Taiwan Chip Industry Powers the Tech World, but Struggles for Status
原文 By ERIC PFANNER Published: September 15, 2013
翻譯 Kevin Chang
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Tien Wu, chief operating officer of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, has a problem: the brightest young people in Taiwan do not want to work in the island’s signature business, chip making.
日月光半導體營運長吳田玉表示，台灣現在碰到一個狀況，國內正發光發熱的年輕人並不願意進入在台灣相當具代表性的半導體產業工作。
“All the college freshmen are asking, ‘Why should I join the industry? I’d rather work for Facebook, Apple or Google,’ ” Mr. Wu said in an interview.
吳田玉在訪問中提到：「所有的社會新鮮人都說：為何我要進入半導體產業？我比較想去Facebook、Apple，或是Google上班。」
Taiwan, an island of 23 million people, is the world’s biggest chip maker. The industry generated about $63 billion in sales here last year — more than one-fifth of the global total, according to the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association. Made-in-Taiwan chips are major components in many of the world’s PCs, smartphones, cameras and other gadgets.
台灣，這座有兩千三百萬的人口的島嶼，同時也是世界規模最大晶片製造國。根據台灣半導體產業協會，光是半導體產業在去年就有630億的產值，超過全世界的五分之一。台灣製造的晶圓是所有電腦、智慧型手機、數位相機，和其他科技產品中最主要的零件。
Why, then, has chip making lost its allure? Many semiconductor companies in Taiwan struggle with low profit margins or even lose money. At the same time, Silicon Valley giants like Google and Apple, whose wizardry would be impossible without the continuing innovations of the semiconductor industry, are sitting on so much cash they do not know what to do with it.
那是為什麼製造晶圓不再擁有吸引力呢？許多台灣的半導體公司正面臨低落的毛利，或甚至虧損的狀況。然而，要是沒有半導體產業持續的研發創新，這些矽谷巨人如Google 和 Apple，他們有再好的產品也毫無用武之地，他們只會剩下為數可觀的資金卻不知道要往哪裡花。
“We’re the guys in the hot room, forging the iron and taking the heat, and someone else is reaping the benefit,” Mr. Wu said.
「我們就是那群在熔爐裡，忍受著高溫，鑄造產品，然後讓其他人坐享其成的人。」吳田玉說。
His lament was echoed by executives of other companies during a semiconductor trade show in Taiwan last week. So even as engineers toil at the latest technological breakthroughs in chip design and manufacturing, industry leaders are also wrestling with a bigger question: how can the semiconductor business grab a bigger portion of the profits it enables?
在台灣上星期舉辦的半導體貿易展覽會中，其他企業經理也有著和吳田玉相同的困擾。就連工程師，也總是費盡心力，為了在製造和設計上得到突破，企業主也不斷絞盡腦汁思考一個更大的問題：到底該怎麼做才能讓半導體產業得到更好的利潤？
The issue is gaining urgency because one of the axioms of semiconductors may be about to break down, putting new financial pressure on the industry. According to Moore’s Law, named after Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years. But transistors are now packed so densely on chips that it may be technically impossible to go further without corrupting data, specialists say.
有人認為摩爾定律即將被打破，因此也讓這個問題顯得日益重要。摩爾定律，以Intel的共同創辦人戈登摩爾命名。摩爾定律指出積體電路上可容納的電晶體數目，約每隔24個月便會增加一倍。但現在晶片上電晶體密集的程度，可能已快要達到技術瓶頸，研究人員說。
“Everybody is coming up against this,” said Pascal Viaud, chief strategy officer of Yole Développement, a consulting firm in Lyon, France. “The industry is going to need to find new ways of creating value.”
「所有人現在都碰到了這個問題，」在法國里昂的Yole Développement，策略長Pascal Viaud表示，「這個產業需要找到新方式來創造價值。」
One approach is to stack transistors, creating so-called three-dimensional chips, rather than line them up side by side. Samsung Electronics of South Korea announced this summer what it described as the first mass-produced 3-D chips for flash memory, a major component in smartphones.
其中一種方法是所謂的3D晶片，比起並排電晶體，3D晶片能夠塞入更多的電晶體。南韓三星電子在今年夏季發表了這項技術，作為快閃記憶體，且大量生產的3D晶片，同時也是智慧型手機中重要的零件。
Although 3-D technology and other advances promise to lower the cost and increase the performance of consumer electronics, they make chip design and manufacturing more complicated and expensive. This has prompted semiconductor companies to rethink how the industry is structured.
雖然3D技術或是其他創新技術能夠使成本降低並提高消費性電子產品的效能，這卻讓晶片的設計和製造變得更加複雜且昂貴。這使半導體公司開始重新思考產業結構的問題。
Several business models are competing for primacy
許多不同的商業模式正在競爭龍頭寶座。
The giants of the industry, including Samsung and Intel, offer one-stop shopping — designing, manufacturing and packaging chips into integrated circuits that are sold to the companies that design and assemble finished phones, cameras and other products. Advocates of this approach, featuring chip-making behemoths known as integrated device manufacturers, or I.D.M.’s, say it provides the financial scale and technological expertise to deal with the industry’s challenges.
