Mong-Song Liang’s background
Experience before his TSMC day
Mong-Song Liang received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, and later studied under Chenming Calvin Hu at the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his doctorate in electrical engineering, Mong-Song Liang was elected as an academician of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) like his mentor. .
After graduation, he worked in memory-related work at AMD (ticker: AMD).
Working at TSMC
He returned to Taiwan in 1992 to join TSMC, and was eventually promoted to senior R&D director. He was the inventor of nearly 500 TSMC patents. TSMC defeated IBM with its own technology. Among the TSMC R&D teams commended by the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, Mong-Song Liang, who was responsible for the 130-nanometer “copper process” advanced module at the time, ranked second in contribution, second only to his boss, Senior Vice President of R&D Shang-yi Chiang.
TSMC shakes off IBM
TSMC’s early technologies were all licensed from IBM (ticker: IBM), and its independent capabilities were poor. In 2003, IBM hoped to sell its newly developed copper process technology to TSMC. But Morris Chang wanted to put an end to IBM’s technology, and believed that IBM’s technology was immature, so it was better to do it himself.
The person who led the research and development team was Shang-yi Chiang. More than a year later, TSMC took the lead in making a breakthrough in its copper process, and six people played a core role: Douglas C.H. Yu, Mong-Song Liang, Jack Sun, Shang-yi Chiang, Konrad Young, and Burn Lin.
Leave TSMC
In February 2009, Mong-Song Liang left TSMC and went to National Tsinghua University as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Institute of Electronics. He left for South Korea more than half a year later.
Liang proved he is capable
After Mong-Song Liang left TSMC, he went to Samsung. Now he is at SMIC, and he has proven to the world that he has this ability.
Biggest contributor of Samsung’s 14nm
In July 2011, Mong-Song Liangg went to Samsung as the VP of R&D. At that time, Samsung was stuck in the technical bottleneck of switching from the 28nm process to the 20nm process. Mong-Song Liang advocated abandoning the 20nm process and directly upgrading to the 14nm process. The results were great. was successful; in the end, Samsung’s 14nm process was mass-produced half a year earlier than TSMC, and TSMC launched a 16nm process at that time, which helped Samsung win orders for Apple A9 and Qualcomm from TSMC.
TSMC sues Liang Meng-Song
TSMC’s lawsuit against Mong-Song Liang for infringing business secrets was lost in the first instance but won in the second instance. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that Mong-Song Liang could not continue to provide services to Samsung in any way. This case was the first time in Taiwan’s history that a senior corporate executive was restricted from expiring after the non-compete period. are still prohibited from working for a competitor company.
Please note: Mong-Song Liang’s move to Samsung came after the non-compete period “ended”, that is, after there were no contractual restrictions.
US has banned non-compete agreements
The Chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission stated that non-competition constitutes an “unfair method of competition”; therefore, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted in April 2024 to ban non-compete agreements by a vote of 3 to 2 to crack down on those that would restrict A contract under which an employee resigns and moves to a new employer.
The passage of this bill is tantamount to opposing this type of contract, which restricts the employment rights of workers and prohibits them from working for competitors of the original employer or establishing competitive enterprises for a period of time after leaving the job or in a specific area.
Liang join SMIC
As co-CEO
In 2017, Mong-Song Liang joined SMIC(ticker: SIUIF) as co-CEO president and executive director. After Mong-Song Liang joined, SMIC’s 28nm process yield rate began to improve. However, due to too late success in development and missed the opportunity for mass production, he decided to skip the next generation 22nm process and switch to mass production of 14nm.
Improved 14nm’s yield
Mong-Song Liang significantly improved the 14nm process yield rate from 3% to more than 95% within 298 days, making SMIC the sixth largest manufacturer in the world after TSMC, UMC, Samsung, Global Foundry and Intel; it has also become the fifth company in the world that can manufacture 12 nanometer processes.
Developed 7nm process
After perfecting the 28nm and 14nm processes, Mong-Song Liang even assisted SMIC to successfully develop it in 2023 under the U.S. embargo and curb from many parties. SMIC did not have ASML’s EUV, which most people thought was impossible. SMIC finally came out of 7nm process chip.
“Nikkei” previously reported that Shimizu Yoji, president of semiconductor research company TechanaLye, said that SMIC’s strength is only three years behind TSMC. In particular, SMIC uses 7nm technology, but it has the same performance as TSMC’s 5nm technology, which represents mainland China’s semiconductor design capabilities have been further improved.
5nm is coming soon
Recently, it has been reported in the market that Huawei and SMIC have joined forces to develop a 5-nanometer process using multiple patterning and achieved breakthroughs. SMIC should be able to launch products with a 5-nanometer process soon without the difficulty of EUV from ASML. Something that will come true.
3nm is on the way
The American “Tom’s Hardware” magazine has pointed out that SMIC and Huawei have applied for patents for the 3nm process using DUV and multiple patterning. It is reasonable to infer that SMIC has already developed the technology of the 3nm process.
Note: Huawei plans to launch AI chips using the 5nm process in 2025. The foundries of Huawei is SMIC.
