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Gelsinger Can't Win, Ecosystems Must be Built, Morris Chang

Arthur Hanson

Well-known member
To succeed, Gelsinger needs to bring back the mantra of Andy Grove "Only the paranoid survive". Fat, dumb and happy is what did in Intel as the leader. TSM is not only an innovation machine but has built a whole worldwide ecosystem of innovation machines in their suppliers and customers. At this point, it will take Intel a decade to catch up, if at all. This is why China wants to take over Taiwan, but that will be impossible for TSM is not a single company, but a worldwide ecosystem. China would have to take over the world to win the game and that according to human history this is impossible.

Morris Chang is not only a technological genius but an ecosystem-building genius. Morris mastered the art of mutually beneficial international relationships like no other man in history. I wish our politicians would study the strategies of Morris Chang and of mutually beneficial relationships. Morris Chang even beat Andy Grove in building mutually beneficial ecosystems. Morris Chang was a genius on more levels than most, even in the tech industry, even can comprehend. I really miss Morris Chang speaking at the quarterly meeting with his dry wit and expanding on his philosophy. There is much to learn from this man on both a business and personal level. This is why many have stated, TSM is the most important company on earth. Any thoughts, comments, or additions solicited and welcome.
 
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China wants freedom from the first island chain. That's why they want Taiwan. If Taiwan fell people will turn to Samsung but south Korea is part of the first island chain as well.

China has never been transparent with covid or anyone else as well. They might not be able to take over Taiwan for some time. Taiwan is using tsmc to buy weapon as a deterrent and it may work for decades.
 
Very true, ecosystem is everything. GF has a foundry ecosystem, not like TSMC but I would put it at #2, Samsung at #3, UMC at #4, and SMIC at #5. Yet another reason for Intel or Samsung to buy GF.
 
Very true, ecosystem is everything. GF has a foundry ecosystem, not like TSMC but I would put it at #2 with Samsung at #3. Yet another reason for Intel or Samsung to buy GF.
There is a huge gap between the ecosystems of TSM and GF, not even close. When Samsung burned Apple, they paid a very high price and are continuing to pay for it. There are no ecosystems even close to the depth and trust of the TSM ecosystem that Morris Chang so carefully crafted both upstream and downstream and even internally.
 
Taiwan is a conundrum for the ccp. If they take over Taiwan and have free access to the Pacific they would have to give their people more freedom. If they don't occupy Taiwan they look weak to their people.

If the united states was in the same situation where taiwan blocked access to the Pacific we would of occupied the country yesterday.
 
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No doubt TSMC's ecosystem is huge, but another important philosophy of the company is that they can be trusted and do not compete with customers. They're willing to help/nurture/grow together with all their supply-chain vendors and have in the past. They have one of the best, if not the best, IC design teams in the world but do not design, build or sell chips of their own. They're laser focused on one thing and that is to become the trusted foundry of the world.

Meanwhile Gelsinger's strategies so far has been all over the map while creating conflict-of-interests everywhere. Let me explain: He wants Apple back after switching from intel to Apple Silicon, yet they created commercials mocking Apple Computers vs Intel PC's. He wants foundry business from other semiconductor companies, yet Intel is contracting TSMC to build Intel's most advanced 3nm chips. He wants to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to American soil, yet he's considering setting up foundries in Europe. His Foundry 2.0 is a huge COI in itself because Intel does build and sell processors of their own in the market. So companies like AMD, Qualcomm, Nvidia, etc., ought to have second thoughts before handing their chips for their direct competitor to build. But this is not even a possibility yet, Intel has a ton to catch up on the sub-10nm process nodes and last I heard they are still a good 2-3 years away. So if all these "COI" mentioned above are just a "friendly-competition" to Gelsinger, boy he's in for a long ride.
 
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It is understandable that from your point of view TSMC is “the most important company on earth”, but I would argue that leading pharmaceutical companies are more important than TSMC. People can live with older node chips(which can be provided by many fabs outside TSMC), but cannot survive without critical drugs.
 
I guess there's only one TSMC successfully providing significant capacity at the "bleeding edge". Whitout capacity at the "bleeding edge" no progress in electronics. In contrast there are several pharmactheutical companies which can provide most advanved drugs (see Corona / Covid-19). So I tend to agree: currently TSMC ist the most important company on earth.
 
No doubt TSMC's ecosystem is huge, but another important philosophy of the company is that they can be trusted and do not compete with customers. They're willing to help/nurture/grow together with all their supply-chain vendors and have in the past. They have one of the best, if not the best, IC design teams in the world but do not design, build or sell chips of their own. They're laser focused on one thing and that is to become the trusted foundry of the world.

Meanwhile Gelsinger's strategies so far has been all over the map while creating conflict-of-interests everywhere. Let me explain: He wants Apple back after switching from intel to Apple Silicon, yet they created commercials mocking Apple Computers vs Intel PC's. He wants foundry business from other semiconductor companies, yet Intel is contracting TSMC to build Intel's most advanced 3nm chips. He wants to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to American soil, yet he's considering setting up foundries in Europe. His Foundry 2.0 is a huge COI in itself because Intel does build and sell processors of their own in the market. So companies like AMD, Qualcomm, Nvidia, etc., ought to have second thoughts before handing their chips for their direct competitor to build. But this is not even a possibility yet, Intel has a ton to catch up on the sub-10nm process nodes and last I heard they are still a good 2-3 years away. So if all these "COI" mentioned above are just a "friendly-competition" to Gelsinger, boy he's in for a long ride.
"They have one of the best, if not the best, IC design teams in the world but do not design, build or sell chips of their own."

Just curious - what do these people do then if they are not designing chips ?
 
"They have one of the best, if not the best, IC design teams in the world but do not design, build or sell chips of their own."

Just curious - what do these people do then if they are not designing chips ?
Functional block design. It filled in all the gaps between netlist and GDSII. ESD is a good example.
 
They have one of the best, if not the best, IC design teams in the world but do not design, build or sell chips of their own. They're laser focused on one thing and that is to become the trusted foundry of the world.

So if a certain global foundry went against this grain and sold off/outsourced the entirety of their IC design expertise to cook the books for some sort of IPO, they probably screwed up?
 
ASML is the only company provides EUV , the very machine that TSMC rely on. TSMC cannot live without ASML, but ASML can live without TSMC as it does not lack customers for EUV machines. So ASML is more import than TSMC.

ASML is critical but so do many other vendors in the supply-chain. For instance, without the german manufacturer Carl Zeiss providing ultra-high performance optics (175 years of lens making expertise) it may not be possible for ASML to build the EUV machines to such fine tolerance. So by that account, one could also argue that Zeiss is more important that ASML. Other companies like Applied Materials, Lam Research, et. al., all play quite an important role in the semiconductor value chain.
 
It is understandable that from your point of view TSMC is “the most important company on earth”, but I would argue that leading pharmaceutical companies are more important than TSMC. People can live with older node chips(which can be provided by many fabs outside TSMC), but cannot survive without critical drugs.
The diagnostics and research run by the pharmaceutical companies would be impossible without chips built by TSM over the years and currently.
 
The diagnostics and research run by the pharmaceutical companies would be impossible without chips built by TSM over the years and currently.

TSMC only become an important fab player since 1990s, major pharmaceutical companies exist long before that. Major life saving drugs such as penicillin/insulin/brufen etc, were also invented long before TSMC.
 
When discussing the "most important company" in the world, I think the '20-pandemic clearly taught us that "toilet paper factories" win hands down!
 
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