HLnovel Chapter 439 Competition with TSMC
Chapter 439 Competition with TSMC
Liang Mengsong's flight was delayed by two and a half hours, and it was already completely dark when he landed in Jinan.
Zhao Hu picked him up from the airport, and the two barely exchanged a few words on the way. Liang Mengsong sat in the passenger seat, a black briefcase on his lap, one hand resting on it, the other propping his chin up as he looked out the window.
Ling Yun was waiting for him in the office. There were two cups of tea on the table, one for Liang Mengsong, which was already cold. When Liang Mengsong pushed the door open and came in, Ling Yun stood up and shook hands with him.
"Let's get down to business first," Liang Mengsong said, placing his briefcase on the table without sitting down. "The 0.18-micron process in Singapore has achieved stable mass production. The yield is 88%, and the monthly production capacity is up to 12,000 wafers, almost 1,000 more than we expected."
"What about TSMC? What's their current technological level?"
"They have been mass-producing 0.13-micron chips for two years now, and the yield rate should be over 95%."
Liang Mengsong pulled a report out of his briefcase, flipped to the last page, and pointed to several red numbers. "Looking at the technology alone, we are a generation and a half behind. But our costs are nearly 40% lower than theirs, and we can offer OEM quotes at 60% of theirs."
Ling Yun picked up the report and glanced at it. "What about the order status?"
"Our order is booked until March next year. In addition to our own StarCore chip order, we also have a switching chip from Huawei and a baseband test chip from Spreadtrum. Two other consumer electronics companies have approached us, one making DVD decoding chips and the other making MP3 controllers, both of them are after cost."
Liang Mengsong sat down, put his briefcase at his feet, picked up the cup of cold tea, took a sip, and without complaint, took a second sip.
"But there's something I have to tell you in person," he put down his cup, the bottom of which tapped on the table, his voice muffled, "TSMC is poaching me."
Ling Yun didn't speak.
"The headhunter called three times. The first time was through a colleague in Singapore, the second time was directly to my home phone, and last week they called my office."
When Liang Mengsong spoke, he didn't look at Ling Yun, but at the cup of tea on the table. His tone was very flat, as if he were reading a report that had nothing to do with him. "The annual salary is three times what it is now, the signing fee is separate, and he also promised to hand over a 12-inch fab R&D team to me to lead."
"What did you reply?"
I said I wouldn't consider it.
"And then he hung up?"
"And then he hung up."
Liang Mengsong dipped his finger into the cup of cold tea, drew a circle on the table, and then tapped inside the circle. "The third time, I asked one more question. I said, 'How did you know my office phone number?' The other end paused for a moment, then said it was in the internal address book. I said, 'I'm not from TSMC, where would I get an internal address book?' Then they hung up."
Ling Yun stood up and walked to the window. The window was a cracked open, and the night wind made the curtains billow and deflate repeatedly, like something breathing.
“You’re not the first one to be poached,” Ling Yun said. “Ni Guangnan’s side received offers as well, and so did Li Mo’s. It all started happening intensively at the end of last year. After Zhang Wei’s incident, Zhao Hu and I investigated the departure trends of all core R&D personnel—TSMC, MediaTek, and Samsung. All three companies were poaching them, but TSMC was the most aggressive.”
"But it's a bit strange that they're trying to poach me," Liang Mengsong said, pulling his chair forward. "I worked at TSMC for fifteen years, rising from a junior engineer to head of R&D. When I left, nobody saw me off, nobody called to ask me to stay. And nobody contacted me after I left either. Now they're suddenly offering me three times my annual salary." He paused. "It doesn't seem like they want to use me, it seems like they want to prevent you from using me."
Ling Yun turned around. "Do you know why?"
"I know. I brought the yield rate of the Singapore factory up from 72% to 88% in less than a year and a half. They got scared."
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid we'll use the same speed at the Shenzhen factory." Liang Mengsong pulled another document from his briefcase and spread it on the table.
It's a hand-drawn sketch of a 12-inch wafer fab. The pencil lines are a bit blurry, and some parts have been erased and redrawn.
The location of the factory, the layout of the cleanroom, and the routing of the power system—everything was marked with specifications and reference standards in small print.
