Foundry (2)

I'd already made it all the way to America without my legs. Today I reached Taiwan.

I still needed a wheelchair, but as a first-class passenger there was nothing inconvenient about the trip.

Click-click.

The moment I stepped off the plane, however, the bodyguards closed in around me.

Front, rear, left, right—full perimeter security. Black and the rest of the detail fanned out into long-range and close-range overwatch.

Hmm…

It reminded me of the Saudi crown prince I'd seen at CES, completely hemmed in by his own security.

When I looked awkward about it, Security Chief Cha Gangjin tried to put me at ease. He was the same man who had taken a bullet for me last time.

"We've already had one incident, and this is a foreign country. If the same people are still thinking the same thoughts, right now would be a perfect opportunity."

The protection felt a little excessive. But when the man who had caught a bullet in my place said so, I had no argument left.

"True enough. This place is sort of China and sort of not, so that only makes it worse."

We reached the airport lounge. Around us a jumble of languages filled the air.

"Careful! Don't let the luggage bump into anything!"

"Boarding was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so tight……."

"Let's go to the night market!"

Listening closely, I picked out Chinese, English, and Japanese all mixed together. Chinese was by far the most common. Crossroads of Asia, indeed—quite the variety of people gathered here.

Taiwan's airport seemed used to disabled passengers; the staff naturally cleared paths for us.

Once we passed through the gate, a picket sign caught my eye.

A group held the Korean-language welcome sign. A man in a deep navy suit and a young woman carrying a document case. The TSMC badges pinned to their chests stood out at once.

"Welcome. Thank you for making the long journey."

The man bowed politely. Cutting straight through the noisy airport air, we moved immediately to the waiting private vehicles.

Outside the windows the scenery of urban Taiwan slid past. I watched the unfamiliar landscape for the first time—streams of motorcycles, shop signs, and a distant forest of high-rises. My watch read two in the afternoon.

"We'll take you to headquarters."

Seoul and Taiwan sat on nearly the same longitude, so there was no time difference with Korea. We decided to hold the meeting first and head to the hotel afterward.

"We've arrived."

The destination was the meeting wing of TSMC headquarters in Tainan. The moment we stepped out of the cars, staff seamlessly secured our path and guided us straight into a conference room.

Chinese-style twin dragons decorated one wall of the room; a massive photograph of a cutting-edge semiconductor wafer hung opposite them. The people waiting for us were already inside.

Among them a man who looked to be in his fifties stepped forward. One glance was enough to know he was the leader on their side.

Silver-streaked hair. Lined forehead and a neat smile. A white shirt and dark necktie suited him perfectly, giving an intelligent impression.

"How do you do? I am Liu Xinpei. I've heard so much about JH's reputation that my ears ache. At last we meet. I've wanted to see you in person."

For someone meeting me for the first time, he looked almost like a fan. I even wondered whether I would run into fans of mine everywhere I went in the semiconductor world. I hoped I wasn't catching celebrity disease.

"Pleasure to meet you."

His handshake carried a solid, firm impression. Liu Xinpei—chairman of TSMC.

"I watched CES on video. A truly impressive presentation."

"Thank you."

Chairman Liu smiled.

"DRAM of astonishing speed, twenty-layer HBM. Innovation doesn't get more innovative than that. JH is, without question, number one in the world in pure technology."

"Haha. Thank you."

"And while we may fall short on technology, we pride ourselves on being number one in the world in production capacity. In foundry services we currently hold the top position."

A smile of quiet pride touched the corners of his mouth.

"Yet… after only auctioning products until now, for you to come here in person like this—does that mean you intend to pursue a fabless model?"

Fabless: no fabrication plant. A company that only designs, without manufacturing facilities of its own.

"For the moment it's similar. But we don't stop at design alone."

"Then…?"

I pointed to the four black cases I had brought. Each held twenty-five glass plates measuring 15.2 cm on a side, so they weren't particularly large and were easy enough to carry.

"I've brought the masks."

"Oh! Is that so? Then you already possess production capability as well. Are you aiming for high-volume production of a small number of product types?"

"No. For now we've only made the masks, and we plan to outsource manufacturing to a foundry this way."

"Ah, I see. You've come to the right place. But what will you do if there are errors in the masks? If yield problems arise, the masks themselves will need continuous revision… If you bring them like this, we may end up having to remake them ourselves."

