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2016 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

2. Innovations Derived from Backwardness: The Case of Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry

verfasst von : Yukihito Sato

Erschienen in: Varieties and Alternatives of Catching-up

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

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Abstract

This chapter examines Taiwan’s semiconductor industry as a successful case of catching up. The case shows that its success can be attributed to catching up not only technologically, but also in other nontechnological factors. As for the manufacturing sector of the industry, it was essential for Taiwan to form a pure-play foundry model ahead of advanced countries. The backwardness of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry not only provided an opportunity to create this potentially promising model, but also forced it to choose the model. The design sector of the industry succeeded in capturing potential demand from emerging economies using its unique business model including total solution for the users. The model was created based on its experiences as a latecomer.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Introduction: Varieties and Alternatives of Catching Up: Asian Development in the Context of the Twenty-First Century

Nächstes Kapitel The Narrow ‘Breadth of R&D’ and the Bottleneck of Technological Catch-Up: A Case Study of Taiwan’s Flat Panel Display Industry from the Perspective of the R&D Strategy of AMOLED

Takeishi et al. (2012) describe many cases where innovation was an unexpected outcome.

For instance, Abramovits (1986) pointed out that a latecomer’s social capability is important in exploiting the advantages of backwardness, and Amsden (2001) and Amsden and Chu (2003) considered the project execution capability/skill of enterprises in a latecomer to be essential.

Advanced countries often miss opportunities and latecomers succeed in anticipating them. Examining reasons for this phenomenon, Christensen (2000) pointed out that leading companies tend to fall into the ‘innovator’s dilemma’. The ‘hysteresis effect’, which Akabane (2014) used to analyze the LCD panel industry in East Asia, is a similar concept.

The author interviewed F-C Tseng, vice chairman of TSMC, on 31 January 2013. Tseng shifted from ITRI to the newly established TSMC and has been a member of the top management since then.

In 1985, the state-of-the-art technology in the world was 1.6–1.2 μm line width, and Taiwan’s mass-production technology was at 5–2.5 μm line width, which was more than 5 years behind the line widths of advanced countries (Bandaoti Gongye Nianjian 1991, p. 36).

Here, ASIC includes application-specific standard product (ASSP).

In 1979, the government organized the Science and Technology Advisory Group, which was composed of foreign advisers.

First, R. Tsao, the president of UMC, offered a plan for creating several fabless companies with one fab into which the production of their products would be integrated. Second, in response to the request by the Chinese-Americans’ fabless companies in Hsinchu Science Park, a fab that would jointly produce their products was planned. These ideas were not ultimately realized mainly because it was considered that these models could not use the capacity of a new fab fully.

Samsung Electronics and Intel also began to get involved in the foundry business and are now competing with TSMC.

Nikkei Electronics (2010, p. 33) gave a different account, saying that TSMC’s development of mass-production technology with 45–40 nm line width was about a year behind that of Intel.

Because of the benefits of integration, memory IC producers do not separate their design and fabrication processes. For instance, Toshiba maintains integration of the two processes for flash memory even though it is reducing its in-house fabrication of logic ICs.

The spun-off fabrication process was organized as a pure-play foundry, GLOBALFOUNDRY. In 2010, it merged with Chartered, which was the world’s third largest pure-play foundry company at the time.

From the author’s interview on 4 February 2013, the fabless company that produced power management ICs had also been supported by TSMC since it was established as a small company because TSMC regarded the company as promising.

The idea of a virtual fab seems to have been conceived before 1996 at TSMC. For instance, in 1994, F-C Tseng stated that one way to operate a foundry business successfully was ‘to enable customers to observe in which process of the fab their products are located and to prevent them from conceiving suspicion and anxiety caused by incomprehensible situations’ (Tseng 1994, p. 91).

According to the interview with Sam Lin, the chairman of Weltrend Semiconductor, on 22 September 2014, TSMC was swamped by responding to customers’ perpetual inquiries about the status of their products in the fabs before the system was established. The system eased this workload.

These reference flows continued to be updated alongside development of TSMC’s manufacturing technology, and the fourteenth version, which corresponded to technology for 16 nm line widths, was released in September 2013 (‘TSMC and OIP Ecosystem Partners Deliver 16FinFET and 3D IC Reference Flows’ http://www.tsmc.com/, accessed on 4 October 2013).

From the same source as the above footnote.

More specifically, the chipset of an advanced company for the third generation was composed of two chips, whereas MediaTek’s MT6268 chipset was still a combination of four chips in November 2009. The transmission speed for an advanced company’s chipset had already reached the 3.75-generation speed, whereas MediaTek’s chipset remained at the third-generation speed (Jingji Ribao 21 November 2009).

MediaTek succeeded in developing a processor with eight cores earlier than its global rivals. However, Qualcomm maintained that the phone’s performance did not necessarily depend on the number of cores.

This kind of view was widely shared at the time in Taiwan (Chao 2001).

Lite-On IT, on the one hand, procured almost all chipsets from MediaTek until the early 2000s (Gongshang Shibao 24 July 2003). MediaTek, on the other hand, made 21.25 % of its total sales from transactions with Lite-On IT in 2000 (Gongshang Shibao 31 August 2001). Lite-On IT was merged into Lite-On Technology in 2014.

Chao (2001, pp. 11–12, 26–7) vividly described the process of MediaTek choosing the generation it would begin producing. Through close examination, it concluded that the second- and 2.5-generation cellular phones would continue to be important until 2005.

Although Qualcomm has had a strong influence since the emergence of the third-generation technology, because MediaTek already obtained a substantially large share in the market for the second- and 2.5-generation technologies, it succeeded in receiving a license for technologies related to WCDMA from Qualcomm without royalties and fees. When a cellular phone producer uses MediaTek’s chipset, it must pay a fee to Qualcomm.

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Titel: Innovations Derived from Backwardness: The Case of Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry
verfasst von: Yukihito Sato
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Buch: Varieties and Alternatives of Catching-up
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59779-3

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-59780-9

Copyright-Jahr: 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59780-9_2

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