Taiwan’s success in the chip industry did not happen for no reason – it took 50 years of hard work, says Wu Cheng-wen, head of Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council.

The remark followed President Trump’s remark that Taiwan “stole our chip industry.”

Wu said: “Taiwan has invested half a century of hard work to achieve today’s success, and it certainly wasn’t something taken easily from other countries.”

The historical record is that, in 1976, RCA sold a licence to Taiwan’s ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) for a 7-micron CMOS process.

 

ITRI scaled this process over the succeeding five decades and successive generations of the process were spun off into startup semiconductor companies to make commercial chips for the market. TSMC was founded in 1987 with technology from ITRI and Philips.

TSMC’s process technology attracted US chip companies to use it for manufacturing their chips which saved US companies from the capital cost of building fabs, boosted their profitability and helped them maintain today’s 50% share of the worldwide chip market.

Wu also echoed Morris Chang’s view that it is impossible for one country to own every aspect of the chip-making process.

“The semiconductor industry is highly complex and requires precise specialisation and division of labour,” said Wu, “given that each country has its own unique industrial strengths, there is no need for a single nation to fully control or monopolise all technologies globally.”