"After you mentioned building a factory in Shenzhen last time, I started drawing this up," Liang Mengsong said, tracing a dotted line with his finger. "I suggest placing it in Guangming District, Shenzhen, not far from Chartered Semiconductor's Hong Kong headquarters, where supporting facilities are relatively convenient. We'll start with 0.13 microns, directly benchmarking TSMC's technology standards from 2000. The construction period is estimated at eighteen months, and if everything goes smoothly, trial production can begin in mid-2005."
Ling Yun pulled over the blueprint and looked at it for a long time. The only sound in the office was the rustling of the curtains in the wind outside the window.
"You just said that TSMC has been in mass production of 0.13-micron chips for two years, while we started trial production in 2005. How many years apart are we?"
"It will be five years before that."
"Can we catch up?"
Liang Mengsong did not answer immediately. He gently pulled the blueprint back from in front of Ling Yun and traced the outline of the factory building with his finger again. When he reached the corner, his finger stopped.
"Mr. Ling, do you know what the most important thing I learned in my fifteen years at TSMC was?"
"What?"
"TSMC wasn't overtaken by anyone; it's that others have been left behind. From its founding in 1987 until now, it has never stopped waiting for anyone. While you're chasing it, it's also running; you have to run faster than it to close the gap. But..."
He lifted his finger from the blueprints and tapped it on the table. "They're big, with long decision-making chains. It took us a little over two years from acquisition to mass production of 0.25 microns in the Singapore plant. Upgrading from 0.25 microns to 0.18 microns for mass production took a year and a half. Meanwhile, within TSMC, the same timeframe from project initiation to mass production takes at least two and a half years."
Do you think you can catch up?
"Yes, but on one condition."
"What are the conditions?"
"Give me the location of the Shenzhen factory, I'll decide on the equipment procurement list, and I'll pick the team members," he looked up at Ling Yun, "I'm going to recruit people from all over the world. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the United States, regardless of nationality, just asking if they can do the job. Some people's salaries will be ridiculously high, you have to support me."
Ling Yun said one word: "No problem."
Liang Mengsong didn't say anything more. He rolled up the blueprints, tied them with a rubber band, and put them back in his briefcase. Then he took out a small plastic bag from the bag, inside which were several black chips, their leads still bearing traces of solder, some of them crooked and twisted.
"I almost forgot," he said, placing the plastic bag on the table, "the test chip for the StarCore chip. We sent it from Singapore for reliability testing, and we just got the results—it ran for 1,000 hours in the high-temperature aging test with a zero failure rate. It also ran for 500 hours in the low-temperature test at minus forty degrees Celsius without any problems. This chip is more durable than we imagined."
Ling Yun picked up a chip and examined it under the lamp. It was about the size of a fingernail, with densely packed pins that gleamed with a dull metallic sheen under the light.
"Running at 400 MHz at 0.18 micrometers with a power consumption of 580 milliwatts," Liang Mengsong said, leaning back in his chair with a calm tone. "This chip was considered above average two years ago, and it's now at the mainstream level. But its significance isn't that—this is the first time we've successfully completed the entire process from design to tape-out to mass production. TSMC can't poach this talent."
Lingyun put the chip back into the plastic bag. "Get the plan for the Shenzhen factory done as soon as possible. Send me the budget and personnel list to my email, and I'll approve it after I see it."
"It's already in progress. I'll give you the final draft at the beginning of next month." Liang Mengsong stood up, picked up his briefcase, weighed it in his hand, and then, as if suddenly remembering something, pulled a small box out of the bag and pushed it onto the table. "I bought a box of wife cakes when I was transiting in Hong Kong. It's for your daughter. She said she'd never had authentic ones when we ate at your house last time."
Ling Yun picked up the box, glanced at it, and put it in the drawer.
Liang Mengsong walked to the door, turned back and said, "We don't need to worry too much about TSMC. They're poaching our staff, but I can handle that. Right now, the biggest concern isn't TSMC."
"What is that?"
"It's internal," Liang Mengsong said, pausing as she rested her hand on the doorknob. "I've heard about Zhang Wei's situation. An assistant having access to chip design documents isn't just one person's problem."
The door closed behind him.
Ling Yun picked up the cup of tea on the table, which had gone completely cold, took a sip, and then picked up the phone to call Zhao Hu.
"You need to conduct a security review of the core team list for the Shenzhen factory. Everyone must pass."