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Former TSMC President Don Brooks

The TSMC Pivot that Changed the Semiconductor Industry!

The TSMC OIP Backstory

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023

The TSMC OIP Backstory

The TSMC OIP Backstory
by Daniel Nenni on 09-18-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: EDA, Events, Foundries, IP, TSMC
1 Comment

This is the 15^th anniversary of the TSMC Open Innovation Platform (OIP). The OIP Ecosystem Forum will kick off on September 27^th in Santa Clara, California and continue around the world for the next two months in person and on-line in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Israel. These are THE most attended semiconductor ecosystem networking events! I hope to see you there!

For more information check TSMC.com.

Growing up in Silicon Valley with a 40 year career in the semiconductor industry/ecosystem has been an amazing experience. Working with the most intelligent people around the world, solving some of the most complex problems, and seeing the fruits of our labor change the world, there is nothing like being a semiconductor professional.

This next passage is an updated chapter from our book “Fabless: The transformation of the Semiconductor Industry“. It captures the OIP backstory quite nicely but there is just one thing I would like to add. The amount of money invested by TSMC and the OIP partners in the ecosystem every year is billions of dollars. The total ecosystem investment is most certainly more than a trillion dollars and I must say we certainly are getting our money’s worth, absolutely.

In Their Own Words: TSMC and Open Innovation Platform
TSMC, the largest and most influential pure-play foundry,
has many fascinating stories to tell. In this section, TSMC
covers some of their basic history, and explains how creating
an ecosystem of partners has been key to their success, and to
the growth of the semiconductor industry.

The history of TSMC and its Open Innovation Platform (OIP)® is, like almost everything in semiconductors, driven by the economics of semiconductor manufacturing. Of course, ICs started 50 years ago at Fairchild, very close to where Google is headquartered today (these things go in circles). The planarization approach, whereby a wafer (just 1” originally) went through each process step as a whole, led to mass production. Other companies such as Intel, National, Texas Instruments and AMD soon followed and started the era of the Integrated Device Manufacturer (although we didn’t call them that back then, we just called them semiconductor companies).

The next step was the invention of ASICs with LSI Logic and VLSI Technology as the pioneers. This was the first step of separating design from manufacturing. Although the physical design was still done by the semiconductor company, the concept was executed by the system company. Perhaps the most important aspect of this change was not that part of the design was done at the system company, but rather the idea for the design and the responsibility for using it to build a successful business rested with the system company, whereas IDMs still had the “if we build it they will come” approach, with a catalog of standard parts.

In 1987, TSMC was founded and the separation between manufacture and design was complete. One missing piece of the puzzle was good physical design tools. Fortunately, Cadence was created in 1988 from the merger of SDA and ECAD (and soon after, Tangent). Cadence was the only supplier of design tools for physical place and route at the time. It was now possible for a system company to buy design tools, design their own chip and have TSMC manufacture it. The system company was completely responsible for the concept, the design, and selling the end-product (either the chip itself or a system containing it). TSMC was completely responsible for the manufacturing (usually including test, packaging and logistics too).

At the time, the interface between the foundry and the design group was fairly simple. The foundry would produce design rules and SPICE parameters for the designers; the design would be given back to the foundry as a GDSII file and a test program. Basic standard cells were required, and these were available on the open market from companies like Artisan, or some groups would design their own. Eventually TSMC would supply standard cells, either designed in-house or from Artisan or other library vendors (bearing an underlining royalty model transparent to end users). However, as manufacturing complexity grew, the gap between manufacturing and design grew too. This caused a big problem for TSMC: there was a lag from when TSMC wanted to get designs into high volume manufacturing and when the design groups were ready to tape out. Since a huge part of the cost of a fab is depreciation on the building and the equipment, which is largely fixed, this was a problem that needed to be addressed.

At 65 nm TSMC started the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) program. It began at a relatively small scale but from 65 nm to 40 nm to 28 nm the amount of manpower involved went up by a factor of 7. By 16 nm FinFET, half of the design effort is IP qualification and physical design because IP is used so extensively in modern SoCs. OIP actively collaborated with EDA and IP vendors early in the life-cycle of each process to ensure that design flows and critical IP were ready early. In this way, designs would tape-out just in time as the fab was starting to ramp so that the demand for wafers was well-matched with the supply.

In some ways the industry has gone a full circle, with the foundry and the design ecosystem together operating as a virtual IDM. The existence of TSMC’s OIP program further sped up disaggregation of the semiconductor supply chain. This was enabled partly by the existence of a healthy EDA industry and an increasingly healthy IP industry. As chip designs had grown more complex and entered the SoC era, the amount of IP on each chip was beyond the capability or the desire of each design group to create. But, especially in a new process, EDA and IP qualification was a problem.

On the EDA side, each new process came with some new discontinuous requirements that required more than just expanding the capacity and speed of the tools to keep up with increasing design size. Strained silicon, high-K metal gate, double patterning and FinFETs each require new support in the tools and designs to drive the development and test of the innovative technology.

