Since the 4th of the so far, there have been about 100 earthquakes in Taiwan.
As one of Taiwan's economic pillars, the semiconductor industry has long been suffering from the threat of "lack of electricity." When working on a 5-nanometer plant at a front-end station recently, Zhang Zhongmou specifically mentioned the local government's support for power supply.
With the rapid development of the semiconductor industry, the demand for the power supply is also increasing .If the power supply can not keep up, then the development of the semiconductor industry will also be a huge obstacle .This earthquake in Hualien, the semiconductor, the electronics industry will produce What kind of impact remains to be seen.
Due to the location of most of TSMC and UMC's manufacturing headquarters in Taiwan, IC Insights pointed out in particular that if Taiwan suffers severe earthquakes or typhoon disasters, it may affect the whole The supply chain for the electronics industry caused a dramatic impact, saying the foundry's diversified customer base is also a single source of manufacturing for many different types of components, resulting in higher levels of impact on independent foundries if the capacity of the foundry is compromised Damage.
In addition, DRAM maker Nanke, China and Asia Branch, panel makers AUO and so have set up factories in Hualien.
According to Ji Wei network understanding, the semiconductor process equipment machine, according to the sensitive process is different, the earthquake up to three, four or more, it will automatically start the protection device trip. And amplitude up to four, according to the safe operation rules, plant Internal workers need to withdraw.
Last year, the "815 Taiwan Blackout" had frightened the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. At the end of July and early August 2017, typhoons of Nisha and Begonia landed one after another in Taiwan. A power transmission tower located in Iowa, East Australia, was blown down by the typhoon. As a result, power supply in Taiwan is tight and power shortage suddenly arises. A preliminary assessment will require at least 15 days to repair this power supply tower.
Subsequently, on August 15, there was a massive island-wide power outage in Taiwan, affecting nearly 7 million households (almost the entire population of Taiwan) .In order to protect Taiwan's pillar industry, the semiconductor industry, the government supplied all electricity remaining in the evening The three major science parks in the semiconductor Fab plant.This also makes the world's largest foundry foundry TSMC intact in the blackout, the global chip seal giant giant ASMC only part of the park there 60-minute power outage, After that, the power supply was resumed soon, and only the factories of Nan Mao Science and Technology Co., Ltd. located in Nanke Park suffered some losses. Overall, this blackout has little impact on Taiwan's semiconductor industry.
Chip in the production process, in the event of power, it means that all the production line may have to scrap all the wafers.First, the production of Fab chip clean production environment, any natural disasters on the building may have caused the slosh Net environment is polluted, and maintaining a clean environment itself also consumes a lot of electricity, and once the blackout, clean environment may be polluted, the wafer may be scrapped throughout the production line at the same time, chip production equipment power Will bring greater losses to an ASML ArF-immersion 1980Di lithography machine production line, for example, in the event of power failure, then resume, restart, ramp up the required equipment costs may be as high as tens of millions of dollars. The loss will be even greater for the entire plant with numerous equipment.
For example, in 2015, the Kaohsiung earthquake in Taiwan, the discontinuation of TSMC's Zhongke and Sanken plants led to a 10% ~ 20% increase in global logic chip prices. Similarly, the global memory chip prices jumped 25% instantly after Hynix, the second-largest chip maker in Korea, exploded in a wafer fab in Wuxi.
Obviously, the stability of the power supply is very important for the semiconductor manufacturers and the entire semiconductor industry, and with the further development of the semiconductor industry, the demand for electricity will also show a sharp growth trend. If Taiwan can not guarantee enough power Supply, 'lack of electricity' will become the biggest obstacle hindering the development of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.