TAIPEI -- The year was 2009 and the chip industry knew it had a problem. Chiang Shang-yi, then head of research and development at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., thought he had a solution.
Instead of squeezing more transistors onto progressively tinier chips, the conventional way of making them more powerful, he suggested to his boss, TSMC founder Morris Chang, that they explore a less advanced part of the chipmaking process known as chip packaging.
