A change at the top of the Shanghai foundry company, SMIC, is the latest episode in a long-running industry feud between TSMC and Richard Chang, the colourful founder and CEO of SMIC who resigned earlier this week.
Chang was also the founder of Worldwide Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (WSMC) which he set up, in 1997, as a foundry competitor to TSMC.
However, before WSMC got going properly, it was bought out, against Chang's wishes, by TSMC.
In a way it was a battle of two TI-ers. Both Richard Chang, and the chairman of TSMC, Morris Chang, cut their teeth at Texas Instruments.
Richard Chang built six fabs for TI before taking early retirement in 1997 to return to Taiwan to found WSMC.
Though born in mainland China, Chang's parents had gone to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-Shek after Mao Tse-Tung and his communist party took over China in 1949. For Chang, who was not yet one year-old at the time, Taiwan was where he grew up.
In 1999, stung at being forcibly separated from WSMC, Richard Chang raised $1.6bn from a group of US investors led by Goldman Sachs.
He looked around for a suitable place to build another fab, and set up another foundry company, and was offered a good deal by the China government which had been trying, unsuccessfully, to spawn a semiconductor industry for a couple of decades.
The Taiwanese government immediately swung into action, saying it was illegal for Chang to raise money in Taiwan, then spend it on a business in China.
The Taiwanese government fined him NT$5m, and threatened Chang with confiscation of his assets in Taiwan if he went ahead with the plan to establish SMIC.
In 2000, however, Chang, went ahead. He told people that he wasn't just thinking about making money, he wanted to: "Share God's love with the Chinese."
Chang, a devout Christian, thought the communists of China needed some spiritual succour.
He recruited a team of engineers from companies around the world, including engineers from TSMC, and set out to build fabs in Beijing and Shanghai.
TSMC sued SMIC for infringement of trade secrets and the case rumbled on for years before, reportedly, being settled earlier this week in a deal which involves SMIC paying $200m to TSMC.
The payment will probably take SMIC's amalgamated losses to over $1bn. Over the last seven years of foundry operations SMIC has accumulated losses of over $800m.
With Chang now removed from the scene, and a new SMIC CEO, David Wang, appointed who comes from one of TSMC's main suppliers, Applied Materials, the way is set for a rapprochement between TSMC and SMIC.
As for Richard Chang, it seems unlikely that such a charismatic character, with an unrivalled experience of the foundry industry, will be lost to the semiconductor business.
Of course, Hector Ruiz's alleged dealings with the hedge fund people have left a vacancy at Globalfoundries.