The Early Years at TSMC

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[@alexkalish8288]

I worked bringing up TSMC in the early days. S3 who I worked for owned 30% - I know most of the people you referenced. There is nothing really special about TSMC except they had good management and we had all worked on FAB's before and we had many Intel people. Andy groove was my hero when I was a kid. .

[@EannaButler]

As a long-standing software guy, I've always been in awe of the physicist-engineers that work at smaller and smaller scales and make usable output.. Software gets bigger cause you guys make it smaller... Appreciated!

[@gus473]

These corporate history episodes are always interesting, occasionally surprising, and definitely worth rearranging my schedule to view sooner than later! 😎✌️

[@take2762]

Tsmc is a fascinating example of defense through unique and vital capabilities

[@nexusyang4832]

“Time and chance happened to us all.” Those are some cold hard truths.

[@anasevi9456]

brilliant closure to the video, and you are absolutely right about how TSMC was lighting in a bottle with the work ethic to make the most of it's place in time. How long that top will last will be interesting.

[@brodriguez11000]

Chance favors the prepared.

[@lucasrem]

I remember this area very good, Morris Chang too, he was semiconductor foundry guy from the early days. At Philips Taiwan, we needed to outsource the production, only keeping ASML in Holland. Morris Chang was just the guy we called, he was the right person for this as chairmen, because of his career, but not a founding father. The Taiwanese political people needed him to come over and do this in Taiwan !

[@walshm__5]

TLDW; - Morris Chang was a figure head leader of TSMC in the 90s, talking down Don Brooks efforts to grow TSMC, but never stopping Brooks from expanding 50%/yr. When these efforts started to bear fruit, Chang pushed Brooks out. Those of us working in Taiwan at the time were not too surprised, as this is Taiwan MGMT 101.

[@smallbin5512]

As a Taiwanese, my observation is that quite a lot amount of Taiwanese educated in united states. American education system foster Taiwanese perfessionals. It is one of the essentials of TSMC's success

[@keepgoingsssxxx]

So then People educated in the US are ruling the ordinary people in Taiwan. Fun 😂.

[@surajkulkarni6868]

Always looking forward to Asianometry’s analysis of TSMC business. One bonus is we get to hear how to pronounce founder’s last name 😊

[@spehropefhany]

Zhāng

[@cv990a4]

Reducing cycle time and increasing yields is fundamentally about sweating the assets. It's not that different from Southwest Airlines increasing aircraft utilization above industry average (which was one of the keys to that business model's success back in the day). Fabs are fabulously expensive - the economics depend critically on maximizing thruput, especially if you're engaged in the commodity end if the business, as TSMC was in the beginning. Now that they have sole ownership of the leading edge of the business, they also have that to sell, but most of their fabs are behind the leading edge, so being a low cost producer is critical and cycle time is one of the keys.

[@alexanderdiogenes8067]

Dude, your show is so freakin valuable.

[@evl619]

台灣媒體理所當然視張忠謀為TSMC之父，感謝你提供了一個很不同的角度

[@MrHav1k]

Great video as always Asianometry. I always learn something new from your semiconductor videos.

[@CarlosGutierrez-ef2pd]

My mom and aunts all worked for TSMC here in Kentucky for many years we need to bring them Back

[@yxyk-fr]

2:43 THAT BOOOOK !

[@Phil-D83]

A lot of people got shafted on tsmc's stock about 15+ years ago.

[@Legslarsen.]

Asianometry is getting the balance right. Morris won’t be happy.

[@dolyharianto]

weird how the American ex CEOs all died in their mid 70s yet Morris Chang is still alive and kicking at 92

[@weedmanwestvancouverbc9266]

Asianometry should look into some of the other companies that did their own semiconductors. MOS Technologies was owned by Commodore, and Jack Traimmel after getting frozen out buy Texas Instruments, he didn't want that happening again. In the end, he got his revenge on them buy freezing them out of the computer Market with the very successful 6502 series of CPUs

[@simmmr]

ending summary was a very good piece of writing

[@0neIntangible]

Man-o-man, some of these industry pioneers have a head for both the intricacies & politics and timing of business models, as well as the brains for the mind boggling intricacies of microelectronics and their fabrication.

[@ErikS-]

2:41... I have this book! Its quite roughed up, but still okay. Cool to see this book in a video!

[@timkaine5098]

It's interesting to look back at the drama of an expanding critical company today with the open AI drama going on. Hard times often bring people together, it's when the glory and money appears that people get jealous and it all starts to crack

[@timeimp]

Man, this history of TSMC is crazier. What's even more insane is how much _everything_ in the modern world can be traced to one of their factories. Fantastic video Asianometry!

