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Morris Chang

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楼主
发表于 8-8-2023 15:13:37 | 只看该作者 回帖奖励 |倒序浏览 |阅读模式
The (1) was published in English on Sunday, Aug 6, 2023 but because it was long and translation needed time, it was published on Ny.times.com today (Tuesday, Aug 8, 2023). It is also more important and newsworthy -- I learned for the first time why Dr Morris Chang went to Taiwan -- than (2). There is no need, in my view, to read the rest of )2_. Other than quotations.

(1) 孟建国 and John Liu, 专访台积电 '教父' 张忠谋:中国难成全球芯片霸主. 纽约时报中文网, Aug 8, 2023
https://cn.nytimes.com/technolog ... of-a-tech-cold-war/

, which is translated from

Paul Mozur and and John Liu, His Life's Work Is at the Center of a US-China Cold War; At 92, Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, can no longer stay in the shadows. New York Times. Aug 6, 2023.at page B1; followed by text on pages B4-5 with another set of title and subtitle:
Paul Mozur and and John Liu, A Chip Titan Can No Longer Stay Offstage in a Tech War; Morris Chang's aha moment led himn to outmaneuver industry giants to build the biggest [;ayer in the semiconductor wprld.

Note:
(a) "In a wood-paneled office overlooking Taipei and the jungle-covered mountains that surround the Taiwanese capital, Morris Chang recently pulled out an old book stamped with technicolor patterns.   It was titled 'Introduction to VLSI Systems,' a graduate-level textbook describing the intricacies of computer chip design. Mr Chang, 92, held it up with reverence.   'I want to show you the date of this book, 1980,' he said. The timing was important, he added, as it was 'the earliest piece' in a puzzle that came together for him * * *"
(i) The "jingle" in "jungle-covered mountains" is an exaggeration. I went to a few mountains -- all low -- around Taipei, none of which is covered with jungle, for it is impossible. The rain is not that much (as a jungle requires).
(ii)  
(A) Carver Mead and Lynn Conway, Introduction to VLSI Systems. self-published (they were the publishers), 1978.
https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people ... SIText/PP-V2/V2.pdf
• There is just one edition. No second edition, that is.
• The cover is shown here. This is printed by "Addison-Wesley, Philippines" in 1980, because it was printed in the Philippines for local consumption.
• Lynn Conway will be discussed in another posting.
(B) Mead–Conway VLSI chip design revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead–Conway_VLSI_chip_design_revolution
("the textbook * * * became a bestseller, since it was the first VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) design textbook usable by non-physicists")

The "physicists" here mean "device physicists who fabricated the chips" mentioned a sentence earlier in this Wiki page.

(b) "So at the age of 54 [born in 1931, that translates to 1985], when many people begin thinking more about retirement, Mr Chang instead put himself on a path to turn his insight into a reality. The engineer left his adopted country, the United States, and moved to Taiwan where he founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC [in 1987]. * * * Today, the company [TSMC] that partially exists because of a textbook is a $500 billion [market capitalization] juggernaut * * * the United States, Japan and Europe have courted TSMC to build them in their neck of the woods. * * * Over a recent three-hour discussion in his office, Mr. Chang made it clear that he identifies as American — he obtained his US citizenship in 1962 [age 31; 13 years after he came to the US in 1949]"
(i) All (Britons and Americans) agree that "neck of the wood" was coined in the US, not in England.
(A) neck of the woods (n; etymology: "neck" in English or "naiack" in Algonquian)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neck_of_the_woods
(B) Where Does the Phrase "My Neck of the Woods" come from? The Guardians, undated (under the heading "Semantic Enigmas" in "Notes & Queries")  
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22668,00.html%E2%80%8E
(Matthew Carmody, London UK: " 'Neck' had been used in English since around 1555 to describe a narrow strip of land, usually surrounded by water [on both sides of land] * * * But the Americans were the first to apply 'neck' to a narrow stand of woods [without water] or, more importantly, to a settlement located in a particular part of the woods")
(ii) "three-hour discussion in his office"
• So, in Note (a) he pulled out the textbook from his office, not home.
• 賴琬莉, 【張忠謀退休生活2】退休週年直擊 張忠謀辦公室獨家曝光. Mirror Media 鏡週刊, Aug 20, 2019 (updated on 更新時間 Aug 21, 2019)
https://tw.news.yahoo.com/%E5%BC ... 5%89-215858875.html
https://www.mirrormedia.mg/premium/20190820fin012
("在信義區一棟商辦大樓,辦公室外掛著小小「張忠謀、張淑芬辦公室」招牌,此處就是半導體教父退休後的落腳處")


(c) "And unlike today's tech moguls — such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who have publicly considered a cage fight — Mr Chang has shown more restraint. If competition between the global tech giants is a series of high-stakes poker games, he is the quiet man who runs the casino.

Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_vs._Mark_Zuckerberg
("The two jostled for third place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index until a rally in shares of Tesla, Inc. helped Musk overtake Zuckerberg in August 2020. * * * In May 2023, Zuckerberg completed his first Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament * * * Replying to a Twitter user informing him that Zuckerberg 'does the ju jitsu [sic] now' in response to another user writing that Instagram's Twitter competitor will be called Threads, Musk said that he was 'up for a cage match if he is' ")

The "[sic]" was in original. because the user misspelled: "ju" should have been "jiu."