On the IP side, design groups increasingly wanted to focus all their efforts on parts of their chip that differentiated them from their competition, and not on re-designing standard interfaces. But that meant that IP companies needed to create the standard interfaces and have them validated in silicon much earlier than before.

The result of OIP has been to create an ecosystem of EDA and IP companies, along with TSMC’s manufacturing, to speed up innovation everywhere. Because EDA and IP groups need to start work before everything about the process is ready and stable, the OIP ecosystem requires a high level of cooperation and trust.

When TSMC was founded in 1987, it really created two industries. The first, obviously, is the foundry industry that TSMC pioneered before others entered. The second was the fabless semiconductor industry where companies did not need to invest in fabs.

The foundry/fabless model largely replaced IDMs and ASIC. An ecosystem of co-operating specialist companies innovates fast. The old model of having process, design tools and IP all integrated under one roof has largely disappeared, along with the “not invented here” syndrome that slowed progress since ideas from outside the IDMs had a tough time penetrating. Even some of the earliest IDMs from the “Real men have fabs” era have gone “fab lite” and use foundries for some of their capacity, typically at the most advanced nodes.

Legendary TSMC Chairman Morris Chang’s “Grand Alliance” is a business model innovation of which OIP is an important part, gathering all the significant players together to support customers—not just EDA and IP, but also equipment and materials suppliers, especially for high-end lithography.

Digging down another level into OIP, there are several important components that allow TSMC to coordinate the design ecosystem for their customers.

EDA: the commercial design tool business flourished when designs got too large for hand-crafted approaches and most semiconductor companies realized they did not have the expertise or resources in-house to develop all their own tools. This was driven more strongly in the front-end with the invention of ASIC, especially gate-arrays, and then in the back end with the invention of foundries.
IP: this used to be a niche business with a mixed reputation, but now is very important with companies like ARM, Imagination, CEVA, Cadence, and Synopsys, all carrying portfolios of important IP such as microprocessors, DDRx, Ethernet, flash memory and so on. In fact, large SoCs now contain over 50% and sometimes as much as 80%.
Services: design services and other value-chain services calibrated with TSMC process technology helps customers maximize efficiency and profit, getting designs into high volume production rapidly.
Packaging: TSMC expanded the OIP ecosystem to include a 3D Fabric Alliance.
People: More than 3,000 TSMC employees are part of OIP plus 10,000 people from the more than 100 OIP partners. The OIP now includes 50,000 titles, 43,000 tech files, and 2,800 PDKs.

Processes are continuing to get more advanced and complex, and the size of a fab that is economical also continues to increase. This means that collaboration needs to increase as the only way to both keep costs in check and ensure that all the pieces required for a successful design are ready just when they are needed.

TSMC has been building an increasingly rich ecosystem for over 30 years and feedback from partners is that they see benefits sooner and more consistently than when dealing with other foundries. Success comes from integrating usage, business models, technology and the OIP ecosystem so that everyone succeeds. There are a lot of moving parts that all have to be ready. It is not possible to design a modern SoC without design tools. More and more SoCs involve more and more 3rd party IP, and, at the heart of it all, the process and the manufacturing ramp with its associated yield learning all needs to be in place at TSMC.

Bottom line: The OIP ecosystem has been a key pillar in enabling this sea of change in the semiconductor industry.

Also Read:

Former TSMC President Don Brooks

The TSMC Pivot that Changed the Semiconductor Industry!

September 11, 2023September 13, 2023

The TSMC Pivot that Changed the Semiconductor Industry!

The TSMC Pivot that Changed the Semiconductor Industry!
by Daniel Nenni on 09-11-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: Foundries, TSMC
5 Comments

During my research I found an interview with Don Brooks from February 2000. It was very interesting and confirmed some of the things I knew about Don and brought up a few things I did not know. It’s an hour but it is a video of Don telling his story and is definitely worth a look. One of the things that was not mentioned however is the pivot that TSMC made when Don was president that enabled the transformation of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely.

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/silicongenesis/catalog/cj789gh7170

Here are notes from the interview:

Don Brooks, former Senior Vice President of Texas Instruments and President and CEO of Fairchild Industries, discusses his experiences in semiconductor manufacturing.

00:00:00 Interviewer introduces Brooks and his overall career.

00:01:00 Discussion of going to school at SMU in a co-op program with Texas Instruments (TI), and his experience working in fabs (semiconductor fabrication plant) and with Jack Kilby.

00:05:10 Discusses TI’s attempt to vertically integrate while horizontally expanding the product line, and Intel’s departure from the DRAM business.

00:11:06 Discusses management at TI and leaving Texas Instruments to be President at Fairchild.

00:15:37 Discusses the demise of Fairchild, sale to Schlumberger, subsequent sale to National, and the Fujitsu proposed merger.

00:27:28 Discusses his upbringing and how he came to work at TI.

00:31:35 Discusses his work in venture capital, becoming the President of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and the context for foundry business and product engineering in the semiconductor industry.

00:37:35 Discusses Morris Chang, the politics of being president at TSMC, and Europe, the U.S., and Taiwan’s cultural differences in the semiconductor industry.

00:47:15 Discussion of the lifetime of fabs, the cost of equipment, and profit sharing.

