Around 20:30 of this video, author Marc Hijink mentioned a fateful meeting during the SEMICON West in San Francisco in July 2013 between Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and ASML about moving wafer standard from 300mm to 450mm.
One thing needs to be clarified is that the meeting was actually called by TSMC and arranged by ASML. Here is an Interview done in 2022 with Dr. Shang-Yi Chiang by Computer History Museum of Mountain View, California. Dr. Shang-Yi Chiang was TSMC R&D Chief back in 2013.
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Chiang: One thing I can share with you is the industry, we do 12-inch wafer now. It was supposed to go 18 inch.
Fairbairn: We’ve been stuck at 12-inch for a long time.
Chiang: Right. Supposed to go 450 millimeter and this project was very hot in 2013. Intel drove that. I think in the history, going to six-- I don't remember very well. I think going to 6 inch is driven by IBM and the 8 and 12 inch driven by Intel. Intel want to drive 450 again. So they promoted [that idea]. Going to a bigger wafer on surface, people say it’s because of productivity. It's not exactly true. More it's a game. It’s a game for the big guy to take advantage on the small guy. It's pretty clear that is the case. Why? Right now, if you want to go to 18 inch the first thing happened is all the equipment vendors, all their new equipment will be 18-inch. They will not make the most advanced technology on 12-inch. They will not.
So the small player who doesn't need 18-inch, they are automatically out of the competition. Number two, it’s again, the small guy, they don't need such a large volume. They cannot afford it either. So it's a big guy to squeeze a small guy out. That's the number one reason for going to the large wafer.
So, Intel started and actually, Intel tried very hard to get TSMC and Samsung to join force. Intel already start spending a couple billion dollars in preparing for 450-millimeter wafers, and for some reason, TSMC, because in the past, TSMC was very-- TSMC was quite aggressive pushing 12 inch, 300 millimeter, and it worked out very well for them. And also again, TSMC began to be very aggressive. I think, at one of the investor conference, Morris Chang himself gave a roadmap for TSMC’s 450 millimeter. And all of a sudden, because previously only Intel was kind of saying, and now TSMC join it. Samsung always kept quiet. They didn't say yes. They didn't say no. They just quiet, keep quiet. Now two of them began to speak up. All of a sudden, the industry became very hot for 450 millimeter wafers.
And one day in 2013, I think around March, I believe, about this time of the year, I went to Morris Chang’s office. I told him. I said, “I don't think we should promote these 450-millimeter wafers.” “Why?” I said, “In the past, our competitors are UMC, SMIC, and those guys are much smaller than we are. We promote 450 mm. We take advantage on them. But right now, we only have two competitors, Intel and Samsung. Both are bigger than we are. So that didn't help us at all. It actually will hurt us.”
I’ll give you one example. I don't know exactly how many R&D engineers Intel has. We had 6,000 R&D engineer. I know their R&D budget is much bigger than we are. I say they may have 8,000. Right now, we are eight to six to them. If we started 450-millimeter, it may tie up 3,000 engineers. Then what we have left to do the R&D? Three thousand. They still have 5,000. So, if I try to compete 3,000 with 5,000, my pressure is much, much higher. That didn’t help us at all. And their revenue was much higher than we are, both Intel and Samsung. So we shouldn't have the old idea, which I supposed to take advantage on UMC. Now we don’t care about UMC.
And Morris Chang got the point immediately, and he appreciate very much, and he say, “What can we do?” I said-- Mike Splinter, he was Applied Materials’ CEO at the time. I said, “Mike is here today.” I say, “You may like to talk to him.” He say, “Yes,” so I went over to get Mike because I’d just talked to Mike.
Mike was not originally on Morris’ schedule. But I went over. I took him to Morris’ office, and of course, Mike speak against that, Intel, and all the negative thing about that because no equipment company like to do that And then he sent me and our procurement VP to visit KLA [Tencor], visit Lam [Research], and again, visit Applied Materials here, and also, I tried to make appointment to visit TEL.
Fairbairn: To visit…
Chiang: TEL, Tokyo Electronics.
Fairbairn: Yeah. Right.
Chiang: They refused to see me, so I didn't talk to them, and they’re all against 450 millimeter. So Morris Chang began to realize that that’s not right thing to do now. So, he himself called at least ten meetings to discuss this topic in the company. He was very, very careful to try to look from all the aspect, and finally, he decided we should not support that. And then he tried very hard to think about the reason. If you just say directly, TSMC will not do that, it’s a negative image because you guys not looking at the future. You cannot. So finally, he decided. When we make the announcement, he said, TSMC’s priority is advanced technology development, not 450 millimeter our top priority. That was the announcement. We also talk to ASML because ASML didn’t care. They said, “Wafer bigger or smaller, my scanner, the time is the same. We cannot save anything because I have to expose each one.”
Fairbairn: You still have to expose each one, right?
Chiang: So ASML arrange meeting at 2013 SEMICON West in San Francisco. They made a reservation for a private room. So we've got Intel, Samsung, and TSMC in a room to discuss 450-millimeter wafers, and Intel, the presenter was Bill Holt. You know Bill Holt? He was in charge of Intel's technology, R&D, and the manufacturing altogether, anything to do with silicon wafer he was in charge, and their procurement VP, and TSMC. I went, and also Steve Tso, our procurement VP. Samsung had sent two VP, but they are lower-level VPs. In the entire meeting, Samsung didn’t say anything, and Bill Holt just get up. Again, he said he promoted a 18-inch wafer. We should all chip in. We should be aggressive, and then I told him-- then I’m the next speaker and I told him our priority is advanced technology. He got that. He was very upset and walked away. (words deleted) In the following day, Intel made announcement their priority is advanced technology development, and that's the end of 450-millimeter wafer. Nobody talked about it then.
Fairbairn: Nobody talked about it since then.
Chiang: Nobody talk about it since then.
Fairbairn: I knew that it had been planned and then it went away.
Chiang: Yeah. It was all of a sudden.
Fairbairn: Yeah.
Chiang: In July of 2013. Very few people knew of that meeting in San Francisco.
Fairbairn: Interesting. Yeah. That’s important information.
Chiang: ASML knew that. Martin van den Brink, ASML’s president, yeah, he knew it very well."
Source:
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102792671
