Born in 1931, Zhang Zhongmou resigned from his position as chief operating officer of Texas Instruments at the time when he was 54 years old, and returned to Taiwan Province, where the semiconductor industry foundation was zero at that time, and created the semiconductor company

TSMC

The most important person in the rise of TSMC is its founder Zhang Zhongmou . Born in 1931, Zhang Zhongmou resigned from his position as chief operating officer of Texas Instruments at the time when he was 54 years old, and returned to Taiwan Province, where the semiconductor industry foundation was zero at that time, and created the semiconductor company with the highest market value in the world from a blank space.

When he was young, Zhang Zhongmou

For Zhang Zhongmou, this was a decision to bet on all his reputation and reputation. He used his accumulated reputation in the semiconductor industry for half his life to exchange for an opportunity for the rise of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. Of TSMC's initial $200 million investment, the investment from Taiwan Province was $100 million, and Philips invested $50 million, and the rest was supported by some local companies. For Zhang Zhongmou himself, this is a bet where he will have nothing if he fails.

Global semiconductor industry changes

Although TSMC is facing the problems of insufficient technology and lack of engineers, TSMC has also seen signs of changes in the chip industry. In the 1980s and 1990s, semiconductor manufacturers from Japan occupied most of the market share. Among the top ten semiconductor companies in the world, Japanese NEC, Toshiba , Hitachi , Fujitsu , Mitsubishi , and Panasonic occupied six of them, and the top three were all acquired by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers. An important factor in the rise of Japanese semiconductor manufacturers was the IDM used by semiconductors at that time (Integrated Device) Manufacture) mode.

IDM mode is simply a vertical integration model. All processes including chip design, chip manufacturing, chip packaging and testing are independently completed by a company. Thanks to the rapid development of Japan's technology industry at that time, in the upstream semiconductor materials fields, there were Tokyo Electronics, Sumitomo Chemical , Shingo Chemical and other material giants, and in the lithography machine field, there were two lithography machine giants (ASML at that time). It is far from being able to compete with these two giants), and has also won six seats among the top ten in the world among semiconductor manufacturers.

NEC chip

This IDM model also made Japan the biggest winner in the global semiconductor industry, but the profit-exclusive model has also caused dissatisfaction among other countries, especially the former semiconductor industry overlord of the United States. After using the "301 Survey" and the "US-Japan Semiconductor Agreement", Japan's semiconductor industry suffered a heavy blow.

At this time, TSMC also ushered in the best opportunity. Zhang Zhongmou knew that it was difficult to compete with these semiconductor giants from scratch in the IDM field, so TSMC began to gather China made efforts in the Foundary model, that is, TSMC was only responsible for the manufacturing link in the entire chip industry chain, while other links such as chip design were abandoned by TSMC. The result is that companies such as Nvidia (Nvidia) are only responsible for chip design. At the same time, TSMC also achieved breakthroughs with the single point of chip manufacturing, gradually surpassing many IDM companies and becoming the king of the global chip manufacturing field.

Zhang Zhongmou

Compared with the IDM model that is dominant for Japanese semiconductor manufacturers, the rise of TSMC indirectly promoted Qualcomm , Nvidia, h The development of manufacturers such as tml3 Broadcom and AMD has also brought TSMC to a rapid development path. Its market value of US$419.5 billion also surpassed Samsung Electronics 4301.6 billion, Texas Instruments Market value of US$150.4 billion, Qualcomm $143.8 billion, and Intel 128.1 billion, becoming the world's highest-capital semiconductor company.

TSMC's success can be said to be the direct result of Zhang Zhongmou's personal outstanding vision. If he had not taken a unique approach and broke the IDM model from a single point, then there would have been basically no great success that TSMC has achieved today. However, the development of the chip industry actually exceeded Zhang Zhongmou's original expectations. Now TSMC is facing a serious problem, and EUV lithography machines have to be shut down.

TSMC will shut down some EUV lithography machines

This biggest factor restricting TSMC's development is insufficient power supply. An EUV lithography machine uses 30,000 kWh of electricity every day. Currently, TSMC has about 80 EUV lithography machines, which means that just these 80 EUV lithography machines will use 800 million kWh of electricity a year. In addition, other equipment has further increased the total electricity consumption of TSMC. In 2021, TSMC's actual electricity consumption has reached nearly 17 billion kWh, accounting for about 8% of the electricity consumption in Taiwan Province. Nowadays, with the global energy supply tight, TSMC's power shortage has become more prominent, so some EUV lithography machines have to be turned off.

In order to alleviate TSMC's power consumption problem, Zhang Zhongmou has also made a related layout before, that is, to build factories in other regions. But now it seems that the Arizona factory has seen a significant delay, and coupled with the growing construction and raw material costs, the initial $12 billion scheduled is already in danger.

TSMC Arizona factory

For TSMC, the delay of the Arizona factory is not only an economic loss, but more importantly, it is the loss of strategic opportunities and development opportunities. With the further improvement of chip manufacturing processes, the power consumption of 3nm, 2nm and 1nm will be further improved in the future. With the objective conditions of TSMC today, it is undoubtedly difficult to continue research and development in advanced processes.

It is undeniable that Zhang Zhongmou can be regarded as a miracle from scratch, but now this miracle has come to an end. Do you think TSMC should solve the objective problem of power resources? Welcome to leave a message for discussion.