For semiconductor manufacturing related enterprises, power outages, water outages, especially the losses caused by unforeseen power outages and water outages, are difficult to estimate. As TSMC, which currently accounts for more than 53% of the wafer foundry revenue, the factory in Taiwan has experienced two power outages in the past 3 days, and I don't know how big the impact is. However, TSMC's biggest problem at present may be the yield rate of the 3nm process.
On the morning of March 3, the news of another power outage came from Taiwan Province of China, covering Taipei, New Taipei, Miaoli, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung and other areas. TSMC, a semiconductor foundry giant with a number of factories in Taiwan, said: It does not affect daily work, and some factories are affected by power pressure drop in the morning, which lasts from about 400 to more than 1000 milliseconds, and the actual impact is being confirmed.
On the afternoon of March 1, the TSMC plant in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park has already experienced a large-scale power devoltage, caused by the tripped fault of the transformer of the wafer foundry, and the step-down amplitude is between 79% and 95%, which is basically equivalent to a power outage.
Although TSMC has not yet announced the specific losses caused by the power outage in Taiwan, the seventh plant of TSMC Wafer 18 will be converted from the originally planned 3nm process production line to the production of 5nm process.
The reason for increasing the 5nm production line, on the one hand, including Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, NVIDIA and other customers in the second half of the year, the new products are mostly concentrated in the 4/5nm process; on the other hand, TSMC's 3nm process is reported to be hindered in the yield rate, and some customers are afraid that their new product strategy in the next 2 years will be limited, and they have also begun to book 5nm process capacity in advance.
However, according to TSMC's previous outflow of strategic plan, its 3nm process process has achieved risk trial production, and it is expected that large-scale mass production will be held in the second half of 2022, and the revenue of 3nm process will be seen in the first quarter of 2023.
Therefore, the truth of everything is still left to time.