Cao Xingcheng and Zhang Zhongmou once known as Taiwan's semiconductor industry, "Shuangxiong", is also an out-and-out 'enemy', their 'struggle' stretches for more than 20 years, almost throughout the entire history of Taiwan's IT industry.
Today, Zhang Zhong became global hegemony, he has become an outsider.
TSMC achieved a revenue of 33 billion U.S. dollars (about 208.7 billion yuan) and a net profit of nearly 80 billion yuan in fiscal 2017. In March 2017, TSMC broke the market value of one trillion yuan to surpass Intel to become the world's largest semiconductor company, Today, its market capitalization is as high as 226.2 billion U.S. dollars, making it the largest market capitalization enterprise in Taiwan.
In the same year, TSMC, which was also called Shuangxiong with TSMC, reported a revenue of only 32.2 billion yuan (149.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017 and a net profit of 2.0 billion yuan (9.6 billion Taiwanese dollars) at a market capitalization of only TSMC's fraction, can be described as all-round backward.
Back in 30 years, the situation of Taiwan UFI is not the case.
Since the 1990s, the IT industry has been the backbone of Taiwan's economy and the semiconductor foundry has been the backbone of Taiwan's IT industry. For a long time, the well-known IT companies in Taiwan benefited from this fundamental advantage.
The rise of Taiwan's semiconductor foundry has benefited from a major innovation in its industry model.
Prior to this, the world's leading semiconductor companies are from design to manufacture big package of large finishes .Dial design into the billions of dollars at its own start, only a lot more chip manufacturing.This makes the semiconductor technology and capital into a double-intensive expensive Industry, the entire market has also been firmly in control of several giants, then seldom have the opportunity to cut into.
Taiwan's big innovation in the semiconductor industry divides design and manufacturing into two parts, which have spawned two new industries: chip design and chip manufacturing. Simply put, it is to let design-capable companies focus on designing and letting Manufacturing companies focus on manufacturing and design and manufacturing do better because of focus.
This subdivision greatly reduced the cost of finding food and eating into the semiconductor industry. As a result, the market dominated by a few oligarchies changed and TSMC's Zhang Zhongmou was considered as the initiator of this change.
In the late 1980s, Zhang Zhongmou, who has been the world's largest semiconductor company, Texas Instruments for many years and had mastered the semi-conductor industry world war for many years, was invited to Taiwan to help develop the semiconductor industry. His final choice was to set up a company that focused on semiconductor foundry, Manufacturing company, which is today's TSMC.
This division of Zhang Zhongmou, so that there is no strength to take into account the manufacture of chip design companies, TSMC can be used as its own manufacturing plant, and thus to compete with the traditional semiconductor giants and chip applications extended to the traditional semiconductor giant no time to take into account when these Design companies continue to win in the competition, success in new areas, it also gives TSMC an endless stream of orders, but also accelerated the overall prosperity of the semiconductor industry.
This is TSMC to the global semiconductor industry brought about the biggest change in the greatest contribution to make its lead in the traditional model can not compete with Intel's AMD has so far maintained a very active, and Qualcomm, Apple, etc. also Have benefited from the foundry model of TSMC, was able to focus on the design and brand.
Well-known management professor Michael Porter therefore claimed that Zhang Zhongmou did not start a business, but to create and accomplish two major industries: a professional semiconductor manufacturing industry, a professional semiconductor design industry .Taiwan media more directly called Zhang Zhongmou Taiwan Economic savior.
But one person scoffed at these accolades Zhang Zhongmou had received. This man is Cao Xingcheng.
In Cao Xingcheng opinion, chip foundry is their own ideas, Zhang Zhongmou is only a 'plagiarist' he had publicly expressed this view, but Zhang Zhongmou never responded.
Compared to Zhang Zhongmou, Cao Xingcheng a lot lower starting point of life, resumes should be much thinner.
Zhang was born in mainland China and his father was a government official who lived an excellent life since childhood. He studied in Harvard, Massachusetts and Stanford, and built Texas Instruments and was invited to Taiwan as a global winner in the semiconductor industry.
Cao Xingcheng was born in Taichung County, Shimizu Township, ranked sixth in the family, his father is a primary school teacher because of poor family, one person to study in Taipei, he also had no money to rent a house, and the tricycle drivers live in the iron house, Reading each day while enjoying the bottom of the community life.
After graduating from high school, Cao Xingcheng to obtain a high score motor University of Taiwan, then entered the Taipei National Chiao Tung University Institute of Management Science Master, to contact the semiconductor industry, he is the Institute of Electronics Industry, Taiwan, deputy director.
At the time when the ITRI was preoccupied with technological innovations, Cao Xingcheng was known as the "Idea King." At that time, the semiconductor industry in Taiwan was just unpacked and he was able to participate fully.
