Monday, January 28th 2019
TSMC Fab 14 B Hit With Chemical Contamination; NVIDIA, MEDIATEK, Huawei, Hisilicon Lines Affected
TSMC's Fab 14 B has been affected with a chemical contamination that has put a considerable number of wafers in suspend mode. Fab 14 B essentially produces 12 and 16 nm, 300 mm wafers for 14 companies, including NVIDIA, MEDIATEK, Huawei and Hisilicon. Reportedly, between 10,000 and 30,000 wafers have been affected (though not scrapped, so there might be salvageable bits and pieces here and there). Of course, every wafer will have to go through a thorough certification process, and the fab will have to go down for the company to purge any remains of these botched chemical compounds.
To put things into perspective, though, Fab 14 B is one of TSMC's Gigafabs, which have a rated monthly output of 100k wafers - so production worth between three and ten days could be affected already, with the additional downtime accruing lost potential fabrication. This event isn't expected to significantly affect availability of any of the products for any of the companies, but these are becoming, at the very least, late inventory - this could well play into some speculative increases in pricing from some players in the market.
Sources:
EE Today, via Reddit
To put things into perspective, though, Fab 14 B is one of TSMC's Gigafabs, which have a rated monthly output of 100k wafers - so production worth between three and ten days could be affected already, with the additional downtime accruing lost potential fabrication. This event isn't expected to significantly affect availability of any of the products for any of the companies, but these are becoming, at the very least, late inventory - this could well play into some speculative increases in pricing from some players in the market.
33 Comments on TSMC Fab 14 B Hit With Chemical Contamination; NVIDIA, MEDIATEK, Huawei, Hisilicon Lines Affected
One bad news after another...
Do CEO's still practice suicide (like in movies) when their company goes down in flames?
Ryzen 3000 pls.
... right?
All I can say is vote with your wallet
How come nobody thought at that before? :laugh::laugh::laugh::rolleyes:
Next up.... Dogs eating the wafers.
Top of the crystal cut off.