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… Read More
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… Read More
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… Read More
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.… Read More
The TSMC 2023 North America Technology Symposium happened today so I wanted to start writing about it as there is a lot to cover. I will do summaries and other bloggers will do more in-depth coverage on the technology side in the coming weeks. Having worked in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem the majority of my 40 year semiconductor… Read More
Mad scientists have been a staple of Hollywood science fiction since Dr Victor Frankenstein created his eponymous monster in 1931. Pre-pandemic, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the main source of on-screen geeks-turned-superheroes, from Iron Man’s Tony Stark to Ant Man’s Hank Pym.
When it comes to real-life scientists on… Read More
The media is trying to disparage the semiconductor industry again. It’s hard to not take this type of desperate journalism personal. Semiconductor people are the smartest and hardest working people in the world and we deserve better, absolutely.
TSMC founder sees trade dispute as ‘reality show with no script’… Read More
TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang. At about the same time, I was wrestling with the question of whether or not to join Actel. Morris had been a top executive at Texas Instruments during the period when TI took ownership of the TTL market. (See my week #8. Texas Instruments and the TTL Wars) I have to admit that when I first … Read More
Growing up in a military family, mostly in California, I would consider my cultural diversity life experience to be more than most. I remember in the 1960s some older folks were chattering about a colored family moving into our neighborhood and they had a son my age. Imagine my excitement as a child in having a multicolored friend!… Read More
Among the companies that bought a license from AT&T to produce the transistor was Sony. While the U.S. maintained its lead in technology, other countries like Japan emerged as competitors. Semiconductor manufacturing was both labor intensive… Read More
