During the challenging early years of China's semiconductor industry, there was an outstanding individual who harbored a steadfast "China Core" in his heart. Even when the semiconductor sector faced numerous difficulties, he resolutely plunged into the wave of the chip industry. Despite experiencing blockades and suppression, his original intention remained unchanged and unyielding.

This person is Mr. Zhang Rujing, known as the "Godfather of Chinese Chips." Today, let us delve into the story of this legendary figure.

01

Bonding with the "Core," Accumulating Rich Factory Construction Experience

Zhang Rujing was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu in 1948 and moved to Taiwan with his parents in January 1949. In 1970, he graduated from National Taiwan University with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and then studied in the United States, earning a Master of Engineering Science from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, and a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from Southern Methodist University.

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In 1977, at the age of 29, Zhang Rujing joined the American semiconductor company Texas Instruments (TI). Shortly after, he became part of the DRAM team led by Nobel Prize winner in Physics and inventor of the integrated circuit, Jack Kilby. It was from this year that Mr. Zhang Rujing formed a deep bond with the chip industry.

Zhang Rujing's career at TI began as a grassroots supervisor, where he personally led workers in all aspects of installation, production, and maintenance, and was promoted to the position of Plant Facilities Manager. Later, Zhang Rujing transitioned into operations and, around 1990, began his journey of factory construction under the guidance of Dr. Shao Zifan, a world-class chip factory construction master at the time. Zhang Rujing was meticulous in thought and strong in execution. Wherever he went, he broke new ground and established benchmarks, getting operations on track within two years before moving on to the next city. He has been involved in the construction and management of over ten wafer factories in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Italy, and other places, becoming a recognized "factory construction expert" in the industry.

Throughout his factory construction process at TI, Zhang Rujing accumulated a wealth of experience, which laid a solid foundation for his subsequent fervent engagement in factory construction upon returning to China.

As Zhang Rujing's career flourished and he became a well-known factory construction expert in the global chip industry, his father, Zhang Xi Lun, asked his son this question: "When will you build a factory on the mainland?"The question of the father was met with an opportunity for resolution at the end of the 1990s.

In 1997, Zhang Rujing applied for early retirement from Texas Instruments, marking his twentieth year at TI. This year also became the starting point of a new chapter in his life, turning the page to a more magnificent one.

02

First Expedition, Joining World Advanced

At that time, the semiconductor industry in mainland China was just beginning. Zhang Rujing keenly sensed that the Chinese chip field was about to experience a significant boom and conceived the idea of returning to China to develop the chip industry. Zhang Rujing once said: "I take pride in being Chinese. We are Chinese, and if we are not good enough, we strive to make China better, so I am very willing to come back."

Leaving the United States, Zhang Rujing first arrived at a chip factory in Wuxi, Jiangsu, to work on a 0.5-micron technology research and development project. However, after completing only one project, he moved to the Taiwan region of China due to policy reasons. At the invitation of Huabang Electronics and the China Development Industrial Bank, he joined World Advanced Semiconductor— the third wafer foundry company in Taiwan, following TSMC and United Microelectronics. With his experience in factory construction and business management, Zhang Rujing, as the deputy general manager of China Development, quickly became the general manager of World Advanced Semiconductor.

Under Zhang Rujing's diligent management, World Advanced Semiconductor achieved profitability just three years after its establishment. However, it wasn't long before news spread that TSMC intended to acquire World Advanced.

The acquisition of World Advanced was one of the results of the intense competition between TSMC and UMC. In 1999, UMC merged with its subsidiaries, Lian Cheng, Lian Rui, Lian Jia, and Hetai, forming a company with a capital amount of over eighty billion, posing a threat to TSMC and forcing TSMC to reach out to World Advanced.

In Zhang Rujing's original plan, World Advanced's third to tenth factories were to be invested in and built on the mainland. During the acquisition negotiations with TSMC, he also made the construction of factories on the mainland one of the conditions for agreeing to the deal. However, it was regrettable that after the acquisition was completed, the previously promised factory construction plan did not materialize as scheduled.

Later, deeply disappointed, Zhang Rujing resigned from the company in anger. Although TSMC wanted to retain Zhang Rujing with a lucrative equity stake, recognizing him as a rare talent, Zhang Rujing remained unmoved, determined to build a chip factory on the mainland.Money, company, stocks – all discarded, after leaving, Zhang Rujing's first stop was Hong Kong.

However, the selection of the factory site was a crucial challenge for Zhang Rujing. In the past, he had conducted in-depth investigations in various places in mainland China, but unfortunately, funds were limited, and he was even once misunderstood as a "swindler" by some local people. Initially, he envisioned establishing a factory in Hong Kong and even visited officials of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, hoping to gain support and assistance.

