Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The failure of the semiconductor wafer manufacturing process from 12 inches to 18 inches was revealed in a recent oral history interview with Dr. Jiang Shangyi at the computer History Museum (CHM).

Dr. Jiang Shangyi recalled that at that time, TSMC formed a G450C alliance with Samsung, Intel, IBM, lattice core and other giants to jointly promote the upgrading of an 18-inch wafer manufacturing system, of which Intel acted particularly actively. Jiang Shangyi revealed that Zhang Zhongmou also took a positive position on the 18-inch migration at that time.

However, Jiang Shangyi believes that the real motivation for Intel to promote technological upgrading is to raise competition barriers and eliminate vulnerable manufacturers.

One day in 2013, Jiang Shangyi expressed different opinions to him in Zhang Zhongmou's office, making it clear that he should not actively participate in the development of the 18-inch wafer process system, because the technology replacement backstage SMC will no longer be able to erode the share of vulnerable manufacturers, but become the weakest party in the Romance of the three Kingdoms with Samsung and Intel, which will damage the development prospects of TSMC.

Jiang Shangyi said, for example, that at that time, Intel's R & D manpower and budget were stronger than TSMC's. If it is calculated according to the R & D manpower of 8000 to 6000, if it needs to occupy 3000 R & D engineers each of TSMC and Intel, then Intel's remaining manpower that can be allocated to the development of advanced process technology will form an advantage of 5000 to 3000, and TSMC will greatly increase the pressure to compete with it in the manufacturing process.

In addition, Jiang Shangyi also introduced Zhang Zhongmou to the applied materials company he is receiving, CEO, which made it clear face to face that major semiconductor equipment manufacturers are not willing to follow the position of 18-inch replacement, and then Jiang Shangyi successively contacted Klei, Pan Lin and other enterprises to collect opinions to further persuade Zhang Zhongmou.

Jiang Shangyi's proposal finally moved Zhang Zhongmou, who subsequently held intensive meetings to unify TSMC's internal consensus and finally said that it would give priority to the miniaturization of process nodes rather than wafer size expansion.

Jiang Shangyi also recalled that at the SEMICON West semiconductor conference in 2013, representatives of Intel, Samsung, TSMC and ASML were together to discuss the development of 18-inch technology. Jiang made it clear that the top priority should be advanced process development. This statement greatly frustrated Intel executive Bill Holt present. The next day, Intel changed its tune, saying that its first task was also advanced process development. The move marks the substantial end of the 18-inch wafer generation.

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