TI

"Just as I was working day and night, fighting desperately on the NPN diffused production line, a world-shaking event was quietly happening before my eyes. Let me explain why something world-shaking happened quietly. It’s simple: “world-shaking” was the later impact; “quietly happening” was the fact at the time. Not long after I joined TI, I got to know a colleague who joined at almost the same time as I did. He had a very striking appearance: extraordinarily tall (over two meters), thin, and most conspicuous of all, an enormous head. At the time he was in his thirties, but looked rather older. Before joining TI, he had worked in Ohio. We were both new TI employees, both from the East, and about the same age, so we quickly became acquainted. Often at five or six in the afternoon, when the day’s work came to a pause, we would have a cup of coffee and chat. He told me he worked in R&D and was thinking of putting several transistors and diodes, plus resistors, together into a circuit on the same silicon chip. He also said that TI’s president, Haggerty, was very interested in his research and believed this was the future direction of semiconductor development. At that time, I was gradually gaining a bit of a reputation in the company for understanding transistors, so sometimes he would also ask my opinion. Honestly, at that time it was difficult enough for me just to make one transistor; putting several transistors plus other electronic components onto the same silicon chip and having them function at the same time was simply inconceivable. But I did my utmost to answer the technical questions he asked me. After a while, he told me he had already made a circuit with a rough scale and form. I was happy for him, but I couldn’t help thinking that for this thing to have practical applications, it was still a long way off."

"After the yield breakthrough for the NPN diffused type, IBM breathed a sigh of relief, because a major bottleneck in their computer production was removed. TI was even happier, because the customer was satisfied, and when pricing had been negotiated, the assumed yield was very low (close to the yield of IBM’s benchmark line). Now the actual yield was several times higher, and profits were also several times higher than expected. Luce’s gamble—fully staffing up when the yield was zero—also paid off."

"Finally one day, I was talking with the foreman when I suddenly heard a tester shouting from twenty feet away. The foreman and I immediately rushed over. While we were hurrying over, the tester had already stood up and was waving his arms excitedly. Operators from the same line also gathered around the tester. We guessed there must be good news. Sure enough, that batch of products actually had a 40% pass rate, and the tester was so excited he couldn’t even speak. A few minutes later, Luce came running over with a big smile—he had already heard the good news. A few minutes after that, my supervisor also came running over with a big smile. The question they cared about most was: “Do you remember how this batch was done?” Of course I remembered. Not only did I remember, I had also written it down in my notebook. That day the full-day yield was 25%, several times higher than any previous day. Everyone probably remembers the happiest moment of their life; that day was the happiest day in my twenty-seven years of life. It was September 1958, four months after I joined TI."

"If I ask myself honestly, why was it that I could achieve some results as soon as I “first tried to make my name” at TI? In my first half year at TI, what I knew and what I could do was not much different from the latter part of my time at Sylvania; at Sylvania, my colleagues and I under Cory also designed and developed quite a few decent transistors, but in the end those achievements all faded into obscurity. Why? At Sylvania, I did not have a big customer anxiously waiting for delivery—if I succeeded in production, he would immediately relax; I did not have a supervisor who had already negotiated a reasonable price with the customer—if I broke through on yield, he could make a lot of money; I did not have a production department that cooperated closely like Luce’s, full of confidence, gambling together and winning together; I did not have a group of enthusiastic operators with team spirit, pulling together through hardship and cheering and dancing with excitement in success; and I especially did not have senior management who could understand the problem and appreciate the achievement. These conditions that I did not have at Sylvania but did have at TI were all because TI and Sylvania were two companies different in nature—different environment, different people. TI gave me opportunities that Sylvania never gave me."

