TSMC in Between US and China 夹缝中的台积电

choi

David Pierson and Michelle Yun, The Most Important Company you've Never Heard of Is Being Dragged into the US-China Rivalry. Los Angeles Times, Dec 17, 2020.
https://www.latimes.com/world-na ... chips-tsmc-china-us

Quote:

TSMC is "churning out circuitry found in iPhones, Amazon cloud computers, graphics processors that power popular video games and even military drones and fighter jets like Lockheed Martin's F-35. * * * The company has been drawn into an increasingly bitter — and at times dangerous — rivalry between the US and China * * * [TSMC is] manufacturing the industry's smallest chips — transistors with parts measuring 5 nanometers, the equivalent of two strands of human DNA. Work has already begun on 2-nanometer chips, which also require one of the most complex feats in engineering, an interplay of lasers, molten tin plasma and mirrors known as extreme ultraviolet lithography that a TSMC executive described as 'close to black magic.'  Once viewed benignly as an electronic commodity, semiconductors are now vital national security assets in the global race for tech supremacy. Last month, TSMC's board approved a plan to open a $12-billion foundry in Arizona by 2024, a move seen as a way to placate Trump administration and Pentagon officials who grew uneasy over TSMC's trade relationship with China. * * * US restrictions on exports shattered Chinese-owned Huawei's plans to roll out 5G networks worldwide and hobbled its once-thriving smartphone business. * * * 'Semiconductors underpin all the "must win" technologies of the 21st century,' said Ashley Feng [who has no Chinese name], a China and Taiwan expert formerly at the Center for a New American Security [2007- ; co-founders Michèle Flournoy and Kurt M Campbell]. * * * The Trump administration has seized on semiconductors as a choke point to slow China's progress. * * * Beijing's suggestion that it might invade Taiwan and return it to Chinese dominion * * * China remains years behind and must import all but 15% of its semiconductors * * * Washington forced TSMC to cut exports to Huawei's chip design subsidiary, HiSilicon Technologies [Co Ltd  海思半导体有限公司; 1991- ; based in Shenzhen], which was its second-biggest customer after Apple, analysts said. * * * the $412-billion chip industry [referring to global production value] * * * It's [Moore Law's] why the iPhone 12 is 50% faster than the iPhone 11. * * * 'TSMC is caught in between two superpowers,' said Dan Wang, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing. * * * the semiconductor industry accounts for 15% of the [Taiwan] economy * * * Craig Addison, author of 'Silicon Shield: Taiwan's Protection Against Chinese Attack.' [Fusion Press (based in Nashville, Tennessee), 2001] * * * After a long career in the US semiconductor industry working for Sylvania and Texas Instruments, where he [Morris Chang]  headed the company’s chip business, he was recruited by the Taiwanese government [in 1985] * * * Chang said in a 2007 interview with SEMI, a chip industry association. * * * [Rick] Cassidy, the TSMC North America president, said he knew Chang had something special when he was a customer of the Taiwanese upstart in the 1990s trying to take an American semiconductor fabless.  'I could buy a wafer from TSMC at a price lower than my internal cost,' said Cassidy, a West Point graduate who joined TSMC in 1997. * * * in November 2019[,] He [Chang] warned his former charges that the company could soon be dragged into a contest between major powers.

Note:
(a) Yun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yun
may be Korean surnames (Yun or Yoon, whose hanja is 尹; Yun or Yeon whose hanja is 燕, 延, 連) or Chinese surname 云 (41st in 宋朝 百家姓).
(b) "5 nanometers, the equivalent of two strands of human DNA"
(i) nucleic acid double helix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleic_acid_double_helix  
(section 4 Helix geometries: "three DNA conformations are believed to be found in nature, A-DNA, B-DNA, and Z-DNA. The B form described by James Watson and Francis Crick is believed to predominate in cells. It is 23.7 Å wide and extends 34 Å per 10 bp of sequence"in length])
(ii) Angstrom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrom
(0.1 nm; Its symbol is Å, a letter of the Swedish alphabet; The unit is named after 19th-century Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström)

Thus DNA double helix (for all living matters, not just humans) is 2.37 nm wide.
(iii) In comparison, width of a human hair is 17-180 micrometers. A micrometer is 1,000 nm.

(c) "Work has already begun on 2-nanometer chips, which also require one of the most complex feats in engineering, an interplay of lasers, molten tin plasma and mirrors known as extreme ultraviolet lithography that a TSMC executive described as 'close to black magic.' "
(i) Mike Rogoway, Lasers, Molten Tin and Ultraviolet Light Chart a Path for Chipmakers. The Oregonian, Nov 26, 2017
https://www.oregonlive.com/silic ... aphy_intel_hil.html  
("A high-powered laser hits a microscopic drop of molten tin, turning it to plasma that emits an ultraviolet light. Mirrors focus and direct that light onto a silicon wafer to create tiny patterns for computer circuitry")
(A) The Oregonian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregonian  
(1850- ; a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon [most populous city in Oregon whose capital is Salem] ; is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the US west coast)  
(B) plasma (physics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)
(C) This report cited a market research firm VLSI Research Inc, based in San Jose, Calif.

https://www.vlsiresearch.com/about
("VLSIresearch is a privately owned company and is not related to any other company or product with the name 'VLSI' ")
(D) In semiconductor jargon, VLSI stands for Very Large Scale Integration.