Note: SMIC is one of two TSMC’s real threat in long term, please see my post of “Two long-term threats to TSMC: US and SMIC“
Top three wafer foundries in the first quarter of 2024
According to a survey released by TrendForce on June 12, the output value of the world’s top 10 wafer foundries in the first quarter of 2024 was US$29.2 billion, a quarterly decrease of 4.3%. Among them, top 3 are below:
- TSMC’s revenue fell by approximately 4.1% quarterly to US$18.85 billion, with a market share of 61.7%.
- Samsung’s revenue fell 7.2% quarterly to US$3.36 billion, and its market share dropped to 11%.
- SMIC’s revenue increased by 4.3% quarterly to US$1.75 billion, outperforming its peers. With a market share of 5.7%, SMIC surpassed GlobalFoundries and UMC and jumped to third place.
It is worth mentioning that SMIC’s ranking has risen to third place, narrowing the gap with Samsung. Samsung’s market share has been between 15-17% in the past few years. This trend also confirms my point in my post three years ago “Two long-term threats to TSMC: US and SMIC“
Taiwan’s denial of Mong-Song Liang
Mong-Song Liang’s career path
Almost all Taiwan’s media circles label Mong-Song Liang a traitor, which I really disagree with. Mong-Song Liang just wanted to find another job because he was born in TSMC, and his future development at TSMC was not smooth. He found a company that suited him and could use his talents to prove his abilities and pursue his dreams.
Note: If there are no traitors, so there are no many famous top companies in today’s semiconductor industry. For details, see my post of “Traitorous Eight, the origin of the semiconductor and venture capital industries“
Changing jobs is an employee’s right
What did Mong-Song Liang do wrong? Isn’t this practice normal in industry and the workplace? Isn’t this true all over the world? Can Taiwan kill all the criminals and almost turn Mong-Song Liang into an evil and ungrateful villain? To put it bluntly, this is just because the Taiwanese people have two sets of standards and a glassy heart. They cannot accept that Mong-Song Liang has taken refuge in TSMC’s opponents, and are dissatisfied with allowing TSMC’s opponents to achieve technological breakthroughs.
Morris Chang did so
Just imagine, Morris Chang left Texas Instruments because he encountered difficulties in his career development at Texas Instruments. It happened that the Taiwan government also needed to establish the semiconductor industry at that time. The Taiwan government funded and assisted Morris Chang in establishing TSMC, allowing Morris Chang to find his own stage and leave his name. I can’t figure out what the difference is. It’s just Taiwanese people’s own sour grapes, damaged self-confidence, coupled with the small country and few people, narrow-mindedness, and the mentality of feeling good about themselves.
For details about the feud between Morris Chang and Mong-Song Liang, please see my post of “TSMC Morris Chang’s controversial words and deeds“
Abnormal position
It’s ideology
Ask yourself, don’t go against your own conscience, if you are honest enough with yourself: What did Mong-Song Liang do wrong? What if you were Mong-Song Liang? What if Mong-Song Liang initially worked for an American or Japanese company instead of TSMC? What if Mong-Song Liang changed jobs not to SMIC but to an American or Japanese company? Would the answers from his critics have been different? This is a question of right and wrong and logic that even children understand. The investment market and the workplace are about strength, not ideology.
Using the same logic, do the millions of people working in mainland China also have problems? Is it possible that all these millions of people should be prosecuted? If Mong-Song Liang worked for an American or Japanese businessman, would Taiwan dare to say anything?
The problem is not Mong-Song Liang, but the prejudiced people.
Taiwanese’s biased stance towards TSMC
In Taiwan, TSMC has become a restricted area for comment. Any negative or unfavorable remarks about TSMC will be severely attacked, different opion nowt allowed, even if the comments are factual. You can only speak positively about TSMC, otherwise you will be counterattacked from all corners of the world──just because TSMC is the only company has strong competitiveness in Taiwan (it is true that TSMC has strong competitiveness) that Taiwanese can overboast, this is unacceptable Tell the secret.
The majority of Taiwanese people’s “Boxers”, double standard, brainwashing by the media, internal propaganda, pretentiousness, a frog in the well (a person with a limited outlook), with narrow mineded, ostrich mentality cannot change the true achievements of others and prevent others from progressing.
The problem is: most Taiwanese people feel good about themselves and do not think that their positions are biased–this is the biggest problem.
Fawn upon the rich and powerful persons
Didn’t you see that American Jensen Huang and Lisa Su were interviewed by thousands of media reportors when they visited Taiwan in the past two years? The Taiwanese media portrayed the two as”the glory of Taiwan”. The reports on the two were more than detailed. During these two visisted Taiwan, they almost always on the headlines of Taiwanese media, as if there is nothing else to report in Taiwan.
So what, these two people were born in Taiwan. Nvidia and AMD are American not Taiwanese companies. These two are now Americans! The performance of the Taiwanese media is completely to try to gain popularity, add icing on the cake, and Fawn upon the rich and powerful persons.
Just like now, some people have seen that SMIC has been creating advanced process chip. People immediately put their faces to it and said, “It’s all credit of Taiwanese Mong-Song Liang, but China doesn’t have that capability!” In the future, Taiwanese might be pround of Mong-Song Liang again. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mong-Song Liang will be called the “the glory of Taiwan” then.
What is snobbery?
Closing words
History will give Mong-Song Liang a fair justice.
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