Taipei, Oct. 2 (CNA) The announcement on Monday by Morris Chang, chairman and founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), that he would retire next June was surprising, but not unexpected.
The electronics guru, known as the "father of semiconductors" for founding and building TSMC into the world's largest semiconductor foundry, is currently 86 years old.
That's way above the average age of Fortune 500 CEOs. But age has never stopped Chang from pursuing his vision for the company.
He founded TSMC when he was 56 and over the past 30 years, he has turned it into the leading company in this field.
TSMC's customers include leading companies such as Apple Inc., Qualcomm, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), MediaTek, Marvell, STMicroelectronics and Broadcom.
Despite his advanced age, Chang always managed to keep TSMC ahead of its competitors, by expanding and upgrading its manufacturing capability throughout its existence.
This allowed TSMC's market capitalization to surpass that of semiconductor giant Intel for the first time in March 2017, when it hit NT$5.14 trillion (US$168.4 billion), ahead of Intel's US$165.7 billion.
But Chang's devotion to semiconductors didn't just start with TSMC. He has dedicated most of his life to the manufacturing of semiconductors, such as integrated circuits and wafers.
He began his professional career in the industry at Sylvania Semiconductor in the United States in 1955 after obtaining his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Three years later, he joined Texas Instrument (TI), where he would spend 25 years of his life learning about and making advances in the field of semiconductors. He previously referred to these years, his youth, as the "youth of semiconductors" as well.
Chang rose quickly in ranks at TI, where he ultimately became vice president responsible for the company's worldwide semiconductor business.
In 1985, the Taiwanese government recruited Chang to run the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a decision that perhaps altered the course of Taiwan's development in science and technology forever.
As head of the ITRI, Chang was in charge of promoting industrial and technological development in Taiwan. Being the visionary that he is, he took his experience working in the semiconductor industry and combined it with a rising trend at the time of outsourcing to found TSMC.
