TAIPEI (Taiwan News) —Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) launched the final volume of his autobiography on Monday (Dec. 9), presiding over an informal chat about his leadership of TSMC and his view on the chip sector.
Chang’s appearance was arranged by CommonWealth Magazine, the publisher of his autobiography. The first volume was released 26 years ago, tracing his early career with Texas Instruments and the founding of TSMC, an early pioneer of the fabless foundry model, per UDN.
The second volume traces Chang’s leadership of TSMC to global prominence in the semiconductor foundry industry up until his retirement in 2018. The autobiography does not address the US-China trade war and geopolitical challenges.
He spoke bluntly about his leadership of TSMC, which he characterized as “very few bad decisions.” Chang added that he never encountered geopolitical challenges such as onshoring or friend-shoring during his tenure, as he would let TSMC’s current leadership manage such challenges.
Chang also discussed TSMC’s early years and the company’s relationship with two major rivals, Intel and Samsung.
"I have always regarded Intel as a friend, whether it was my relationship with the three founders (Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove) or the company," Chang said. This friendly relationship ended with the arrival of former CEO Pat Gelsinger, who Chang described as being hostile to TSMC.
“Intel did not ask me for advice, and actually, I did not want to have discussions with them.”
Chang said Intel's Achilles' heel is the lack of a new strategy and a problematic switch to wafer foundry services, which he believes is leading the company to miss out on AI business opportunities. He said Intel is now left with an even bigger challenge as it still has not developed a new strategy and is searching for yet another CEO.
As for Samsung, he believes the company's strategic flaw is technology rather than leadership or administration.
In his autobiography, he recounted a meeting with the former chair of Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, who persuaded Taiwanese companies to cooperate with Samsung on the production of memory (DRAM) rather than pursuing it independently. TSMC’s venture with Samsung eventually failed, leading TSMC to refocus on wafer foundry services.
Chang said Acer declined the offer to work with Samsung, instead choosing to partner with Texas Instruments for DRAM production, a venture that also ended up failing. In this regard, he said, “Better the devil you know than the devil you do not know."