may not be as good as TSMC. Many people would praise Zhang Zhongmou as the "chip king" and "the father of Taiwan semiconductors in China", which is enough to show how much influence Zhang Zhongmou is.
When talking about Zhang Zhongmou's entrepreneurial experience, it is necessary to start from 1949. This year, Zhang Zhongmou was admitted to Harvard University in the United States for 18 years. With his extraordinary talent and learning ability, Zhang Zhongmou was admitted to Harvard University in the United States from Zhejiang.
Being able to enter Harvard University has proved how outstanding Zhang Zhongmou's ability is, but Zhang Zhongmou suddenly transferred to MIT while studying at Harvard University, which is also a top university. At this time, Zhang Zhongmou had not yet officially contacted semiconductors.
Until 1955, Zhang Zhongmou became an engineer in the semiconductor department of an electrical appliance company, and since then he embarked on a brilliant journey in the semiconductor industry.
No one expected that such an inconspicuous engineer would rewrite the structure of the semiconductor industry in the next few decades. After entering this industry, Zhang Zhongmou was not satisfied with the status quo and wanted to gain better development prospects, so he joined Texas Instruments in 1958.
Joining Texas Instruments can be said to be a very important turning point in Zhang Zhongmou's life, and it also laid the groundwork for his later success in the field of chip foundry.
On the one hand, Zhang Zhongmou has accumulated a lot of professional knowledge in Texas Instruments and learned about the industry background. On the other hand, Zhang Zhongmou has made many friends in the circle and accumulated extensive connections. For example, , founder of Intel , Gordon Moore , , inventor of , , Jack Kilby , etc. are all good friends of Zhang Zhongmou.
Although Texas Instruments is not as good as before, Texas Instruments is like an incubation base for talents in the semiconductor industry. All of the above characters have taken up Texas Instruments.
resigned from the high salary in the United States and resolutely returned to China to start a business
Zhang Zhongmou's position is getting higher and higher. At the age of 31, he became the vice president of Texas Instruments, received a high salary, and managed a lot of people. As long as Zhang Zhongmou continues to work at Texas Instruments, he may be able to go further. Zhang Zhongmou can make a successful career in the United States not only rely on his extraordinary abilities, but also his lofty situation and courage.
Zhang Zhongmou realized that the semiconductor industry will become a hot spot in the next few decades, and the Texas Instruments platform is no longer enough to satisfy Zhang Zhongmou's pursuit. So Zhang Zhongmou quit his high-paying job in the United States and resolutely returned to China to start a business.
What you need to know is that Zhang Zhongmou is from Ningbo, Zhejiang, and he also lived in the mainland before going to the United States. But after Zhang Zhong returned to China, he went to Taiwan Province.
Why Zhang Zhongmou chose to go to Taiwan Province may be related to the environmental background at that time and the chip foundry industry that Zhang Zhongmou wanted to do.
At that time, Taiwan Province was developing manufacturing and had certain labor advantages. It urgently needed a number of tenable industries in the industrial field, and chip manufacturing was a good choice.
Zhang Zhongmou's resume is very impressive, and he was naturally invited by Taiwan Province to serve as the director of of the Industrial Technology Research Institute. After some investigation and thinking, Zhang Zhongmou decided to do what others had not done before and build the world's first pure wafer foundry factory.So in 1987, the company TSMC was officially established.
connections came in handy. TSMC was unstoppable and
pure wafer foundry model was only one company at that time. Other semiconductor companies adopted the IDM model, which means chip design, manufacturing and packaging at the same time. Not only is the cost high, but the risk is also very high.
So TSMC's existence uses professional technology to take on the risks of semiconductor companies, allowing customers to design chips with peace of mind, and leaving the manufacturing matters to TSMC. But it is not that simple to do wafer foundry. Technology is one aspect. Who is willing to hand over the order to a strange company? What if the chip is broken?
At this time, the connections that Zhang Zhongmou has accumulated at Texas Instruments came in handy. Several bigwigs who are powerful in the US semiconductor industry have handed over the orders to TSMC for OEM.
originally just a try, but I didn’t expect that TSMC made wafer chip technology leading the industry. As a result, more and more American companies handed over the orders to TSMC, and since then, American companies that have adopted the IDM model have successively transformed and focused on chip design. TSMC is unstoppable after all. Although it was built by connections, it would be difficult to succeed without leading technology.
Now, looking at the company of TSMC, it has experienced countless strong winds and waves, and its competitors have emerged one after another, and it has not shaken the status of TSMC as the world's largest chip foundry.
Now TSMC has mastered high-end process technologies such as 5nm and 4nm, and has more than half of the world's EUV lithography machines. He has been invited to build factories in countries around the world, becoming the most shining existence in the semiconductor industry.
In 2018, Zhang Zhongmou retired successfully and retired from TSMC. Maybe Zhang Zhongmou's story will come to an end, but the story of TSMC's future has just begun.
