1. Morris Chung-Mou Chang is a Taiwanese-American billionaire businessman and electrical engineer who pioneered the foundry model of semiconductor fabrication.
26 Facts About Morris Chang
1. 2.
Morris Chang is regarded as the founder of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.
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Morris Chang was the company's chief executive officer from 1987 to 2005, and retired as its chairman in 2018.
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Morris Chang built his business career first in the United States and then subsequently in Taiwan.
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From 1958 to 1983, Morris Chang worked at Texas Instruments, becoming its vice president.
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Morris Chang then left TI in 1983 and was briefly the president and chief operating officer of General Instrument.
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Morris Chang was born in the city of Ningbo, situated within Chekiang in China, in 1931.
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The elder Morris Chang was an official in charge of finance for the Yin county government and later a bank manager.
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Morris Chang spent most of his primary school years in British Hong Kong between the ages of six and eleven.
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In 1941, the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began and Morris Chang's family went back to Shanghai and Ningbo to live for a few months, eventually making their way to the wartime capital of Chongqing.
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In 1949, Morris Chang moved to the United States to attend Harvard University.
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Morris Chang transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his sophomore year and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1952 and 1953, respectively, and a Master of Engineering in 1955.
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Morris Chang failed two consecutive doctoral qualification examinations and eventually left MIT without obtaining a PhD.
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Morris Chang was tasked with improving germanium transistor yields, besides device development.
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Morris Chang worked on a four-transistor project for TI where the manufacturing was done by IBM.
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Also at TI, Morris Chang pioneered the then controversial idea of pricing semiconductors "ahead of the cost curve", which meant sacrificing early profits to gain market share and achieve manufacturing yields that would result in greater profits over an extended timeline.
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Morris Chang left TI and later became president and chief operating officer of General Instrument Corporation.
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Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 thanks to transfer of production technology and license of intellectual property from Philips in exchange for 27.6 percent equity and financing from the government's National Development Fund, Executive Yuan for 48.3 percent stake.
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Morris Chang left ITRI in 1994 and became chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation from 1994 to 2003 while continuing as chairman of TSMC.
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In June 2009, Morris Chang returned to the position of TSMC's CEO .
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Morris Chang was awarded the Order of Propitious Clouds, First Class in September 2018.
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Morris Chang has served as Presidential Envoy of the Republic of China, under the name Chinese Taipei, to APEC several times.
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Morris Chang believed the US would increase onshore semiconductor manufacturing somewhat at a very high cost, and produce at high unit costs, rendering it unable to compete with factories like TSMC.
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Morris Chang said TSMC chairman Mark Liu decided to invest US$12 billion in Arizona at the urging of the US government.
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Morris Chang met his first wife, Christine Chen, when he was at MIT and she was in Boston University.
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Morris Chang married his second wife, Sophie Morris Chang, a cousin of Foxconn founder Terry Gou, in 2001.