As we well know, the whole of Taiwan is currently facing drought and there are reservoirs and dams almost at the bottom, which also makes it difficult for companies to operate. Now to do so in the factory Fab-14A (P7) (Southern Taiwan Science Park) company TSMC added a power outage, which in such cases means, on the one hand, that the wafers currently being processed can be discarded, followed by complicated cleaning of the machines and gradual re-commissioning.
According to Reuters the cause of the outage is known and it is basically a cliché, as the line was interrupted in the late morning by digging the cable during earthworks. Fortunately, the operator managed to minimize the damage by switching on backup generators, and the power supply was then completely restored last night around 7 o’clock local time.
The Fab 14A factory is currently producing chips using 40, 45, 65 and 90nm technologies, ie older processes, and the question is for which specific companies the wafers were processed. These could be, for example, customers from car manufacturers, which already have such major shortage problems that they have to limit car production. In the case of TSMC, losses are estimated at $ 28 million to $ 35 million, which is likely to be covered by insurance, so TSMC’s customers, who are currently investigating the damage, are likely to be the most harmed.