Seeing the concern on his face, I answered with a smile.

"It's fine. We'll just correct them."

"Correct the masks…?"

"Yes."

"Not remanufacture them?"

"Yes. We only need to fix the parts that need fixing."

A brief silence settled over the conference room.

Under ordinary circumstances the claim would have sounded absurd. Chairman Liu, however, looked me straight in the eye and slowly nodded.

"If anyone else had said that, I would have laughed it off. But… coming from JH, I have no choice but to believe it."

"Yes. You don't need to worry about the mask side."

Chairman Liu smiled and spread his hands.

"Very well. Then what kind of product do you intend to manufacture?"

"LPU. In other words, a chip with far greater computational capacity than a GPU. What would the production cost be?"

A TSMC staff member answered in his place.

"Production is calculated on a silicon-wafer basis."

Our side asked a few questions of our own.

"Is there a minimum production quantity?"

"Yes. The minimum run is five hundred wafers. If the LPU you designed is roughly GPU-sized, approximately seventy chips can be produced per wafer."

"What kind of yield can we expect?"

"For an initial process we are targeting sixty percent or higher. Once we stabilize through repeated collaboration, we aim for eighty percent or more."

We asked about unit costs as well.

"Pricing is calculated per silicon wafer. The total production cost for the chips made from a single wafer is one hundred million Korean won."

A single wafer could yield as few as fifty or as many as several hundred semiconductors. Paying one hundred million won meant they would use one wafer to produce fifty or more chips for us.

"Sounds fine. Let's contract."

"Thank you."

We drew up the contract.

Five hundred wafers × seventy chips × sixty percent came out to roughly twenty-one thousand LPUs. With an investment of fifty billion won, we would need to charge about 2.5 million won per chip just to break even. Market prices for server GPUs ranged from three million won on the cheap end to thirty million on the expensive end. Since we had brought the masks ourselves, the structure was unlikely to produce a loss under ordinary circumstances.

Of course the eventual revenue would vary enormously depending on how well the semiconductors actually performed. If the chips underperformed, fifty billion won would simply go up in smoke. I had brought the masks and could correct any problems with only minor adjustments, but for everyone else the process began with making the masks; if yields dropped they would remake the masks, and before long a few hundred billion won became pocket change. That was why semiconductors remained a field ordinary companies never even dared to enter. Having several hundred billion sitting in the corporate account was the only reason I could pull the trigger so cleanly.

"Let's run them."

After the signatures we shook hands with Chairman Liu once more.

"Thank you. We will do our utmost in production."

"Yes. I'm counting on you."

"While you're here, would you like to see the production process?"

They were offering to show me how it was done?

"Gladly."

"This way, please."

Chairman Liu led me personally. Inside the plant, observation corridors had been prepared so visitors could watch the process. Like watching fish through aquarium glass, we could observe the factory from the hallway through thick panes.

Rolling the wheelchair closer, I saw gleaming wafers spinning inside the machinery. Inside a massive furnace, red light blazed.

Chairman Liu's calm voice continued.

"That is the process of melting silicon at fourteen hundred degrees Celsius."

"And that rod-like thing I can see…?"

"Yes. A seed crystal. When we dip it in and slowly draw it upward, a silver pillar—an ingot—grows."

I had expected a semiconductor plant to be filled with electron microscopes and the like. It was nothing of the sort.

"It's practically a steel mill."

"Exactly. We put quartz and carbon into a furnace, heat it to fourteen hundred degrees, and pull silicon ingots. A steelworks is the closest comparison."

As the long silicon crystal emerged, I held my breath.

"It looks… halfway between metal and glass."

"You've seen it precisely. An ingot three hundred millimeters in diameter and one meter long. Soon diamond saws will slice it into wafers."

I followed Chairman Liu sideways. As we moved, the once-molten silicon became thin slices, and layer after layer was built upon them.

"You see? Thousands of pieces of equipment move; hundreds of process steps are repeated. Yet in the end all of this…"

He tapped his own temple.

"…begins inside a human mind—with design. Without design, production cannot exist."

I nodded quietly.

Across the way another machine flared as if breathing fire.

"Ion implantation equipment. That device is what allows us to separate P-type and N-type semiconductors."

"I see."