At that time, Jiang Shangzhou, who was transferred from Hainan to Shanghai to serve as the deputy director of the Shanghai Economic Commission, learned about Zhang Rujing's plans to build a factory and warmly invited him to inspect Shanghai. In January 2000, when Zhang Rujing visited Shanghai, all four leadership groups of the city were mobilized, leading Zhang Rujing to decide to shift his factory plan from Hong Kong to Shanghai.

Recalling this experience later, Zhang Rujing stated: "Without Jiang Shangzhou, I would have left long ago."

03

Another Battle, the Establishment of SMIC

In April 2000, Zhang Rujing persuaded his American wife to bring the entire family, including his mother who was over 90 years old, to Shanghai and gave up his household registration in Taiwan Province to establish Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). At that time, Zhang Rujing lacked talent, funds, and equipment, but that was not a problem; none of these were enough to hold him back from moving forward.

Lacking talent, he sought talent. Zhang Rujing successively used his personal charm to widely issue a call to heroes, gathering over 400 international chip industry technical engineers within a year. This included his former subordinates, veterans from TSMC, and others. Moreover, around the year 2000, a group of talented and experienced individuals returned, causing a sudden acceleration in China's chip industry. In addition to Zhang Rujing, there were individuals such as Wu Ping from Spreadtrum, Deng Zhonghan from VLSI Technology, Dai Wemin from VeriSilicon, and Zhu Yiming from GigaDevice, among others.

Lacking funds, he sought funds. Zhang Rujing successfully obtained investments from Goldman Sachs and Walden International from the United States, Han鼎 Asia Pacific from Taiwan, Ascend Capital from Singapore, and companies with Chinese government backgrounds like Shanghai Industrial and Peking University Enterprise.

Equipment was the most troublesome issue, as the Wassenaar Arrangement almost completely blocked the possibility of importation. To break through the equipment embargo, Zhang Rujing found five American church organizations to provide guarantees, allowing chip manufacturing equipment to be smoothly transported to Shanghai.In 2000, the mainland's chip industry was just beginning to develop, and the momentum was not strong, it could even be said that it was in a cold phase, which was indeed unfavorable for a startup company, but Zhang Rujing did not think so.

Amidst the overall pessimism in the industry and the continuous withdrawal of players, Zhang Rujing relied on his personal connections to purchase a large number of low-cost second-hand equipment, quickly establishing three 8-inch wafer production lines for SMIC, preparing the production capacity fully before the industry's recovery, and setting the world's fastest record for chip factory construction. It was precisely because of this that SMIC quickly captured half of the mainland's semiconductor foundry market.

Around 2003, to expand the scale, Zhang Rujing conducted a second round of private fundraising and almost simultaneously started the construction of two 12-inch wafer factories in Beijing, and also acquired a factory in Tianjin that was previously owned by Motorola at a low price. In about three years, six factories were built, and the initial integrated circuit line width achieved from 0.25 microns, 0.18 microns to 90nm. This earned Zhang Rujing the nickname "Factory Building Maniac."

In March 2004, when SMIC was listed in Hong Kong and the United States, according to research institution IDC's study, SMIC's output value had already surpassed that of Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor (CSM) in the third quarter of 2004, becoming the world's third-largest wafer foundry.

Logically, this should have been the most brilliant moment in Zhang Rujing's life, but a crisis also emerged at the same time.

It is necessary to mention the confrontation between Zhang Rujing and Zhang Zhongmou. In 1987, Zhang Zhongmou founded the world's first professional foundry company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), in the Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, and quickly developed into the leader of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

SMIC had recruited many engineers from TSMC during its initial stage, and the recruitment process involved the leakage of the company's product process technology. As a result, TSMC launched frequent attacks on SMIC, suing SMIC multiple times for technical patents.

In August 2003, at a critical moment when SMIC was about to go public in Hong Kong, TSMC demanded compensation of 1 billion US dollars for issues related to trade secrets. In February 2005, the two parties reached an out-of-court settlement. One year and seven months later, TSMC sued SMIC again for violating the settlement agreement. In September 2009, TSMC won the lawsuit. The 200 million US dollars in compensation and 10% of the company's equity made this six-year-long lawsuit the most brutal battle in China's semiconductor industry.

The most painful price was that Zhang Rujing had to resign and leave SMIC, which he had devoted his heart and soul to and had been running for nine years. In November 2009, Zhang Rujing submitted his resignation, and at the same time, he also signed a non-compete agreement.