00:57:20 Discusses moving back to the US, working at UMC on the Board of Directors, and focusing on his work in venture capital.

Interviewed by Rob Walker, February 8, 2000, Sunnyvale, California.

In regards to the pivot, this is what I remember but it is open for debate. Back when TSMC first started it was a very difficult transition from using an ASIC company like VLSI Technology or LSI Logic to using a pure-play foundry. There was a serious amount of foundation IP, PDKs and customer owned tooling (COT) that had to be done before a fabless company could design to a new process.

When TSMC first arrived a pureplay foundry was a very difficult sell to chip designers since there was no real ecosystem to support them. IDMs were the first targets since they had internal EDA and IP groups but the bigger margin markets were the emerging fabless companies or what was to be the Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Broadcoms of the world.

The first couple of processes TSMC used were licensed from Philips so there were some PDKs and IP available. After that TSMC developed their own processes with “greenfield” fabs and the real work began.

Not long after assessing the TSMC sales strategy, Don Brooks sold the TSMC board on the idea of opening up TSMC’s design rules to the EDA and IP companies for quicker and broader adoption of the TSMC process technologies. I don’t recall exactly the first set of design rules TSMC released, I believe it was 1.0µm, but I do recall the first commercial EDA/IP company to adopt them and it was Compass Design Automation, a spin out of VLSI Technology, which was later purchased by Avant! (I worked for Avant!). In fact, my god friend and favorite co-author Paul McLellan, a long time VLSI Technology employee, was president of Compass.

To make a long story short, not only did all of the EDA and IP companies adopt TSMC PDKs, TSMC’s competitors did as well. A fabless company could design a chip for TSMC and take it to UMC, Chartered (now GF), or SMIC for second source manufacturing. I experienced this first hand many times. One tape-out I was involved in originated at TSMC and was manufactured by all four foundries during its lifetime. This “T like” process development strategy continued until the FinFET era (16nm). The PDK “accessibility” made TSMC what they are today, the highest margin foundry the world has ever seen. But during the CMOS years (down to 28nm) TSMC’s margins were compressed by the smaller foundries so this level of openness was a double edged sword.

The bottom line: Morris Chang’s hands-off management style during Don’s tenure was a good thing. Had Don Brooks not opened up the TSMC design rules the semiconductor ecosystem may not be what it is today, a true force of nature.

Also Read:

Former TSMC President Don Brooks

September 4, 2023September 3, 2023

Former TSMC President Don Brooks

Former TSMC President Don Brooks
by Daniel Nenni on 09-04-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: Foundries, TSMC

Don Brooks is well known to many long time semiconductor insiders, like myself, but most SemiWiki readers have probably never heard of him. Don is a semiconductor legend and here is his story. This will be in two parts since he had a big impact on the semiconductor industry and TSMC. From 1991 to 1997 Don served as President of TSMC and helped grow the nascent company into what it is today, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry with a market capitalization of $500B.

Don Brooks passed away in 2013 and here is the story from his memorial. If you read between the lines you can get a real sense of who Don really was, a very intelligent, driven, semiconductor professional of the highest caliber, absolutely.

Don graduated from Sunset High School in 1957 and was a key player on their basketball team, which won the City Championship his senior year. Don attended Tarleton State College on a basketball scholarship his freshman year. He married his high school sweetheart in 1958 and enrolled in SMU under a co-op program with Texas Instruments.

He happened to be assigned to TI’s Research Lab during a time when Jack Kilby invented/developed the integrated circuit. Consequently, his entire 25-year career at TI focused on the commercialization and production of semiconductors. He rapidly rose through the ranks of TI’s management and became the youngest man ever to be promoted to Senior Vice President at Texas Instruments. Under his leadership TI developed a reputation as the world’s leading supplier of MOS memories.

In 1983 he became President & CEO of Fairchild Industries in Mountain View, CA. He founded KLM Capital in 1988 and served as its Chairman for years. Don joined TSMC as President in 1991. During his tenure as President, TSMC returned to profitability, and grew to become the world’s largest independent semiconductor fabrication company.

Morris Chang, Founder and Chairman of TSMC had these words to say about Don’s tenure as President of the Company “Since his arrival in 1991 Don Brooks has provided dramatic leadership that built TSMC into the world’s most successful dedicated foundry”. TSMC grew at an average annual rate of 54% over Don’s time as President of the Company and achieved record profits.

Following TSMC, he was a board member of United Microelectronics Corporation of Taiwan (NYSE: UMC and TSE: 2303) and previously served as its President and co-Chief Executive Officer from 1997-1999. From what I understand, Morris Chang and Don had a disagreement (broken promise) and moving across the street to UMC was Don’s way of resolving it.

In addition to Don’s success as a senior executive, he also had significant success as a private investor including, but not limited to;

Don was the first outside investor in Silicon Labs (SLAB; NASDAQ) one of the premier success stories of the Austin high tech boom, and he was the first outside investor in Broadcom (BRCM; NASDAQ) one of the most successful startup semiconductor companies of all time.