"We take pride in possessing the world's greatest production capacity. In technological power, however, JH stands first in the world. Every one of our employees was deeply impressed."

"Thank you."

"As a foundry, our philosophy is never to compete with our customers. We have no brand of our own. We manufacture only our customers' chips. Technology leakage? We have no reason for it. We think only of production."

A peculiar sincerity colored his tone.

"It won't leak over to places like China, will it?"

At my half-joking remark Chairman Liu gave a short laugh and waved a hand.

"Haha. What you just said is roughly the same as Korea handing the Ohsung Group over to North Korea."

"Ah. I understand perfectly."

Answering a China joke with a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠North Korea joke—Chairman Liu had a sense of humor.

"JH is already number one in technology. Yet our actual semiconductor production lines are the largest. Doesn't that leave only one answer?"

Beyond the corridor glass the machines continued etching wafers. Standing before them, Chairman Liu looked at me and spoke.

"Let us go together. If JH's technology and our production capacity join hands… the world will have no choice but to follow in our wake."

"Yes. Thank you. We would also like to maintain a good relationship with TSMC."

A warm, amicable atmosphere. And with that, my tour of the production process came to an end.

TSMC Mask Inspection Team.

"What is this?"

The employee peering through an optical microscope at the mask looked flustered. When he jumped, the team leader standing a short distance away asked,

"What's wrong? Is the mask no good?"

"No, it's not that… You need to see this yourself."

The team leader took the seat in place of the employee and looked through the microscope.

A glass plate that was clear, clean, and perfectly flat. It looked like an absolute, transparent plane.

"Huh?"

A glass plate being transparent and flat was not something that could be taken for granted—not at the magnifications they were using.

"Incredible. Put this under the SEM."

SEM: a scanning electron microscope using secondary ions. At roughly one hundred thousand times magnification, every tiny undulation and scratch on a glass plate would be visible.

A short while later, JH's mask under SEM observation appeared on the monitor.

The glass was a perfect plane. The metal patterned upon it looked like the brushwork of a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Joseon-era master calligrapher.

"Ah…!"

"Whoa…"

Every employee who saw the monitor was stunned. The team leader pushed the SEM's magnification to maximum.

One hundred thousand times. The absolute plane showed not the slightest distortion.

"Team leader… have you ever seen anything like this?"

"In a product? Or in a textbook?"

"Anywhere at all."

"Do you think something like this has ever existed?"

A little later the team leader sought out the section chief.

"Section Chief. You have to see this."

And the section chief reported to the director.

"Director. You absolutely must see this."

The director went to the president.

"President. If you don't look at this, it will be a disaster."

The president reported to Chairman Liu.

"Chairman! Where are you? This is a decisive moment that will determine the fate of the company!"

At the claim that the company's destiny was at stake, Chairman Liu came down in person to examine JH's mask. He, too, was a man who had spent decades inside semiconductor processes. The moment he saw it, he knew a new world had opened.

The next day.

I had come to the airport to return to Korea when TSMC's Chairman Liu appeared to see me off.

"Oh my. Coming all the way to the airport to see me off—I'm grateful."

Yet somehow the expression on Chairman Liu's face was very different from the day before.

"CEO… Yesterday I overstepped by speaking of leading the world together. I apologize."

"Pardon?"

"I… that is, well…"

Without further preamble Chairman Liu bowed deeply at the waist.

"CEO! Please include me in the future that JH will lead! We are confident we can handle delivery flawlessly, so I beg you not to cast us aside—please keep us with you."

The chairman's sudden reversal of attitude was a little overwhelming.

"Why… are you doing this?"

"Yesterday I saw the mask. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was…"

Chairman Liu's eyes sparkled as if he were still looking at something.

"A perfect plane. In all my life I have never seen a mask like that."

"Ah…"

So he had fallen for a mask designed by a 5-Circle Mage and crafted by dwarves.

"CEO. We will take complete responsibility for this delivery."

"I'd be grateful if you would. Oh—my flight time is almost here…"

"Have a safe trip home. And from now on, please be sure to include our company as well!"

"Ah… yes."

Under Chairman Liu's extravagant hospitality I could practically feel my bodyguards' shoulders swelling with pride.

Still, Chairman Liu was impressive in his own right. Treating a guest like this was probably how a foundry became number one. Surely he didn't act this way only toward me… right?