Acquired: zweieinhalb Podcast-Stunden über die Geschichte von TSMC
Apropos Computer-Chips: Ben Gilbert und David Rosenthal blicken in ihrem Acquired-Podcast auf die faszinierende Geschichte von TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) – unter anderem der Fertiger aller A- und M-Prozessoren für Apple.
Der Deal kam unter Jeff Williams zur Zeit des iPhone 4 zustanden. Und man kann gar nicht fett genug unterstreichen, wie groß diese Wette für beide Firmen war.
I had flown to Taiwan and had dinner with Dr. Chang and Sophie at their house. It was a wonderful dinner. We were not doing business with TSMC at the time, but we had a great conversation. We talked about the possibilities of doing stuff together, and we knew the possibilities would be great if we could take leading edge technology and marry it with our ambitions. And what seems obvious now, wasn’t then, because the risk was very substantial.
The nature of the way Apple does business is we put all of our energy into our new products, and we launch them, and if we were to bet heavily on TSMC, there would be no backup plan. You can not double plan the kind of volumes that we do. We want leading edge technology, but we want it at established technology kind of volumes, and so that may be want Dr. Chang is referring to when he says „intense.“
TSMC legte als zweiter Chip-Produzent neben Samsung beim A9 (im iPhone 6s) los. Die Prozessor-Fertigung von zwei unterschiedlichen Herstellern trat im Oktober 2015 eine Mini-Kontroverse um unterschiedliche Akkulaufzeiten los, die (wie so häufig) keine Kontroverse war.
…Together we decided to take the bet, take the leap, and Apple decided to have 100 percent of our new iPhone and new iPad chips, application processors, sourced at TSMC. And TSMC invested $9 billion and had 6,000 people working ‚round the clock to bring up a Tainan fab in a record 11 months. And, in the end, the execution was flawless. And we’ve gone on together to ship over half a billion chips together in that short window. And I think TSMC has invested $25 billion. $9 billion on that first venture — there are very few companies in the world that $9 billion in capital across everything, not a single bet. So for that, we thank you, Dr. Chang, and everybody at TSMC. It’s been a wonderful partnership.