In 1976, Taiwan acquired chip manufacturing technology from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in the US RCA has developed the world's first all-electronic color television picture tube and the first solar cell, but in the midst of technological change , Its development plummeted, stood on the brink of mergers and acquisitions.
At that time, the technology blockade in the United States against the semiconductor was not as strict as it is now. So Taiwan got the RCA technology and was responsible for applying the technology to a group of people at the core of the ITRI. Cao Xingcheng was one of them.
Based on the technology, with the strong support of then-Minister of Economy Sun Yun-hsuan, Electronics planned to set up an IC company because the names of the original shareholder companies all had a word of 'Hua'and the company was named UMC , That is, the famous Taiwan UMC later.
A group of male technology companies, who do management?
Hu Dinghua, director of the Institute of Electronics, made a master's degree in one of Dr. Zhong's cadets, Cao Xingcheng, for the following reasons: 'He does not make much research and management undertakings.
In 1983, Cao Xingcheng became UMC vice president, only 33 years old.
But this is not a bad one.
Because of the ultra-high threshold of the semiconductor industry, the outside world generally see the bad news, friends persuade Cao Xingcheng to stay in the system, go out of their own absolute profit and loss absolutely eat big losses .Cao Xingcheng also hesitated, but eventually decided to break one.
UMC's starting point was the same as other semiconductor companies at the time, and it was not only very hard to kick-start IC design and manufacturing, but also saw no hope in the shadow of the giants.
According to Cao Xingcheng later unilateral statement: he took office not long before they realized that such a model is difficult to succeed, so day thinking night, how to break the game, eventually came up with a semiconductor foundry program, that is, to give up the UMC is not Good at design, focus on foundry manufacturing.
At that time, Zhang Zhongmou had not yet returned to Taiwan, but he had already walked very close with Taiwan's "Ministry of Economy," and was hired as a science and technology adviser. As a result, Cao's "plagiarism" of plagiarizing his ideas came about.
According to his statement, with this idea, he wrote a plan of foundry mode, and entrusted Zhang Zhong Mou. In the planning book, Cao Xingcheng elaborated on the benefits of semiconductor foundry, but also put forward Hope and Zhang Zhong Mou cooperation, but did not get Zhang's response.
Until Zhang Zhongmou was invited back to Taiwan, served as president of Taiwan's Industrial Research Institute, and founded the next TSMC, founding the semiconductor foundry model, Cao Xingcheng only feel himself 'naive'.
Moreover, Zhang Zhongmou also served as the new chairman of UMC, Cao Xingcheng became the top boss.
Cao Xingcheng said that he never imagined that the famed semiconductor giant was the first to copy his own ideas, but people had to bow under the eaves and Cao Xingcheng only pressed indignation.
After years from now, when UMC was able to wrestle with TSMC, Cao Xingcheng referred to the past only for a long time, and Zhang Zhongmou never responded. The outside world argued endlessly and irrelevantly.
But Zhang Zhongmou left him a chance of revenge.
The founding of TSMC, but also the charge of Taiwan's UMC, Zhang Zhong ambitious enough for two purposes.In 1988, TSMC won the large orders of Intel, foundry on the right track, but the UMC is still struggling to accompany the old run.
In 1991, Cao Xingcheng, the general manager of UMC, took Zhang Zhongmou as his cause for not giving equal treatment to TSMC and TSMC. Together with other directors, they jointly removed Zhang Zhongrui, the chairman of Taiwan's UMC, and replaced himself.
At that time, Zhang Zhongmou's status was not as unbreakable as today. This incident also caused an uproar in Taiwan and was later called the "duo" semiconductor.
A few years ago when Cao Xingcheng took over the chairman, Taiwan Semiconductor took the strategy of semi-conductor foundry, IC design business and SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) in parallel, each accounting for about 30% of the three major businesses.
In the IC design, UMC flowering everywhere, from the VCD chip to the car chip to do anything, but also done a good job, but Cao Xingcheng not satisfied, he is waiting for an opportunity to regain the 'own thing'.
In 1995, the opportunity finally arrived.
This year, under the strong promotion of Zhang Zhongmou, the foundry industry was fully accepted by the industry. There was an endless stream of orders from TSMC, but the production capacity did not meet the demand. Even the strategy of allowing customers to pay for the pre-ordered production capacity was released.
This caused some dissatisfaction with customers.
Cao Xingcheng decided to seize this opportunity.He announced the transformation of Taiwan's UMC will become a foundry, the original IC design department all split out as a separate company, UMC only holding, do not operate.
Moreover, Cao Xingcheng is also chess come up with a focus on foundry plans: the chip design company to raise funds, the power of bundling together to do foundry.This arrangement has the obvious advantage is that not only can raise more funds, You can bind more orders.
