A few days ago, news broke on the Internet that Luo Weiren, a 21-year senior executive of TSMC, was going to switch jobs to Intel. Although he retired from TSMC in July, the matter still attracted attention in the industry. The reason is that although Luo Weiren is 75 years old, his status and experience are still very important. He switched jobs to a company that competes with TSMC, and it is also an American semiconductor giant. This will make it very difficult for TSMC.
Luo Weiren was one of the backbones of Intel's process research and development as early as 1996. He went to TSMC in 2004 until his retirement at the end of July this year. Over the past 21 years, he has participated in the research and development of multiple generations of important processes of TSMC.Especially the 28nm HKMG process and advanced processes in the EUV era.
TSMC’s usual retirement age is 67, but Luo Weiren can retire at the age of 75, which shows that TSMC attaches great importance to this veteran.
Taking a step back, even though Luo Weiren has withdrawn from the research and development frontline in recent years, he has been familiar with how TSMC achieves rapid and stable mass production of advanced processes for many years. This experience alone is enough to attract friends, and less detours may bring about changes in the market structure.
When a figure like Luo Weiren retires, he will also enter into a non-competition agreement. If he really goes to a friend, TSMC will probably take legal action through normal means. However, it may be difficult to achieve this for Luo Weiren.On the one hand, Luo Weiren is an American, and on the other hand, TSMC is worried about whether the US government was involved in this incident.
It is well known that the United States has requirements for domestic mass production of advanced processes. Even if TSMC has transferred the 4nm process, it will not change. The only ones that can be trusted are domestic manufacturers like Intel. In August, it also invested in Intel and became the largest shareholder with 10% of the shares.
Therefore, if this matter changes from a simple job-hopping to a poaching operation supported by the US official, TSMC will suffer a huge loss. After all, the consequences of offending US officials are more serious than the loss of 5nm and 2nm process technology.
