Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

by Chris Miller

The founding of TSMC gave all chip designers a reliable partner. Chang promised never to design chips, only to build them. TSMC didn’t compete with its customers; it succeeded if they did. A decade earlier, Carver Mead had prophesied a Gutenberg moment in chipmaking, but there was one key difference. The old German printer had tried and failed to establish a monopoly over printing. He couldn’t stop his technology from quickly spreading across Europe, benefitting authors and print shops alike. In the chip industry, by lowering startup costs, Chang’s foundry model gave birth to dozens of new “authors”—fabless chip design firms—that transformed the tech sector by putting computing power in all sorts of devices. However, the democratization of authorship coincided with a monopolization of the digital printing press. The economics of chip manufacturing required relentless consolidation. Whichever company produced the most chips had a built-in advantage, improving its yield and spreading capital investment costs over more customers. TSMC’s business boomed during the 1990s and its manufacturing processes improved relentlessly. Morris Chang wanted to become the Gutenberg of the digital era. He ended up vastly more powerful. Hardly anyone realized it at the time, but Chang, TSMC, and Taiwan were on a path toward dominating the production of the world’s most advanced chips.