A few days ago I was one of the lucky people in attendance during the Computer History Museum’s annual Fellow Awards, an award ceremony that honors individuals that have greatly contributed to the development of computing.

This year, among the four distinguished Fellow Award honorees was Morris Chang, one of the most innovative semiconductor pioneers of our time and the founding chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known to most as TSMC. TSMC was a revolution in the world of semiconductors because it was the world’s first independent silicon foundry. Any company with an integrated circuit design could have their chips built at TSMC, eliminating the billion-dollar investment a company had to make to build its own semiconductor factory. TSMC allowed a new class of fabless semiconductor companies, like NVIDIA, to form, and the computer industry hasn’t been the same since.

After his induction into the Computer History Museum’s Hall of Fellows, Mr. Chang sat down with our co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang in front of a live, 200-person audience to talk about his career in the technology industry. Jensen shared some great personal stories about Mr. Chang with the audience and Mr. Chang gave a candid, first-hand account of the challenges he faced in starting TSMC.

You can check out a video of the entire talk on the Computer History Museum’s website here. (wmv video file, 203 MB)