Within a short period of four months, Cao Xingcheng unite with 12 American IC design companies to assemble NT $ 40 billion and set up three semi-conductor foundries in Liancheng, Lianjia and Lianrui in a single breath. In the following year, Scale expanded to four.
At the same time, Cao Xingcheng also large-scale out of Taiwan, to Japan M & A, set up factories in Singapore, not only win over a group of overseas customers, production capacity also quickly go hand in hand with TSMC.
UMC continued generous order TSMC is quite tense, and even traction TSMC's strategy.MORE, TSMC also follow the strategy of going out to the United States to set up factories.
During that period, the two companies you are fighting for me, competing against each other, and the big game code will be staged from time to time. That is also the most emotional and booming year for Taiwan's semiconductor industry.
At its most intense, in June 1997, TSMC announced that it would invest NT $ 400 billion in Vietnam, and Taiwan UEL immediately made an investment decision to invest NT $ 500 billion.
In August 1997, UMC's Lianrui started pilot production and the production capacity in the second month reached 30,000 pieces. In October, UMC's management said publicly that TSMC would be able to get rid of it within two years.
Everyone did not think that, just in the crucial moment of heroic hegemony, an accidental change of the game.
In a few days, Taiwan's UEFA released a fire caused by human negligence and swallowed the plant of Lianrui. The NT $ 10 billion investment went to nothing, and the 2 billion orders it has received have also been drained.
The fire was considered the worst fire damage in Taiwanese business. UMC paid more than NT $ 10 billion for it. Other losses are even more difficult to estimate.
This made Cao Xingcheng deeply frustrated, but he still showed an indomitable fighting spirit.
In 1999, Cao Xingcheng announced the merger of its four semiconductor foundries, and the UMC 'five in one' overall operation.This triggered the stock price rose TSMC, customers also smell the wind.
The combined UMC, second only to Intel and TSMC, has become the world's third-largest semiconductor company with the market capitalization of the fourth in the world and stimulated TSMC to follow suit again. It has forcibly acquired WorldCom's integrated circuit company in response to UMC The menacing, to ensure their leading position.
In addition to its catch-up in terms of size and capacity, TU's technology has also grown by leaps and bounds. The first copper process to produce wafers, the production of 12-inch wafers, the industry's first 65-nanometer manufacturing process chip, is its performance.
Complete transformation, strong performance after bath, but also to Cao Xingcheng fame and fortune.
In 2001, Cao Xingcheng was rated as one of the three most likely to lead the Taiwanese technology in the future, and the company is considered to be the most worthy long-term investment company.
But soon afterwards, TU hit two fatal blows again.
Before 2000, the gap between TSMC and TSMC was getting smaller and smaller. However, after 2000, TSMC not only consolidated its advantages but also widened the gap. Its core lies in its 0.13-micron process technology.
In the 0.18-micron manufacturing process, UMC was ahead of TSMC and at 0.13-micron stage, UMC chose to develop jointly with IBM and Infineon in order to stabilize its advantages, but the results of the cooperation have been rather sluggish and the three parties each have their own abilities to unite together. The project eventually failed.
After the end of the cooperation, Taiwan's UMC decided to research and development, but the technology industry, the time is the most valuable advantage, not to mention is the semiconductor with Moore's Law race in the 0.13-micron process trapped in TSU, TSMC super Up and completely throw off Taiwan UMC, Taiwan UMC never regain a city.
However, it is not technology itself that Taiwan UMC will never win again.
In 2000, Zhang Rujing, founder of Worldbest acquired by TSMC, went to the mainland to set up SMIC and copy the wafer foundry model in Taiwan. As a result, the mainland's first professional semiconductor foundry company was born.
The sudden change in the strait industry pattern has made both Cao Xingcheng and Zhang Zhongmou uneasy. Both of them are highly optimistic about the development prospects of the Mainland, but their actions are quite different.
At that time, the Taiwan authorities prevented the death of fabless factories and strictly forbade the Taiwan-funded investment in the mainland. Zhang Zhongmou chose to stay alive until the 'decree' allowed the attempt to invest and set up factories in Shanghai's Songjiang River. To the mainland founded the Suzhou and ship technology.
Cao Xingcheng very adored Zheng He seven Western feat, the name of the ship and technology from which, in the design, he also made a special request, the factory building into a ship is about to sail.
However, this ambitious warship brought great troubles to Cao Xingcheng and eventually led to Taiwan's power failure.
Forcibly "landing", leaving TSU to be severely punished by the Chen Shui-bian authorities and triggering a 'check and control' major move. The ultra-frequency search Taiwan UMC, even the high-level personnel of private homes have been repeatedly raided.