One thing that impresses me about Don and other semiconductor legends is their dedication to family. In my opinion, fifty plus year marriages show true character, compassion, and the ability to compromise. My father’s parents were married for 72 years, I saw it first hand, something I aspire to.

There is a lot more to Don’s TSMC story of course and that is what I will cover in Part II.

Also Read:

August 30, 2023September 10, 2023

Arm Inches Up the Infrastructure Value Chain

Arm Inches Up the Infrastructure Value Chain
by Bernard Murphy on 08-30-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: AI, Arm, IP, TSMC

Arm just revealed at HotChips their compute subsystems (CSS) direction led by CSS N2. The intent behind CSS is to provide pre-integrated, optimized and validated subsystems to accelerate time to market for infrastructure system builders. Think HPC servers, wireless infrastructure, big edge systems for industry, city, enterprise automation. This for me answers how Arm can add more value to system developers without becoming a chip company. They know their technology better than anyone else; by providing pre-designed, optimized and validated subsytems – cores, coherent interconnect, interrupt, memory management and I/O interfaces, together with SystemReady validation – they can chop a big chunk out of the total system development cycle.

Accelerating Custom Silicon

A completely custom design around core, interconnect, and other IPs obviously provides maximum flexibility and ability to differentiate but at a cost. That cost isn’t only in development but also in time to deployment. Time is becoming a very critical factor in fast moving markets – just look at AI and the changes it is driving in hyperscaler datacenters. I have to believe current economic uncertainties compound these concerns.

Those pressures are likely forcing an emphasis on differentiating only where essential and standardizing everywhere else, especially when proven experts can take care of a big core component. CSS provides a very standard yet configurable subsystem for many-core compute, include N2 cores (in this case), the coherent mesh network between those cores, together with interrupt and memory management, cache hierarchy, chiplet support through UCIe or custom interfaces, DDR5/LPDDR5 external memory interface, PCIe/CXL Gen5 for fast IO and or coherent IO, expansion IO, and system management.

All PPA optimized for an advanced 5nm TSMC process and proven SystemReady® with a reference software stack. The system developer still has plenty of scope for differentiation through added accelerators, specialized compute, their own power management, etc.

Neoverse V2

Arm also announced a next step in the Neoverse V-series, unsurprisingly improved over the V1 version with improved integer performance and reduction in system level cache misses. There is improvement on a variety of other benchmarks also.

Also noteworthy is its performance in the NVIDIA Grace-Hopper combo (based on Neoverse V2). NVIDIA shared real hardware data with Arm on performance versus Intel Sapphire Rapids and AMD Genoa. In raw performance the Grace CPU was mostly at par with AMD and generally faster than Sapphire Rapids by 30-40%.

Most striking for me was their calculation for a datacenter limited to 5MW, important because all datacenters are ultimately power limited. In this case Grace bested AMD in performance by between 70% and 150% and was far ahead of Intel.

Net value

First on Neoverse’s contribution to Grace-Hopper – wow. That system is at the center of the tech universe right now, thanks to AI in general and large language models in particular. This is an incredible reference. Second, while I’m sure that Intel and AMD can deliver better peak performance than Arm-based systems, and Grace-Hopper workloads are somewhat specialized, (a) most workloads don’t need high end performance and (b) AI is getting into everything now. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make a case that, for cost and sustainability over a complete datacenter, Arm-based systems shouldn’t play a much bigger role especially as expense budgets tighten.

For CSS-N2, based on their own analysis Arm estimates up to 80 engineering years of effort required to develop the CSS N2 level of integration, a number that existing customers confirm is in the right ballpark. In an engineer-constrained environment, this is 80 engineering years they can drop from their program cost and schedule without compromising whatever secret differentiation the want to add around the compute core.

These look like very logical next steps for Arm in their Neoverse product line. Faster performance in the V-series and let customers take advantage of Arm’s own experience and expertise in building N2-based compute systems, while leaving open lots of room for adding their own special sauce. You can read the press release HERE.

August 25, 2023August 27, 2023

The First TSMC CEO James E. Dykes

The First TSMC CEO James E. Dykes
by Daniel Nenni on 08-25-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: Foundries, TSMC
3 Comments

Most people ( including ChatGPT) think Morris Chang was the first TSMC CEO but it was in fact Jim Dykes, a very interesting character in the semiconductor industry.

According to his eulogy: Jim came from the humblest of beginnings, easily sharing that he grew up in a house without running water and never had a bed of his own. But because of his own drive, coupled with compassion, leadership, and intelligence, he was indeed a genuine “success story.” He was honored in his profession with awards too numerous to list. During his long career he held leadership positions in several companies, including Radiation, Harris, General Electric, Philips North America and TSMC in Taiwan. His work took him to locales in Florida, California, North Carolina and Texas as well as overseas, but he returned to his Florida roots to retire, living both in Fort McCoy and St. Augustine.

Jim was known around the semiconductor industry as a friendly, funny, approachable person. I did not know him but some of my inner circle did. According to semiconductor lore, Jim Dykes was forced on Morris Chang by the TSMC Board of Directors due to his GE Semiconductor experience and Philips connections. Unfortunately Jim and Morris were polar opposites and didn’t get along. Jim left TSMC inside the two year mark and was replaced by Morris himself. Morris didn’t like Philips looking over his shoulder and stated that the TSMC CEO must be Taiwanese and he was not wrong in my opinion. Morris then hired Don Brooks as President of TSMC. I will write more about Don Brooks next because he had a lasting influence on TSMC that is not generally known.

