History really has a sense of humor. Do you remember when Mao Zedong was trying to conquer Taiwan by force? The United States intervened and stationed Nike nuclear missiles on Taiwan in 1958 to deter China. Bad for Chinese reunification and good for the U.S.? Not so fast.
Since Taiwan was de facto independent and a ward of the United States, Taiwanese students were permitted to study in the U.S. and learn about semiconductors. In 1964, Taiwan licensed its first transistor design from General Instruments.
I read the American plan was to use Taiwan for cheap assembly. They never imagined the Taiwanese and little Taiwan could muscle their way into chip design. The Americans misjudged Taiwanese. Remember what I said earlier about all Taiwanese wanting to run their own companies?
Anyway, between its start in 1964 and 2011, Taiwan swallowed up the chip industry (see below).
The story gets funnier. Basically, American electronics and semiconductor know-how was transferred/diffused from Silicon Valley to Taiwan's Hsinchu Park. Now, the same know-how is being transferred from ex-employees of TSMC to China's SMIC. Sometimes, delayed reunification can yield unimaginable benefits.
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Taiwan now the world's leading chip maker
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Taiwan now the world's leading chip maker
Peter Clarke
1/13/2012 10:28 AM EST
LONDON –
As of July 2011 Taiwan held 21 percent of the world's installed wafer fabrication capacity, surpassing Japan and Korea and taking the top spot for the first time, according to market research firm IC Insights.
Japan held 19.7 percent and Korea 16.8 percent, the Americas region has 14.7 percent of the IC manufacturing capacity and China, with 8.9 percent now accounts for more wafer capacity than Europe.
These figures include local manufacturing capacity regardless of the headquarters location of the companies that own the fabs. So Samsung manufacturing in Austin, Texas contributes to the Americas percentage.
The ROW "region" consists primarily of Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, but also includes countries such as Russia, Belarus, India, South Africa, and Australia.
IC Insights indicated as Taiwan holds 25.4 percent of manufacturing on 300-mm diameter wafers, 18.7 percent of 200-mm wafer capacity, and 11.4 percent of 150-mm wafer capacity. In 2011, 300mm wafers represented 64.6% of the country's installed capacity, 200mm wafers, 29.2%; and 150mm wafers accounted for 6.1%.
Taiwan also holds the industry's largest share of capacity dedicated to "not so leading-edge" 40- to 60-nm process geometries."
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Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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SMIC was founded in 2000 by Richard Chang (Traditional Chinese: 張汝京
, a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur who had previously worked at Texas Instruments and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). Under Chang’s leadership, SMIC built its first fab in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai, China, and subsequently expanded its manufacturing operations to other cities in mainland China.
SMIC is currently the largest and most advanced semiconductor foundry in mainland China. The company was listed on the SEHK and New York Stock Exchange in 2004."
