Abstract
This paper focuses on the relationship between ITRI and Taiwan’s IC Design Industry. The author separates the history to four periods to review. In the first period (~1980), ITRI was responsible to bring IC technology in Taiwan from RCA. Besides, ITRI set up UMC. In the second period (1981~1990), ITRI noticed the importance of IC design. Therefore, ITRI planned to train people with specialty in IC design. Besides, ITRI set up TSMC which is the first semiconductor dedicated foundry in the world. The establishment of TSMC enabled the rapid growth of the fabless semiconductor industry. In the third period (1991~2000), ITRI made effort to assist the growing emergence of IC design company, and open lap is one of the example. ITRI’s spin-off company (UMC) divided its IC design departments to build up new IC design companies like Mediatek. Besides, ITRI noticed the trend of SoC. Therefore, it was aggressive to promote the image of SoC. Moreover, in 2000, ITRI set up System-on-chip Technology Center (STC) to be responsible for the related activities. In the last period (2001~2008), ITRI still strived to make Taiwan more competitive in IC design industry such as Nankang IC Design Incubation Center, IP Qualification Alliance (IPQA), and etc.