One thing Jim left behind that is searchable is industry presentations. My good friend and co-author Paul McLellan covered Jim’s “Four Little Dragons of the Orient and an Emerging Role Model for Semiconductor Companies” presentation quite nicely HERE. This presentation was made in January of 1988 while Jim was just starting as CEO of TSMC. I have a PDF copy in case you are interested.

“I maintain we are no less than a precursor of an entirely new way of doing business in semiconductors. We are a value-added manufacturer with a unique charter… We can have no designs or product of our own. T-S-M-C was established to bridge the gap between what our customers can design and what they can market.”

“We consider ourselves to be a strategic manufacturing resource, not an opportunistic one. We exist because today’s semiconductor companies and users need a manufacturing partner they can trust and our approach, where we and our customers in effect spread costs among many users, yet achieve the economics each seeks, makes it a win-win for everyone.”

So from the very beginning TSMC’s goal was to be the Trusted Foundry Partner which still stands today. From the current TSMC vision and mission statement:

“Our mission is to be the trusted technology and capacity provider of the global logic IC industry for years to come.”

Another interesting Jim Dykes presentation “TSMC Outlook May 1988” is on SemiWiki. It is more about Taiwan than TSMC but interesting just the same.

“Taiwan, by comparison, is more like Silicon Valley. You find in Taiwan the same entrepreneurial spirit the same willingness to trade hard work for business success and the opportunities to make it happen, that you find in Santa Clara County, and here in the Valley of the Sun. Even Taiwan’s version of Wall Street will seem familiar to many of you. There’s a red-hot stock market where an entrepreneur can take a company public and become rich overnight.”

I agree with this statement 100% and experienced it first hand in the 1990s through today, absolutely.

I was also able to dig up a Jim Dykes presentation “TO BE OR NOT TO BE” from 1982 when he was VP of the Semiconductor Division at GE. In this paper Jim talks about the pros and cons of being a captive semiconductor manufacturer. Captive is what we now call system fabless companies or companies that make their own chips for complete systems they sell (Apple). Remember, at the time, computer system companies were driving the semiconductor industry and had their own fabs: IBM, HP, DEC, DG, etc… so we have come full circle with systems companies making their own chips again.

Speaking of DG (Data General), I read Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder during my undergraduate studies and absolutely fell in love with the technology. In fact, after graduating, I went to work for DG which was featured in the book.

I have a PDF copy of Jim’s “TO BE OR NOT TO BE” presentation in case you are interested.

Also read:

August 21, 2023September 1, 2024

How Intel, Samsung and TSMC are Changing the World

How Intel, Samsung and TSMC are Changing the World
by Mike Gianfagna on 08-21-2023 at 10:00 am
Categories: Analytics, Foundries, Intel Foundry, Samsung Foundry, TSMC
3 Comments

Given the changes in the music business, the term “Rock Star” doesn’t really have any relevance to music or its performers anymore. Instead, we use the term to describe leaders, innovators and generally people or organizations of great significance. In the world of semiconductors, the designers of advanced chips were the rock stars for a long time. Those who put those chips in packages were regarded as the clean-up crew. A roadie for the rock star at best.

Thanks to the coming revolution of multi-die design, packaging is now a fundamental technology driver and advanced packaging engineers are now the rock stars. These trends promise to change the semiconductor industry and the world. SemiWiki recently received some compelling data on this topic. The sources of the data are just as interesting as the data itself. Read on to understand how Intel, Samsung and TSMC are changing the world.

The Data, Who is Watching What

This all began with an email from The Bulleit Group entitled Intel Stock Down, Why TSMC Might Be Responsible. The Bulleit Group, in its own words, was founded in 2012 by Kyle Arteaga and Alex Hunter over a glass of Bulleit Bourbon (no relation). Once I read that, I had to learn more. This is a tech agency with a twist – a singular focus on what’s next, how to get there and what it means. The company’s rotating home page graphic illuminates its mission.

We tell stories about:

the future
frontier technology
sci-fi becoming reality
a better world
challenging the status quo
mavericks
the nexus of technology and culture

The punch line is:

Throughout the past ten years, technology has changed everything about the way we live. We’re focused on the next ten.

I found it gratifying that a forward-looking, award-winning organization like this was interested in semiconductor packaging. But this isn’t the end of the story. The Bulleit Group was writing to share information it had received from LexisNexis, another catchy name I hadn’t heard of.

LexisNexis is an intellectual property solutions provider. The company’s tagline is Bringing Clarity to Innovation. In its own words, we are proud to directly support and serve (innovators) in their endeavors to better humankind. Another award-winning and unique organization with a global perspective. And their team is focused on semiconductor packaging. Life is good.

