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Published · transcript-backed

Speaker unverified: belief

27 Jan 2025 Acquired TSMC Founder Morris Chang

“At about that time, 2008-2009 when I came back, we were running (I think) 6% or 7% a year, but it was negotiated every year between the R&D director and the CEO.”

— Speaker unverified

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Speaker
Speaker unverified
Attribution
Not verified from this transcript
Claim type
belief
Recorded
27 Jan 2025
Publisher
Acquired

Transcript context

…After the 40-nanometer node, after you fix these problems, as you said, the next node was 28 nanometers. As we understand your story and the company’s story, 28 nanometers is when TSMC really started to take the leadership role at the leading edge in the industry. How did you decide to go commit so hard to 28 nanometers after having had all the problems at 40 nanometers? Well, I had a lot of trouble at TI. My peak job at TI was the head of worldwide semiconductors. TI of course had many businesses, defense business materials and controls. Also their origin, which was geophysical, and so on. But TI’s semiconductor business was their biggest, and I was the head of that worldwide semiconductor business. At that time, when I was the head of worldwide semiconductors, our R&D budget was 4.8% of our revenue. I thought it was not enough. I just wanted to raise it to 5.5% of the revenue. But my request was denied every time I raised it. Now, coming back to TSMC, I wanted to set a percentage of revenue number, so we don’t have to argue every year how much on R&D is spent. At about that time, 2008-2009 when I came back, we were running (I think) 6% or 7% a year, but it was negotiated every year between the R&D director and the CEO. I want to stop that. I want to make him at ease. He doesn’t have to argue, doesn’t have to request every year. I almost just literally picked a number I already had. We’ve been running 6% or 7% already. I said, oh, let’s pick 8%, regardless of whether there’s a recession or not. That’s just 8% of revenue. That was the best news. If you ask our R&D director back then, I think was in second place of R&D. He would tell you, he has told me many times in the last 10–15 years that this was really the best thing that we did for R&D. They were not concerned. The R&D director was not concerned at all about having his planned budget cut back, his planned resource people allocation cut back, none of that. He has been working 8%. It has been like that, and that is what propelled our R&D effort. This period in 2010, it wasn’t just ramping the R&D budget, it was also the capital expenditures. You had had almost a decade of $2–$2½ billion spent building the fabs every year. In 2010, you ramped that to almost 6 billion. What was it about the competitive environment, the 28-nanometer node that caused you to push all your chips in on that?…

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