(d) " 'My old world crumbled as the mainland changed its color, and a new world was yet to be established,' he wrote in his autobiography, which was published in 1998.   In 1949, Mr Chang moved to the United States, attending Harvard [for a year, as freshman] before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study mechanical engineering. In 1955, when he twice failed a qualifying exam for a doctoral degree at MIT, he decided to test out the job market. * * * Three years at Sylvania [1955-1958] * * * In 1958, he jumped to a buzzy new semiconductor company, Texas Instruments. The Dallas company was 'youthful and energetic,' with many employees working over 50 hours a week and sleeping overnight in the office. Four years later [1962], Mr Chang became an American, an identity he considers primary. * * * In the 1970s, the firm produced a chip that could synthesize the human voice, which led to the famed Speak & Spell toy, a hand-held device that helped children with spelling and pronunciation.   'It's just like Camelot * * *' "
(i) 張忠謀自傳. 天下, 1998.

張忠謀自傳: 1931-1964. 天下, 2010 might be an update of the same book )both versions in Chinese). He plans to publish what now is termed volume two of his autobiography as soon as he finishes it (he started in 2018 when he retired finally, expected to complete in no time but is still working on it).
(ii) Morris Chang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang
("He transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in sophomore year and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1952 and 1953, respectively. Chang failed two consecutive doctoral qualification examinations and eventually left MIT without obtaining a PhD.   In 1955 [Does this mean that Chang spent 2 more years at MIT after he obtained master's in 1953?] he turned down a job offer from Ford Motor Company and joined Sylvania Semiconductor, then known as a small semiconductor division of Sylvania Electric Products.
(footnotes omitted)
(A) As far as I can tell, there was never a company called Sylvania Semiconductor. It was "semiconductor division of Sylvania Electric Products [1931-1959 (both started and ended in merger)]."
(B) "In 1959, Sylvania Electronics merged with General Telephone to form General Telephone and Electronics (GTE)."  en.wikipedia.org for "Sylvania Electric Products."\

GTE went defunct in "2000, when it was acquired by Bell Atlantic; the combined company took the name Verizon."  en.wikipedia.org for "GTE."
(iii) Texas Instruments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments
(was founded in 1951; "In early 1952, Texas Instruments purchased a patent license to produce germanium transistors from Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T, for $25,000, beginning production by the end of the year"_

Quote: "TI produced the world's first commercial silicon transistor in 1954, and the same year designed and manufactured the first transistor radio. Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at TI's Central Research Labs. TI also invented the hand-held calculator in 1967, and introduced the first single-chip microcontroller in 1970 * * * " (footnote omitted).
(iv) Speak & Spell (toy)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy)
(table shows the toy first sold in 1978)
(v) Camelot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot
("The name's derivation is uncertain")


(e) "In 1984, Mr Chang [left TI and] joined General Instrument [as president], another chip firm * * * So in 1985, Mr Chang, then 54, left the United States for a place he knew only from several visits to a Texas Instruments factory. * * * Within weeks of Mr Chang's arrival, Li Kwoh-ting [李国鼎], a government official * * * In 1987, Mr. Chang founded TSMC. * * * In 1997, Mr Chang recruited a new head of research of development, Chiang Shang-yi [蒋尚义]. He told Mr Chiang to benchmark TSMC against the industry leader, Intel.   'Our goal is to be No 1, barring none,' Mr Chang said. * * * In April 2009, angry TSMC employees — many who had recently been let go by the company — set up a protest camp at a leafy playground in Taipei's quiet residential neighborhood of Dazhi. They were down the street from Mr Chang's upscale apartment building [this cn.nyties.com translates as 对面就是张忠谋住的高档公寓楼; not 对面 (across the street) but 'down the street']. * * * [in 2010] Jeff Williams, a senior vice president at Apple, reached out through Mr Chang's [second] wife, Sophie Chang [张淑芬], who is a relative ['張淑芬的媽媽和郭台銘的母親初永真是姊妹,所以張淑芬要稱初永真為阿姨,而郭台銘就是她的表弟'] of Terry Gou [郭台铭], the founder of Foxconn
a lesson he learned from Bill Bain, who founded the consulting firm Bain & Company -1973- ; headquartered in Boston], back at Texas Instruments.   Mr Bain, then a consultant for Boston Consulting Group, had worked in an office next to Mr Chang for almost two years. He had analyzed Texas Instruments' production and sales numbers and argued that the more the company produced, the better it would perform."
(i) General Instrument
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument
(1939-  ; based in Horsham [10 miles north of center of Philadelphia], Pennsylvania)
(ii) 蒋尚义
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/蒋尚义
(iii) Something is off. The NYT here talked about 2010. However, "Back in 2013, Intel made its first attempt and started offering production of chips for Altera using the 14nm process." from the Web.

Intel Foundry Services, a division of Intel, was established in 2021. Intel's current CEO, Pat Gelsinger, was installed on Feb 15, 2021.
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沙发
 楼主| 发表于 8-8-2023 15:14:06 | 只看该作者
(2) John Liu and 孟建国, 面对地缘政治动荡,台积电为何坚持扎根台湾. 纽约时报中文网, Aug 7, 2023
https://cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20230807/tsmc-mark-liu/

, which was translated from

John Liu and Paul Mozur, Chip Maker Keeps Roots In Taiwan. New York Times, Aug 7, 2023, at page B1.

three consecutive paragraphs:

"TSMC has made a $40 billion investment in Arizona to build two factories to produce chips that are one or two generations behind its most advanced ones. The company is expected to submit its application for CHIPS Act subsidies this month, Mr [Chairman Mark] Liu said.

"The Arizona plants have been slow going, and the company has deployed hundreds of Taiwanese technicians to expedite the process. Last month it pushed back the expected start date by a year to 2025, and it has faced high costs and managerial challenges. Internal tensions over cultural differences have surfaced between TSMC and American workers.

"And doubts loom over whether American companies will be willing to pay the likely premium required for chips made in Arizona, where TSMC's construction costs alone could be at least four times higher than they are in Taiwan. * * *
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