Despite being forced to leave SMIC, which he had founded, Zhang Rujing did not complain or feel sad. Instead, he comforted his friends, "Don't think this is a big failure in life, don't be knocked down, life always needs continuous effort."After Zhang Rujing's departure, SMIC was taken over by Jiang Shangzhou. During his tenure, Jiang Shangzhou invited top talents in the industry such as Wang Ningguo and Yang Shining to join SMIC, divested non-core businesses, and led SMIC to turn a profit in 2010. He was also hailed as "one of the two great warriors of SMIC."

Later, Zhang Rujing frankly stated: "For me, this process is a blessing in disguise. Because that project was successful, SMIC was well-established, and the current succession is also very good."

Under the restriction of a 3-year non-compete agreement, Zhang Rujing turned to the field of LED research and development, manufacturing, and LED-related application products. In less than three years, Zhang Rujing invested in four LED companies in China, covering the upstream substrate materials, chips, and downstream lighting application fields of LED, with an investment amount exceeding 3.5 billion yuan, dedicated to the fields of environmental protection and health.

04

Passing the Baton Again, Founding New Sheng

After leaving SMIC, Zhang Rujing did not leave the mainland or the integrated circuit industry. In 2014, after a 5-year hiatus, Zhang Rujing started his third venture by founding New Sheng Semiconductor Company in Shanghai.

It is reported that the background of Zhang Rujing's establishment of Shanghai New Sheng was that at that time, there were many constraints on 12-inch silicon wafers in mainland China, which were highly dependent on imports. The purpose of Zhang Rujing's venture this time was to solve these problems.

In 2016, Shanghai New Sheng successfully pulled out the first 300mm single-crystal silicon ingot, and achieved scaled production in 2018, initiating the domestic industrialization process of 300mm semiconductor silicon wafers.

Three years later, Zhang Rujing handed over the New Sheng company to the Shanghai Silicon Industry Group for continued operation and management, while he himself embarked on the next venture. This time, he once again did something that no one had done before.

Zhang Rujing has publicly stated, "I am also very pleased that the domestic shortage of large silicon wafers has begun to have a substantial solution, so let the country continue to grow and strengthen it. Actually, what I really want to do is IDM (Integrated Device Manufacturing model)."05

Relocating to Qingdao, Founding SinoIC

In 2018, Zhang Rukun relocated to Qingdao and established the first CIDM (Commune Integrated Device Manufacturer) model company in China, SinoIC Semiconductor. This marked his fifth entrepreneurial venture following his involvement with World Advanced Semiconductor, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), the LED research and development manufacturing sector, and Shanghai Xinsheng.

SinoIC is the first collaborative integrated circuit manufacturing (CIDM) project in China. The project is capable of mass-producing high-end mixed-signal and special process 8-inch and 12-inch chips, as well as domestically advanced photomasks, making it a vertically integrated chip factory on par with advanced IDMs (Integrated Device Manufacturers) abroad. In August 2021, SinoIC Semiconductor successfully initiated production at its 8-inch wafer facility.

The global chip shortage that began in the second half of 2020 was primarily due to a lack of mature process products in 8-inch and 12-inch wafers, especially with the demand for new energy electric vehicles focusing on 8-inch (200mm, 0.11 microns and above) and 40nm/28nm and above 12-inch (300mm) wafers.

06

Joining Jittag, Continuing the Legacy

In May 2022, at the age of 74, Zhang Rukun left Qingdao SinoIC to join Shanghai Jittag Semiconductor. The industry's interpretation is that Zhang Rukun aimed to alleviate the chip shortage dilemma in the new energy automotive industry. Domestic automotive-grade chip investments, attention, and resources are relatively scarce, with a high dependency on imports for high-end microcontroller chips.

Regarding these entrepreneurial journeys, whether choosing to continue or deciding to leave, Zhang Rukun has maintained a low-profile stance towards external inquiries, rarely offering excessive explanations. He typically attributes the reasons for leaving to "personal interests."

Some have praised Zhang Rukun in this way: he carries the grand dream of China's semiconductor industry, and for this dream, he has forsaken everything. This determination and persistence are undoubtedly the most admirable.It is precisely because of outstanding individuals like Zhang Rujing that China's semiconductor industry has been able to emerge in the fierce international competition. His achievements belong not only to him personally but also to the entire Chinese semiconductor industry. On the journey of "China's Core," if we can have more people like Zhang Rujing, then China's "core" affairs will no longer be a heavy burden on our hearts, but a beacon of hope filled with infinite possibilities. We look forward to the continued vigorous development of China's semiconductor industry under the leadership of more figures like Zhang Rujing, making a greater contribution to the prosperity and strength of the nation.