"In my first half year at TI, according to my neighbor, I became a “crazy worker.” I went to work at 8 a.m. every morning and went home at 7 p.m. for dinner. At 8 p.m. I went back to the plant to check the night shift’s results, and only went home after the third shift started at midnight. Of the two engineers under me, one worked hours similar to mine, and the other specialized in the second and third night shifts. No one told us to work this way; it was all voluntary, and we felt it was what we should do. Looking at other departments in the company, although our unit seemed to work harder than others, others’ working hours were also long. That was TI at the time!"

"When I say Noyce had business vision, in fact he not only had vision—he was also a very shrewd businessman. In 1973, memory was in short supply (just like twenty years later), and at that time Intel was the largest memory supplier. The computer division of TI urgently needed memory, and the vice president of the computer division called me: “I hear you and Noyce are old acquaintances. Could you ask him to allocate us a bit more?” I called Noyce. He seemed very troubled and poured out to me for several minutes about the hardships suppliers face during shortages, but in the end he still agreed to consider it. I hung up thinking the chances were small—maybe there wouldn’t even be a reply. Unexpectedly, he called me the next day, sounding very relaxed: “Ah, Morris, no problem with what you said yesterday; we can do it. Of course, old friends should help each other.” Before I could thank him, he immediately continued: “But silicon raw material is also in short supply. We really need silicon raw material. I know the silicon raw materials department is also under your control. Could you ask them to allocate us a bit more?” Clearly, overnight he had already worked out with his staff how to turn this “favor” into a trade that would also benefit him."

"The development of integrated circuits was faster than I had imagined when I chatted with Kilby. After the inspiration from the inventions of Kilby and Noyce, the biggest obstacle to the development of integrated circuits was manufacturing process capability. Under fierce competition among companies, advances in process capability progressed by leaps and bounds. Products I considered “unthinkable” in 1958 had become quite possible by 1962. In 1963, TI established an integrated circuit business unit and began small-scale production. By the end of 1966, when I took over as general manager of the integrated circuit business unit, business had already reached about 1.5 million U.S. dollars per month. In the early 1970s, the MOS structure was widely adopted, and integrated circuits grew even faster. By 1995, the global integrated circuit market reached 130 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 85% of the entire semiconductor market."

"During his nearly twenty years at TI, he was TI’s most outstanding inventor of that period. Under the system of large American corporations, an interest like his could not make him rich, because ownership of invention patents belongs to the company, not the inventor. Of course, TI rewarded him generously, but it could never compare with the huge profits from owning the patent rights himself. Therefore, he later decided to leave TI to be an inventor on his own, while also doing consulting."

"It now seems that from the 1950s to the 1970s, TI enjoyed more than twenty years of prosperity in the semiconductor industry. There were, of course, many factors, but the professional caliber of the top management in the early period was indeed one of them. Unfortunately, the seeds of failure are often planted within success. As a company gradually grows larger, the internal and external matters of top leaders gradually increase, but most of them have nothing to do with technology. In order to “handle countless affairs every day,” they themselves become disconnected from rapidly advancing technology. Take Shabert as an example: in the 1950s he was a semiconductor expert; in the 1960s he was promoted to executive vice president in charge of the company’s overall business and began to gradually lose touch with semiconductors; by the 1970s, he had become a layman in semiconductors. Even more sadly, he himself did not know he had become disconnected, and still believed that the semiconductor industry of the 1970s was the same as it had been twenty years earlier."

"Of course, in earlier business history there were quite a few successful examples of “the small taking on the big,” but those successes were achieved only after long struggles, and most were cases where big companies made serious mistakes that gave small companies opportunities. TI’s large competitors, however, had not made serious mistakes, yet TI surpassed them in only a few short years. Why was this? Ultimately, the pace of technological progress clearly accelerated after World War II, and “technological inflection points” emerged one after another. When each “technological inflection point” appears, big companies are not necessarily stronger than small ones; small and big companies have almost equal opportunities. Over the past decades, cases of small companies outperforming big companies have become too numerous to count. The most famous example in the past ten-plus years is Microsoft beating IBM. But as far as I know, TI established the earliest model."