[@PainterVierax]

not everything, as other foundries still exist, but a large amount indeed.

[@dennisscott6430]

Immensely insightful concluding remarks. Excellent presentation… as usual.

[@bcal5962]

Absolutely fascinating video

[@katechen9458]

Hmm, some part sounds like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. I don't know what really happened and many people/culture have different definition of conservative. I remember once we interviewed an Asian guy from Berkeley. I thought he was good and everything he said was based on clear thinking processes. My co-worker thought he was lack of confidence because he seemed hesitate to answer the questions. We didn't hire him. After a few years, I met him in a conference and he had a wonderful career in another company. Anyway, I don't like personal worship. I believe many wonderful things are results of groups of hard workers and good-lucks. I studied at one of the universities near TSMC mentioned here and many people I know work/worked for TSMC. The history is very complicated, including the government vision/involvement /technology transferring, not just money. The environment was also very complicated. It was different from the environment in the US or even Taiwan now. It definitely got lots of help from other companies in the world even though at that time, no one knew how big it would become. Of course, they also face many new challenges now. I wish TSMC good luck and keep going for a wonderful future!

[@Koulis0001]

thank you for this excellent video sir!

[@jonasschupfer1612]

I could not find any information about the upcoming biography of Morris Chang, does someone know the title and release date?

[@johnzelinka5684]

I love your work. Keep it up!

[@MarcBelmont]

Thanks!

[@yeowool404]

Some parts of video have green geometric blobs and some don't, I much prefer the static black background though

[@williamhoodtn]

Very good video today!

[@woolfel]

another excellent video. interesting history

[@urhumbleservant]

12:03 Going Fabless 12:30 What is a foundry?

[@alalfred3474]

Interesting perspective, not the Morris Chang version.

[@rickden8362]

Great video, just the content l like.

[@user-kk2vx1sx8k]

I have a question for you. Is there any reason of using only EUV light for lithography? Why don't we use shorter waves like hard x-ray or gamma ray?? Thanks for amazing videos luv em!

[@abumohandes4487]

If you can build a mirror for X-rays, go for it.

[@user-kk2vx1sx8k]

@@abumohandes4487 ohh....! My bad

[@Martinit0]

The more x-ray the radiation the less it interacts with surface material (your photoresist). So it will require even higher optical power to run a litho process. Also the optical path will become very elongated (vs. folded in a compact space) as mirrors have to have very low angle of incidence, as previous poster mentioned. Basically like synchrotron beamlines.

[@Daniel_lebieR]

There's a typo in the name of Klaus Wiemer (!Weimer) at 10:00

[@lucasrem]

Let's make it better

[@clintcowan9424]

Right time, right place, doing the right things

[@catcoder12]

Great channel highlighting Asia. I feel you can make videos a bit shorter because they feel a bit monotonous.

[@RonJohn63]

1:08 That sounds like a proto-FPGA.

[@JinKee]

Can TSMC make lightning strike twice in Arizona?

[@nathanpeters9515]

I think they could in Texas. Enough is at stake here that I think people should be hired who don’t take failure as an option. Maybe former military.

[@user-yc2qq6dp2s]

I can't get over how much this guy loves TSMC and semiconductor.

[@DavidHalko]

TSMC did what no one else in the industry could do. Sun Microsystems was a fabless systems company, going to Texas Ibstruments for making their silicon. When Sun wanted smaller chips, TI was unwilling to make the fab. Sun moved to TSMC. Sun was purchased by Oracle. TSMC now makes Oracle’s latest M8 chips. It would not have been possible without TSMC - the SPARC M8 processor. In 2017, Oracle SPARC M8 general purpose processor was a 64 bit, 5 GHz, 32 core, 8 hardware threads per core, 4 instruction per clock cycle CPU chip. Nothing like the world had ever seen! Only TSMC was able to make it for Oracle… and that chip may still be one of the fastest CPU’s on the market, even though the General Purpose CPU is now over 6 years old.

[@CD3WD-Project]

Does anyone other then me use this guys videos to go to sleep to or just me. No i am not saying they are boring.

[@konstantinboev7018]

Do you think if Bulgaria could continue its semiconductor industry and compete with the other manufacturers ,if there was political will

[@DavidHalko]

Depends on whether the people have the heart ❤️ and there is enough funding… the cost of a new fab is greater than the GDP of most nations.

[@konstantinboev7018]

@@DavidHalko true

[@Nick3DvB]

But time and chance happen to them all, tru dat.

[@greggc.touftree5936]

Now do TEAC.