The Data, What it Means

Let’s look at what LexisNexis is saying. Since the organization focuses on IP, a patent analysis is in its wheelhouse. This analysis was based on 37,779 patent families active on 07/20/2023. That’s a lot of data to analyze. The results are quite interesting. Below are the top ten patent producers.

Top ten patent producers

TSMC, Samsung and Intel are clearly in the lead. The Bulleit Group summarizes this data as follows:

LexisNexis discusses the different approaches of semiconductor companies regarding advanced packaging, with Intel focusing on high-performance computing, for example, Samsung targets high-volume assembly, and TSMC aims to capture a wide range of trends from low-cost to high-performance computing. In addition, these topics are not only important to the manufacturers above, but these topics are also relevant to fabless companies such as AMD, Apple, Broadcom, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc., particularly in the continuing demand for AI-enabled technologies.

Reuters covered these trends in a recently published story. The article commented, “Advanced packaging is crucial for improving semiconductor designs as it becomes more difficult to pack more transistors onto a single piece of silicon. Packaging technology enabled the industry to stitch together several chips called “chiplets” – either stacked or adjacent to one another – within the same container.” Once again, the mainstream media has taken notice of significant, world-changing trends in semiconductors. Honestly, this feels quite good.

“They seem to be the ones that pulled the field forward, and set the technology standard,” said LexisNexis PatentSight Managing Director Marco Richter in an interview, referring to TSMC, Samsung and Intel.

Additional insights from LexisNexis illustrate the substantial growth of the advanced packaging sector. See below. Back to that rock star comment.

Advanced packaging trends

To Learn More

If you’re interested in digging deeper, here are two reports from LexisNexis that may be of interest:

Innovation Momentum 2023: The Global Top 100

Exploring the Global Sustainable Innovation Landscape: The Top 100 Companies and Beyond

The second report dives into the links between sustainability and technology innovation. And that’s how Intel, Samsung and TSMC are changing the world.

Also Read:

Intel Enables the Multi-Die Revolution with Packaging Innovation

TSMC Redefines Foundry to Enable Next-Generation Products

VLSI Symposium – Intel PowerVia Technology

TSMC Doubles Down on Semiconductor Packaging!

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023

How Philips Saved TSMC

How Philips Saved TSMC
by Daniel Nenni on 08-21-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: Foundries, TSMC

TSMC and Philips have deep historical ties. In fact, TSMC may not have existed without Philips. In the 1980s TSMC was established as a joint venture with Philips Electronics, the government of Taiwan, and other private investors. Several semiconductor companies were approached by Morris Chang for funding including semiconductor giants Intel and Texas Instruments but neither chose to participate. Both Intel and TI are now TSMC customers so it came full circle.

Only Philips was willing to sign a joint venture contract with Taiwan to put up $58 million in exchange for a 27.5 percent stake in TSMC. The Taiwanese government provided another 48 percent of the startup capital for TSMC and the rest of the capital was raised from private investors. The government asked several of the island’s wealthiest families who owned firms that specialized in plastics, textiles, and chemicals, to put up the money. TSMC was really a Taiwanese enterprise rather than a normal start-up semiconductor company.

It wasn’t just the money, Philips also played a crucial role in the early days of TSMC by transferring semiconductor manufacturing technology, IP and patents to the newly-formed company and working closely as an investor, partner, and customer. Philips really was the first semiconductor company to go fab-light due to the rising costs of building and operating fabs.

Even though they had a minority stake, Philips had quite a bit of influence and even installed the first TSMC CEO James E. Dykes, who had previously worked for Philips North America. I will write more about James in the next installment.

However, over time, Philips reduced its stake in TSMC, and the two companies evolved in different directions. Philips shifted its primary focus to health technology while TSMC concentrated on becoming the most successful pure-play foundry in history, absolutely. The other semiconductor powerhouse Philips has historical ties to is ASML (ASML was a spinout of Philips Labs) but that is another story in itself.

Here is some background on Philips from ChatGPT-4:

“Founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Philips, or Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Royal Philips), is a leading multinational conglomerate known for its diversified technology solutions. Initially starting as a company manufacturing incandescent lamps and other electrical products, Philips expanded over the decades into various sectors.

Here’s a brief overview of Philips’ trajectory over the years:

Early Days (1891 – 1920s): The company initially focused on producing carbon-filament lamps. They soon became one of the largest producers in Europe.

Radio and Electronics (1920s – 1940s): Philips entered the radio market in the 1920s. By the 1930s, they were one of the largest radio manufacturers in the world. They also started producing X-ray and radio technology during this period.

Post-war Era (1940s – 1960s): After World War II, Philips was involved in the revival of the Stirling engine. They also diversified into products like television sets and shavers during this period.

Electronics Expansion (1970s – 1990s): Philips expanded further into electronics, producing items like cassette tapes, CD players, and other home electronics. The company co-developed the Compact Disc (CD) with Sony.

2000s and beyond: In the 21st century, Philips started streamlining its operations to focus on health technology and personal health solutions. They sold off or spun off many non-core divisions, such as their semiconductor division (NXP Semiconductors) and their lighting division (Signify). The company’s primary focus has been on healthcare, diagnostic imaging, patient monitoring, health informatics, and personal care.

