Richard R. Chang, CEO, SMIC

Richard Chang received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1970, his M.S. degree in Engineering Science from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1974, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University in 1986. His Ph.D. dissertation was on the design of double hetrojunction AlGaAs semiconductor injection laser.

After working for Union Carbide Corp. (in Tonawanda, N.Y.) for a few years as a Process Development Engineer, Richard joined Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) in 1977 where he worked on a variety of projects for the next 20 years. He began as a Design Engineer in TI’s Specialty Product Division in Lubbock, Texas. Richard contributed to the development of the highly acclaimed speech learning toy called “Speak and Spell”. He also worked in TI’s Central Research Laboratories (CRL) on projects such as solar cell systems and infrared detectors for various applications. From 1983, he joined DMOS4’s (TI’s first 6” wafer fab in the States) start-up team and was responsible for program scheduling, budget planning, equipment selection and purchasing, technology transfer, and training of engineers and operators. In the late 80s, he joined the DRAM technology/operation fan-out team in TI’s MOS Memory organization, reporting to Dr. Fann Shao, from whom he learned and benefited tremendously. With the help of his team, Richard achieved the operation and business goals. Besides DMOS4, his involvement led to the construction and start-up of operations for the following wafer fabs of TI: TI-Acer Fab1A & 1B (both in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan), TECH Fab1 (in Singapore), AMOS Phase2 (in Italy), and KTI (a JV between Kobe Steel and TI, in Japan). His outstanding contributions were highly recognized by TI’s top management. Late 1997, as TI began to focus on DSP and Analog products, TI’s MOS Memory group was sold to Micron and Richard took early retirement from TI.

In October of 1997, Richard joined Worldwide Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (WSMC) and became its President in February of 1998. He prudently recruited and kept accountable the executive management team. With their collective efforts, the team completed the fab construction, equipment selection, technology transfer (from Toshiba and Fujitsu), technology development (of 0.35um to 0.20um logic, mixed-signal, DRAM, SRAM, and nonvolatile memory technologies), wafer and mask production, and sales/marketing operations. WSMC became profitable by the fourth quarter of 1999, and subsequently was merged with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in January of 2000.

To materialize the vast market opportunities in China and to fulfill his long-term goal of raising the semiconductor technology level in China, Richard chose Shanghai as the site for starting up a new wafer foundry: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).
l In February of 2000, Richard became the President and CEO of SMIC. Their team ramped up three fabs in Shanghai within the first two years.
l In 2002, its first year of full production, SMIC was ranked as the ninth-largest global foundry, with an estimated US$95 million in sales.
l In 2003, SMIC merged a foundry fab (MOS17) of Motorola in Tianjin.
l In 2004, a new 12-inch wafer fab commenced pilot production in Beijing. SMIC has successfully passed the strict requirements, officially listed on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Mar.17, 2004.
l Now SMIC is building other three fabs in Shanghai and a testing fab in Chengdu