What made the authorities angry even more was that Cao Xingcheng, without any intention of "repentance," often sarcasticly exposed Chen Shui-bian authorities in public and repeatedly attacked the authorities in advertisements in the newspapers .He said with half ridicule: 'If in the morning, Go to Shanghai, and then fly back to Taiwan in the evening, so I will not be leaving the mainland.
The hawkish attitude finally brought him the court's prosecution and endless "political troubles." It is of course self-evident that the operational crisis and tests TUU encountered during this period.
Due to the frequent lawsuits, in June 2005, Cao Xingcheng resigned his post of "State Policy Consultant." With the intensification of incidents, in 2006, Cao Xingcheng was forced to resign as UMC chairman and retired.
A year later, the Taiwan Hsinchu District Court ruled that Cao Xingcheng was innocent. However, his dream of leading Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to surpass TSMC is already shattered. Taiwan's UMC has been drifting away with the departure of its soul.
After the departure of Cao Xingcheng, the semiconductor industry continues to change. Intel entered the ARM chip foundry market; Samsung set up an independent foundry department and replaced TSU as TSMC to chase after me. Violet Group Foundation, founded the Yangtze River Storage, the mainland foundry thus entered a grand era ...
With the new changes, it is almost impossible for TSL to reproduce the glory of the past, and the followers of Cao Xingcheng, whether they are Kuo Wei, Hong Jiaocong or Sun Shiwei, failed to reproduce the glory of Cao Xingcheng.
For a sudden farewell and the abrupt end of the king's dream, Cao Xingcheng never spoke out.
After retirement, his identity has become another two, one is a collector, the other is a social activist.
Cao Xingcheng keen art collection, his collection from the prehistoric bronze Tang three colors, all-encompassing, and even the media in Taiwan called his home is 'Little Imperial Palace'.
In 2008, Stuart, the worldwide vice president of Sotheby's Auction, published "The Greatest Collector of Our Time," counting the 100 most important collectors since 1945, including three Chinese, The one who is alive
Cao Xingcheng said that the collection is purely out of hobbies, not appreciation.
'The art collection's reward is the collection itself. You also want to make money, that is a bit insensitive .You marry a wife, life together, you feel very happy.Do you still think that you can sell to make money later?' He said .
However, when the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Cao Xingcheng sold a collection of 65 million Hong Kong dollars, of which half were donated to Wenchuan disaster areas, the balance donated to other charities.
In addition to the collection, Cao Xingcheng after retirement is most concerned about the sound of cross-Strait.
In November 2007, he called on Taiwan's leaders to jointly work out a plan for "peaceful co-existence of both sides of the Taiwan Straits," resolving the impasse and the plight of cross-Strait relations and repeatedly making sound calls for the peaceful cross-Strait relations.
Why suddenly bid farewell to the year, and how to treat the dominance of semiconductor overlord dream, after the goodbye Cao Xingcheng never spoke out loud, and even never talk about semiconductors.
However, in the semiconductor industry, his influence still exists, and even many people treat him more than Zhang Zhongmou more respect from his training of a new generation, and he pursued a set of management culture.
At TSMC, Zhang Zhongmou's image is very sublime and is a symbol of authoritarianism. The next level of supervisor and he are both far away from each other. In Taiwan's UMC, the biggest feature of the team is that it is neither too big nor too small that everyone can play each other's tongue and joke about each other.
Most admired by Cao Xingcheng was his willingness to share and respect for the development of the individual.When he was the general manager of UMC early in the year, he pioneered the allotment and issue of dividends and put forward that every employee should be the boss. This tactic has led Taiwanese technology companies to follow suit Incoming, thus attracting a large number of overseas talents.
Cao Xingcheng is also a loyal fan of the 28th Law. He believes that over 80% of a company's achievements are made by 20%, so he pays special attention to these people and allocates 80% of the company's profits to the top 20%.
In addition to Rangli, Cao Xingcheng has been in UMC encourage entrepreneurship and promote internal entrepreneurship.He impelled the heads of departments to set up a new company from the institutional arrangements, as the general manager, and UMC mutual cross-fertilization.
This led Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to incubate a number of emerging enterprises and also hatch a group of emerging entrepreneurs, including representative companies such as MediaTek, UF, LianYang, Wisdom Technology, etc. These enterprises are all transformed by UMC , The heads of these departments are also turned into the boss of the enterprise, formed a magnificent 'Union House'.
In 'Lianjia Bang', the most famous should be MediaTek.
Tsai Ming-shing, chairman of the leading chip design company in Asia, is even more influential than Cao Xingcheng, but until now he has seen Cao Xingcheng respectfully calling his boss.
Good at achieving others, and let a group of managers become entrepreneurs, which is the industry that Cao Xingcheng beat Zhang Zhongmou place, and won him a lot of praise.