Throughout its history, Philips has been known for innovation and has been responsible for a number of significant technological advancements. The company operates globally and continues to be a major player in the fields it is active in.“

The Dutch had an even deeper connection to Taiwan dating back hundreds of years. Here is a 10 minute history video that covers it nicely and is well worth watching:

Next up: TSMC’s first CEO James E. Dykes and the Taiwan Semiconductor Outlook (May 1988).

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August 14, 2023August 15, 2023

Morris Chang’s Journey to Taiwan and TSMC

Morris Chang’s Journey to Taiwan and TSMC
by Daniel Nenni on 08-14-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: Foundries, TSMC
2 Comments

High volume manufacturing is a 24/7 business with 12 hour shifts. You don’t always get to pick the shifts you want and you must cover for others when they can’t. It’s a challenging career and not for the faint of heart like myself.

In the 1980s and 1990s I spent time in Japan working with some of the top Japanese semiconductor manufacturers. It was an amazing experience but I walked away wondering how the US would be able to compete. The Japanese people I met worked very hard to honor their families and country. Back in the United States we worked 9-5 for a paycheck. Morris Chang knew this from his experience at TI and that is why he headed to Taiwan.

As I have written, Taiwan’s early start into semiconductors did not begin with Morris Chang but he does figure in prominently in Taiwan’s rise to dominance. Here is a brief biography of Morris (ChatGPT 4.0):

“Morris Chang (张忠谋) is widely recognized as the father of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. Born in 1931 in Ningbo, China, Chang moved to the U.S. in the late 1940s, where he pursued higher education in the field of physics and engineering.

Here are a few key points about Morris Chang:

Education: Morris Chang holds degrees from several esteemed institutions. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Texas Instruments: Before his endeavors in Taiwan, Chang worked at Texas Instruments (TI) in the United States for 25 years. During his tenure there, he held various senior positions including Group Vice President of the Worldwide Semiconductor Group.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC): In 1987, Chang founded the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). TSMC is the world’s first dedicated semiconductor foundry, meaning it manufactures chips for other companies without designing its own products. This business model transformed the global semiconductor industry, enabling a myriad of fabless semiconductor companies to focus on chip design without having to invest in expensive manufacturing facilities.
Economic Impact: Under Chang’s leadership, TSMC became a cornerstone of Taiwan’s IT industry, propelling the country into a major role in the global semiconductor market. Taiwan’s importance in chip manufacturing can’t be overstated, with TSMC at the forefront of cutting-edge semiconductor technology and production.
Retirement: Chang retired from TSMC in 2018, but his influence in the semiconductor world and his legacy as a pioneer in the foundry business model will persist for years to come.
Recognition: Chang has received numerous awards and honors over the years in recognition of his contributions to the semiconductor industry and his visionary leadership.

In summary, Morris Chang is a seminal figure in the semiconductor industry, especially in the foundry business model. His leadership and strategic vision not only transformed the industry but also elevated Taiwan’s standing in the global tech ecosystem.“

From a semiconductor insider’s point of view, there is a lot more to this story. Morris started his education at Harvard but MIT turned out to be more to his liking both financially and technically. For engineers, MIT was the place to be and Morris was an engineer at heart. Morris chose mechanical engineering but he quickly became obsessed with the transistor during his first job right out of college.

After graduating from MIT (1955) Morris went to work for Sylvania, a company with a long history in lighting and electronics. After 3 years Morris wanted to go where the transistor innovation was and that was Texas Instruments. His dream was to be the head of the central research labs at TI but Morris did not have a PhD, or even a degree in electrical engineering. In fact, he twice failed a qualifying exam for a doctoral degree at M.I.T.

Morris first worked in the germanium transistor business which would soon be surpassed by the silicon transistor. TI was IBMs major supplier (20% of TI’s revenue) and Morris was in charge of the IBM program. Getting yields ramped up was the first big challenge for Morris. He burned the midnight oil and cracked the yield code and became a hero. Morris was promoted to the head of the germanium transistor program and in 1963 he was sent to Stanford to get his PhD for further advancement. He Finished the PhD program in a record time (2.5 years) while still spending time at TI.

When Morris returned to TI full time, germanium was no longer leading edge technology so Morris took a leadership position with the TI IC group. Morris’s influence grew and in 1973 he became head of the semiconductors group and again became a hero. TI was the king of TTL (Transistor – Transistor Logic) with a 60% market share and more than $1B in revenue, but TTL was soon replaced by MOS and TI lost the MOS race.

SemiWiki: Texas Instruments and the TTL Wars

Morris’s downfall at TI was MOS memory and microprocessors. Other companies caught up with TI (Mostek) and in some cases surpassed them. Microprocessors became the next big thing and TI had the first microprocessor patent, not Intel or Motorola. When IBM chose the Intel 8088 microprocessor for their first personal computer over the TI TMS9900 and the Motorola 6800 (amongst others), Morris took this as a personal defeat.

In 1977 Morris’s departure from TI officially started when he was removed as Group VP of Semiconductors and became Group VP of Consumer Products, a somewhat troubled business at the time (calculators and toys). Morris was then moved to head of corporate quality and his fall from grace was complete. Morris wasn’t fired from TI but his departure was not unexpected.

