Lo's departure was originally treated as a celebratory milestone. TSMC held a farewell event honoring his 21 years of service, and after leaving, he received the ITRI Fellow distinction, presented in person by Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim. Since TSMC believed he was retiring, it appears he was not asked to sign a non-compete agreement, a customary requirement for departing executives that expressly forbids employment at competing firms for 18 months, with half-salary compensation. However, now TSMC is reportedly investigating whether Lo indeed took trade secrets with him.
Most recently, Wei-Jen Lo served as senior vice president, overseeing technology development within the R&D organization at TSMC. He joined the company in 2004, initially taking charge of Operations II as a vice president. From 2006 through 2009, he led the R&D division, after which he transitioned into a role managing the firm’s Advanced Technology Business along with manufacturing-technology operations. Under his leadership, his organization has accumulated over 1,500 patents worldwide, including approximately 1,000 filed in the United States.
Before moving to TSMC, Dr. Lo held senior technical and production roles at Intel, including oversight of the company's development site in Santa Clara between 1997 and 2000, according to The Org . His earlier career included teaching at an American university and research positions at Motorola's R&D organization and the Xerox Microelectronics Center.
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Anton Shilov Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
rluker5 Quite a storied career. Wonder if he took any information over to TSMC? Reply
Air2004 rluker5 said: Quite a storied career. Wonder if he took any information over to TSMC? I was thinking the same. Reply
MergleBergle Air2004 said: I was thinking the same. I wasn't. He left Intel halfway through the lifecycle of the Pentium 4, which the Athlon 64 was superior to, and everyone, including Intel knew it, which is why they threatened any PC company if they dared to use AMD's product (and were rightfully, eventually punished for). So the only trade secrets he would have brought are "don't do things like Intel" Reply
das_stig Smells like TSMC cheesed off they paid for a retirement party and he then decides to come back to work and not for them, while they failed to get a non-compete gagging order. Reply
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Reference reading
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/high-ranking-tsmc-executive-faces-taiwan-legal-investigation-over-murky-return-to-intel-report-alleges-employee-took-technical-documents-with-him#main
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