"About half of the funding for my section came from the company’s own funds, and the other half came from U.S. military contracts. At that time, the military urgently needed transistors and signed R&D contracts with many companies. To compete for these contracts, I often had opportunities to go to the Army Signal unit in New Jersey to discuss matters with the semiconductor technology procurement personnel there. One of them later became my colleague at TI. As I recall, at that time military contracts involved little bureaucratic red tape; the main point of management was the results. If the results met the specified requirements, the funds were paid in full; if the results did not meet specifications, part of the funding was withheld until they met the requirements."

"The new general manager immediately summoned “important personnel” one by one. I had never met him before, but I was also on the list of those summoned. Since joining Sylvania I had never been to the general manager’s office, yet now I had the chance to enter. It was an extremely spacious, luxuriously decorated office, far more lavish than the TI general manager’s office that I would later often enter, and it could even compare with the general manager’s offices of major companies in Taiwan today. The new general manager was very amiable and seemed sincere as well. While looking at a list on the desk, he said only a few short sentences: “I don’t know you, but as I understand it, your performance is good, so you are not among those to be laid off. However, the company needs to lay off about half the staff. Among the four engineers in your section, so-and-so and so-and-so are to be laid off; please inform them. Of course, the company will pay severance according to seniority. Your section will also be dissolved, and the remaining personnel will be merged into another section. Your salary and grade will not change, but from now on please contribute to the company as an individual engineer.” Even though he was amiable and sincere, every word of those sentences was unpleasant to hear. Our section—including me—was five young people; after two years of hard work, what we ended up with was two people being laid off. As for me? The new general manager seemed to think that not laying me off was already a great favor. But although I had not gone to other companies to look for work, I firmly believed that finding a job would not be a problem. I immediately protested on behalf of the two who were being laid off, but it was too late; he had already decided. The two who were laid off were both in their first jobs. Telling them this result was the hardest work of my life; both conversations ended in tears. In the end, the two of them said the same thing: “It seems enthusiasm and hard work still aren’t enough.” Youthful innocence disappeared within a single day, and that lost innocence could never be found again."

"Another observation I had about TI was that its upper management was quite proficient in semiconductor technology. Usually, in a technology company, the grassroots staff have specialized knowledge, but the upper levels are not necessarily experts. TI in the 1950s, however, was a semiconductor company where people at all levels were insiders."

"TI’s breakthrough in silicon transistors immediately redrew the map of the semiconductor market. Before that, TI was an obscure small company; after that, TI soared and dominated the semiconductor industry for more than twenty years. TI’s breakthrough also had a deeper meaning: it established a model for countless small technology companies thereafter—that it is possible for the small to take on the big, and that the small have a chance to succeed against the big."

"After Teal arrived at TI, he focused on research and development of silicon. At an academic semiconductor conference in May 1954, Teal presented a paper titled “Recent Developments in Silicon.” Such conferences did not require authors to submit manuscripts in advance, so before the presentations, no one could know what Teal was going to say. At the same conference, there were several papers about silicon development. In a paper before Teal’s, on the development of silicon transistors, the author was a semiconductor research director at a large company. He said with confidence that silicon technology was advancing quickly, but that to use it to manufacture transistors would still require at least two or three more years. After he finished, Teal went on stage. Calm and unhurried, he described some experimental results, and among the audience there were still quite a few people dozing off. Finally, when he finished reading the paper, Teal raised his head and, in his Texas accent, slowly said: “We have successfully manufactured silicon transistors, whose performance matches what experiments predicted. TI is in pilot production, and we expect that in a few months we will be able to mass-produce them and bring them to market.”"

"At the end of 1955, when I transferred to become section chief of the R&D department, silicon transistors had been on the market for more than a year, and TI almost monopolized the market. Even so, the cost of germanium was still lower than silicon, so most of the transistor market was still held by germanium. My responsibility was to develop germanium transistors of various frequencies and power levels."