Most chip and flat-panel manufacturing facilities have resumed normal operations after a brief pause due to the magnitude 7.2 earthquake on Wednesday, the National Science and Technology Council said in a statement yesterday.
Major foundry companies and flat-panel makers in the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) restarted most of their equipment on the same day as the quake, leaving only a few still making final adjustments to return to full operations, the council said.
“Major foundry companies have smoothly restarted their manufacturing equipment. They have sufficient stocks of materials,” it said.
Photo: Mike Kai Chen, Bloomberg
At the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), semiconductor companies rebooted 90 percent of manufacturing equipment on Wednesday before resuming full operations yesterday, while those in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) resumed work on Wednesday at noon, it said.
“The swift recovery can be attributed to chipmakers’ preparedness, as their facilities and equipment incorporate quake-resistant and protection mechanisms,” council spokesperson Andrea Hsu (許增如) said by telephone. “They [chipmakers] fared much better than 25 years ago and in 2018 when strong earthquakes struck Taiwan... The brief production stoppage should lead to manageable losses for the companies.”
Taiwan plays an outsized role in the global economy because its companies craft the semiconductors at the foundation of technologies like artificial intelligence, smartphones and electric vehicles. Led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), local firms produce an estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of the highest-end chips.
TSMC, the leading producer of advanced chips for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, said yesterday that about 80 percent of its wafer manufacturing equipment had resumed operation and operation at new fabs had been fully restored.
But, it would take longer time to restart automotive production lines at fabs located in areas with greater quake impact, TSMC said in a statement late last night.
Major manufacturing equipment including all extreme-ultraviolet-lithography tools, which are used to produce advanced chips such as 3-nanometer chips, emerged unscathed from the quake, the chipmaker said. All fab construction in Taiwan has restarted as no safety concerns were found, it added.
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進), a TSMC affiliate, said it had brought about 80 percent of its machinery back online by noon yesterday and was resuming production gradually, while United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) said the quake had not had any major impact on operations and it would restart normal operations and shipments soon.
TSMC should see limited impact as most of its fabs are in areas less affected by the earthquake, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a note yesterday.
As the company has resumed operations of its advanced fabs, which produce 5, 4 and 3-nanometer chips, in just six to eight hours after the quake hit, the damage should be manageable, the researcher said.
However, broken water pipes at TSMC’s Fab 12 in Hsinchu might affect the facility’s operations in the short term and even cause a slight increase in capital spending for the chipmaker, TrendForce said.
Fab 12 is expected to start producing 2-nanometer chips by the end of this year, TSMC said earlier.
The researcher estimated the earthquake would not significantly affect TSMC’s advanced chip packaging facilities in the Longtan (龍潭) section of the Hsinchu Science Park as the chipmaker has backup equipment to replace damaged water chillers.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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