[@timboatfield]

*_There is no T in Quiche, like the is no T in niche!_*

[@ingusmant]

What does brooks means with homogeneous? And why is that an advantage?

[@cscansin]

east to pass ideas and stear a ship. military like

[@DavidHalko]

Homogeneous means groups don’t fight with each other, they realize everyone benefits when they succeed! In countries like the US, sometimes labor fights against management, sometimes poor pitted against rich, sometimes ethnicities fight against other ethnicities… usually when someone finds a way to profit from making division, by holding the greater hostage to some compromise that is not beneficial for the whole. This negative behavior, repeated, eventually destroys the whole. In countries like the US, as long as people see themselves as “Americans”, not as labor, not as an ethnicity, amazing things are possible… but this is getting harder and harder with destructive thought like critical race theory, which teaches dumb concepts encouraging people to concentrate on differences, instead of unity & the whole. For example, iron by itself is great! Take Iron & combine with carbon, manganese, phosphorous, sulfur, silicon, and sometimes nickel & chromium - one gets various grades of steel, which is far superior to iron alone, but if one is taught to only concentrates on carbon & ignore iron & other elements, superior steel is never possible. Piles of iron, carbon, chromium, nickel, etc. which never mix, never can make steel, they must mixed together and the end products become piles of homogeneous steel products. Homogeny is an important thing in society. One must see themselves as part of a bigger thing, ignore superficial differences, and build a better everything.

[@happygarlic13]

tldr TSMC overtook the fabrication only business in the semiconductor industry

[@wrog268]

hello

[@mhx47]

21/2 - that really is not how you write Two and a half..... most likely oversight copying it into video so just pointing out to avoid in the future. It would be great to see their emojis :D

[@albuslee4831]

Learned a lot from this video. But this doesn't explaines how TSMC remained on top in the hyper-competitive semiconductor industry. Just being there at the right time finding the right opportunity doesn't explains the modern dominance of TSMC in the semi conductor industry. Even with all your explanation it's hard to accept the conclusion of this video of saying, "Just being there at the right time finding the right opportunity" was how TSMC got successful.

[@DavidHalko]

“how TSMC remained on top…” TSMC is just a foundry for customers, while other customers had their own vertically integrated foundries. Upgrading & building new fabs cost more money than most individual products can support. Honestly, a new fab costs more than the GDP of most nations. TSMC was able to focus on one thing, producing chips, and multiple customers & products could support the creation of the very expensive latest fabs. TSMC could focus on wafers.

[@bobweiram6321]

How can the US compete with Asia when their industries are government subsidized?

[@DavidHalko]

It is called “The Stock Market” - the US finances industries through stocks when banks say no due to risk.

[@bobweiram6321]

@@DavidHalko It's no where as effective as subsidies. Shareholders tend to be risk adverse and demand short term over long term profits, limiting their ability to compete against subsidized companies. Chinese companies, for example, can comfortably operate at a loss in order to undercut the competition with lower prices. They are also able to invest their profits in equipment and facilities to give them an even greater competitive advantage.

[@DavidHalko]

@@bobweiram6321 - US companies operate comfortably at a loss for extended periods of time, these are startups. China 🇨🇳 paid companies more than the average cost of an EV to create EV’s in China 🇨🇳… yet Tesla was able to compete with that. Of course, Tesla is a hated company by many far left whackos now a days, because of their fierce competitive nature of their CEO. There is a point where government subsidies are hard to overcome, since governments have the power of the monetary printing press… but this is where “dumping” rules come into play while dealing with international trade.

[@POVwithRC]

He was right. Homogeneity works.

[@nicenice_hamburger9204]

🤨

[@brandonkirisaki9708]

😃

[@bikashshrestha1472]

Next title should be "Overnight failure?"

[@lionssuperbowl]

not at all

[@Matthew-ld9wx]

You should do a video about Elon Musk and neurolink the implant the chips in your brain

[@theblackhand6485]

Sorry, but due KZbin ads every 2 minutes this show is hard to watch. Not to watch at all! So sad that watching a video must be all about making money. I do have to bail out. C'ya some day when ever where. Bye.

[@DavidHalko]

It is called “skip” 😂

[@AppliedCryogenics]

When non-US citizens come to the US for university, and then they go back home and run businesses that align with or complement the US, I'm proud. When non-US citizens come to the US for university, and then they go back home to compete with the US, financially or militarily, I'm angry.

[@d.jensen5153]

When unity, outstanding preparation, and a strong work ethic make workers in any company in any country of the world successful, I applaud them.

[@namantripathi.]

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