Kim Ho Yeap and Humaira Nisar, Chap 1 Introduction.
https://www.intechopen.com/books ... uctory-chapter-vlsi
("Table 1 depicts the progressive trend of the integration level for the semiconductor industry. It can be observed from the table that the number of transistors that can be fabricated in a chip has been growing continuously over the years. In fact, this growth has complied closely with Moore's law. To distinguish the increase of transistors in every 10 years, each era is designated a name, that is, the SSI, MSI, LSI, VLSI, ULSI and SLSI eras. During the VLSI era, a microprocessor was fabricated for the first time into a single integrated circuit chip. Although this era has now long passed, the VLSI term is still being widely used today. This is partly due to the absence of an obvious qualitative leap between VLSI and its subsequent ULSI and SLSI eras, and partly, it is also because IC engineers and experts working in this field have been so used to this term that they decided to continue adopting it")

This is a chapter in a book:
In Yeap and Nisar (eds), Very-Large-Scale Integration. IntechOpen Ltd (based in London), Feb 28, 2018
https://www.intechopen.com/books/very-large-scale-integration

Nisar is a woman.
(ii) black magic (mass noun)
https://www.lexico.com/definition/black_magic

(d) Ashley Feng
https://www.cnas.org/people/ashley-feng

(e)
(i) Morris Chang  張忠謀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang
("In 1948, as China was in the height of the Chinese Civil War, a year before People's Republic of China established, Chang moved to Hong Kong.  The very next year he moved yet again to the United States to attend Harvard University. He transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in sophomore year and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1952 and 1953, respectively. After leaving MIT without obtaining a PhD, he was hired by Sylvania Semiconductor, then just known as a small semiconductor division of Sylvania Electric Products, in 1955. Three years later, he moved to Texas Instruments in 1958, which was then rapidly rising in its field. After three years at TI, he rose to manager of the engineering section of the company. It was then, in 1961, that TI decided to invest in him by giving him the opportunity to obtain his PhD degree, which he received in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1964.  During his 25-year career (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments, he rose up in the ranks to become the group vice president responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business. He left TI and later become president and chief operating officer of General Instrument Corporation (1984–1985) ) (footnotes omitted).
(ii) Sylvania Electric Products, Inc (1942-1959; in 1942 Hygrade Sylvania Corp changed name to this; in "1959, Sylvania merged with General Telephone to create General Telephone & Electronics Corp" (GTE) )
http://www.vintagesylvania.net/?page=history
(In "1681, Charles II granted a land charter to William Penn to repay a debt of £16,000 (around £2,100,000 in 2008, adjusting for retail inflation) owed to William's father, Admiral William Penn. This was one of the largest land grants to an individual in history. The King named it Pennsylvania (literally 'Penn's Woods') in honor of the Admiral. Penn, the son, who wanted it to be called New Wales, and then Sylvania (from the Latin [noun feminine] silva 'forest, woods'), was embarrassed at the change, fearing that people would think he had named it after himself, but King Charles would not rename the grant") (citations omitted).

"Sylvania" itself is not a word in any dictionary.

Sylvania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvania
("continues to license" this brand name)
was known to me as the name on fluorescent (white) tubes in US. Called Sylvania from one of its predecessor (Novelty Incandescent Lamp Co, Inc) was based in Pennsylvania. But one does not frequently see fluorescent tubes in America any more.


(f)
(i) "Dan Wang, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing"

佳富龙洲(北京)商务咨询有限公司 分析师王丹
(ii) Rick Cassidy has no Chinese name. His LinkedIn page says "Education United States Military Academy at West Point   BS - Engineering   1969-1973," that he has lived in San Jose, Calif AND worked for TSMC since 1997. (TSMC.com has a page for management team that indicates "11/14/1997" as "on-board date" for Rick Cassidy.) I can not find in the Web Cassidy's previous employment.

(g)
(i) charge (n): "a person or thing committed into the care of another  <played with her young charges at the day-care center>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/charge

The "charges" here refer to TSMC employees, in particular the executive team he plucked in preparation for his retirement.
(ii) Compare ward (n):
"6: a person or thing under guard, protection, or surveillance: such as
a: a minor subject to wardship
b: a person who by reason of incapacity (such as minority or mental illness) is under the protection of a court either directly or through a guardian appointed by the court
— called also ward of court
c: a person or body of persons under the protection or tutelage of a government"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ward

So, "into the car of" a civilian (eg, nanny au pair, babby-sitter) is a charge, into the care of a government is a ward, such as orphan, institutionalized patients, but not innames.