Morris then spent a difficult two years (1984-86) at General Instruments under CEO Frank Hickey before calling it quits and heading to Taiwan. I was a field engineer for GI during the Hickey era (1979-82) and it was a tumultuous time for the company, absolutely.

Bottom Line: The work ethic and experience Morris developed through his career with innovative electronic and semiconductor companies was the perfect foundation for the customer centric pure-play foundry model that is TSMC. It should be noted that TI is today a semiconductor powerhouse, one of the longest standing semiconductor companies in the world. TI is also a long standing customer of TSMC.

To be continued…. How Philips saved TSMC!

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August 7, 2023August 14, 2023

How Taiwan Saved the Semiconductor Industry

How Taiwan Saved the Semiconductor Industry
by Daniel Nenni on 08-07-2023 at 6:00 am
Categories: Foundries, TSMC
4 Comments

Now that semiconductors are front page news and a political football, I would like to write more about how we got to where we are today to better understand where semiconductors will go tomorrow. I will start this article with a provocative quote that really made me laugh and will put some context to what I am trying to accomplish here:

Trump accuses Taiwan of taking away America’s semiconductor business “Taiwan, they took our business away. We should have stopped them. We should have taxed them. We should have tariffed them,” said Donald Trump, Fox News, July 2023.

I know, American politics is an acquired taste but it is funny just the same. We already covered the fabless transformation in our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” so let’s start with a quick look at the history of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan (GPT 4.0):

The semiconductor industry in Taiwan has a rich history that spans several decades, starting from the 1970s to the present day. The industry has played a crucial role in Taiwan’s economic transformation from an agrarian economy to one of the world’s top high-tech industrialized nations.

Here are some of the key milestones:

“Formation of Electronics Research and Service Organization (ERSO): In 1973, the Taiwanese government established ERSO under the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Its aim was to develop the electronics industry in Taiwan and provide a platform for semiconductor research and development.

Birth of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC): In 1987, TSMC, the world’s first dedicated semiconductor foundry, was founded by Dr. Morris Chang. The establishment of TSMC initiated the foundry model in the global semiconductor industry, which separated the manufacturing and design aspects of chip production. This allowed fabless companies to focus on designing innovative chip solutions without the need for significant capital investments in manufacturing facilities.

Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park: The Taiwanese government established this park in 1980 to serve as a hub for high-tech companies. It now houses numerous semiconductor companies and has played a significant role in the growth of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.

Expansion of other major semiconductor companies: Over the years, several other Taiwanese companies have become key players in the global semiconductor industry. These include United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), the world’s second-largest pure-play semiconductor foundry, MediaTek, a leading fabless semiconductor company, and ASE Technology Holding Co., the world’s largest provider of independent semiconductor manufacturing services in assembly and test.

Leadership in Advanced Process Technology: In recent years, TSMC, in particular, has emerged as a global leader in advanced process technologies, successfully achieving mass production at ever smaller node sizes (7nm, 5nm, 3nm and planning for 2nm and beyond). This has placed Taiwan at the forefront of the global semiconductor industry.

While this summary provides a brief overview, the history of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is rich and complex, driven by strategic government initiatives, visionary leadership, strong educational programs, and the rise of the global digital economy. As of 2023, Taiwan is one of the world’s largest and most important centers for semiconductor manufacturing.”

Great summary, here is a little color on what happened. When I joined the semiconductor industry in the 1980s it was a challenging decade. Mini computer companies such as IBM, Hewlet-Packard, Digital Equipment, Data General, Prime Computer, and Wang all had their own fabs all over the United States. Unfortunately, due to over regulation (especially here in California) and the inability to hire skilled workers (sound familiar?), manufacturing of all types left the US for more friendly countries.

Additionally, in the 1980s, there were quite a few economic ups and downs including the crash of 1985. Keeping these very expensive fabs running was difficult which spawned the IDM foundry business where US and Japanese semiconductor companies accepted designs from outside customers for contract manufacturing to fill their fabs.

One of the first big fabless companies to do this was FPGA vendor Xilinx (founded in 1984, now owned by AMD). Sieko Epson (Japan) was Xilinx’s first IDM foundry partner. Xilinx quickly outgrew the relationship and moved to UMC and then TSMC which is where they are today.

Clearly IDM foundries were a stop-gap solution back then since they routinely competed with customers and the foundry business had lower margins than the products they manufactured internally so those products always had priority in the fabs.

Also in the 1980s, the ASIC business model was developed by VLSI Technology (founded in 1979) and LSI Logic (founded in 1980). VLSI and LSI accepted designs from fabless companies and manufactured them using internal fabs. But again the cost of the fabs was prohibitive. The ASIC business model is again thriving but it is now populated by fabless ASIC companies who do the design and manage manufacturing through the foundries.

Bottom line: The early IDM foundries and ASIC companies created the perfect storm for the pure-play foundry business model that fully evolved in the 1990s and that is where Dr. Morris Chang comes in.

To be continued… Morris Chang’s journey to Taiwan.

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