半導體產業巨擘，包括三星，Intel，延攬所有購買，設計，製造，封裝，再交給組裝廠完成組裝，組裝成手機，相機，或是其他產品。這些企業利用這種一條龍的商業模式，垂直整合生產，企業擁有足夠的經濟規模，也有技術專家持續研發。
Another approach is more specialized, with separate companies handling different stages in the creation of an integrated circuit. Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, for example, packages and tests chips that have been made by so-called chip foundries and designed by others. Supporters of this approach say clients of electronics companies prefer to deal with more focused semiconductor contractors.
而另一種方法則是較屬於專業分工，由不同的公司分別完成生產的各個階段。舉例來說，聯電負責封裝並測試晶圓代工廠做好的晶片。支持專業分工的人認為，這些電子公司客戶比較喜歡和較專精的半導體承包商合作。
“Today, I can say with certainty that the I.D.M. model is dead,” said Ajit Manocha, chief executive of Global Foundries, a chip maker in Milpitas, Calif., that was created from the manufacturing arm of Advanced Micro Devices four years ago.
「今天，我可以肯定地說垂直整合模式已經死了，」位於加州的半導體公司，格羅方德(Global Foundries) 的執行長Ajit Manocha如此說。格羅方德是四年前從AMD分拆的半導體公司。
Although semiconductor companies everywhere are wrestling with how they should be structured, it is particularly pertinent in Taiwan because of the industry’s size and its relative fragmentation. Taiwan has been less affected by the rounds of consolidation that have concentrated the industry in a handful of big players elsewhere.
全球的半導體公司都在思索著如何改善企業架構，台灣也不例外。台灣的半導體產業分散，但是台灣卻在強敵環伺的情況下，能夠較不被那些垂直整合的巨型企業衝擊。
To try to cope with the new challenges, the biggest chip maker on the island, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or T.S.M.C., long considered purely a foundry, has recently moved to add capabilities, like chip packaging.
為了面對新的挑戰，台灣規模最大的半導體公司台積電，過去試著保持一個純代工廠的身分，最近已經開始嘗試積體電路的封裝。
United Microelectronics Corporation, the second-largest foundry by revenue in Taiwan, has announced an alliance with International Business Machines to develop new technology, as well as investments in other chip companies.
營收規模第二大的代工廠聯電，宣布和IBM結盟，聯合開發新技術，也同時投資其他晶圓廠。
Despite all the maneuvering, 2013 is shaping up as a pretty good year for chip makers in Taiwan, with total revenue expected to rise to 1.87 trillion Taiwan dollars, or about $63 billion, up 14 percent from 2012, according to the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association. But the industry is volatile; two years ago, sales plunged 12 percent.
儘管有許多的改變，2013正發展為有利於台灣半導體公司的一年。根據台灣半導體產業協會的資料，2013年總營收預計可高達1.87兆新台幣，約630億美金，比2012年成長了14%。然而這個產業動盪起伏不定，兩年前銷售曾經驟降達12%。
Some analysts see signs of a turnaround in memory chips, one of the weakest parts of the industry. Prices have been weak for years because chip makers expanded capacity just as sales of personal computers, a big user of memory chips, began to slump. But consolidation has helped put capacity back in line with sales.
分析師看到了記憶體晶片的震盪，記憶體是台灣半導體產業最弱的一環，價格持續低迷了幾年，因為製造廠只擴充了大量使用記憶體晶片的個人電腦產線，但卻銷售卻不斷下滑，然而企業間的聯合使得銷售量回升。
The vulnerability of the market to changes in supply and demand was demonstrated in early September when a fire at a plant in China that is owned by SK Hynix of South Korea, the second-biggest producer of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips after Samsung, caused prices in the spot market to surge as much as 20 percent.
九月SK Hynix在中國的工廠大火充分顯示了半導體市場供需的敏感。Hynix是僅次於三星，生產DRAM第二大的企業，這場大火使得市場價格爆增了20%。
The market for other chips, including those that serve as the brains of computers and mobile devices, has been steadier, helped by the global boom in sales of smartphones and other mobile devices.
相反的，由於智慧型裝置的大量出貨，CPU晶片市場卻是相對穩定的。
Some executives say concerns about the structure of the industry are overblown. Instead of coveting the lavish profits of the Internet companies and mobile phone makers like Apple and Samsung, they say, chip makers ought to work on developing new markets for their products in industries like automobiles and health care.
有些主管認為半導體產業已經過度膨脹，與其打著網路公司和手機廠像是Apple和三星的主意，晶圓廠亟虛開發新的市場，比如說汽車產業和健康醫療產業。
“It’s about innovation,” said Jack Sun, chief technology officer of T.S.M.C. “We need to collaborate to create innovation together. Otherwise we won’t be able to retire.”
「關鍵在於創新，」孫元成，台積電的技術長說，「我們需要彼此合作創新，否則我們不能安心退休。」
“So leave the software guys and the O.E.M.’s alone for now,” he said, referring to the companies that assemble electronics devices, known as original equipment manufacturers.
「所以從現在開始讓那些軟體工程師和OEM廠好好相處吧!」他說。
原文:
沒有留言:
張貼留言