Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) said Wednesday operations at all its plants had returned to normal after an early morning magnitude 6.6 earthquake near Hualien caused sporadic evacuations and minor machine damage.
TSMC said that technical hiccups triggered by the earthquake, which struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 1:41 a.m., had been rectified following an inspection.
The world’s largest contract chipmaker added that temporarily evacuated workers had all returned to production lines with the impact on operations expected to be minimal.
With the world facing a semiconductor shortage, the massive earthquake raised concerns over disruptions to output at TSMC, which commands a more than 50 percent share in the global pure-play wafer foundry market.
TSMC runs advanced wafer plants in three science parks in Taiwan – the Hsinchu Science Park, the Central Taiwan Science Park, and the Southern Taiwan Science Park – producing high-end chips including 7-nanometer, 5nm, and 3nm processes.
The earthquake reached “6 weak” on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, which gauges the actual effect of a quake, in Taitung County’s Changbin, hitting 5 in other parts of the county as well as neighboring Hualien.
It was Taiwan’s most intense earthquake of the year, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), and caused damage to a bridge and provincial highways in Hualien County as well as a blackout in Pingtung County that affected over 1,000 households.
Other chipmakers, panel producers
United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), a smaller contract chipmaker with wafer plants in Hsinchu and Tainan, said part of its production equipment had been affected by the earthquake but that self-protection mechanisms had effectively nullified the material impact on its operations.
Fellow contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., based primarily out of Hsinchu Science Park, said the earthquake had caused a loss of only two-to-three hours of production for the company, adding the company would adjust future production to make up for the loss.
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. (VIS) said it has been checking the possible impact from the earthquake on its wafer plants located in Hsinchu.
AU Optronics Corp., one of the largest flat panel producers in Taiwan, said the quake had caused temporary suspension of some of its production but that its operations had now returned to normal.
Rival Innolux Corp. also reported a temporary halt in its production due to the triggering of anti-shake mechanisms. However, the firm said the impact was expected to be minimal, with all employees safe and operations gradually returning to normal.
The administrative bureaus of the three major science parks said they had not yet received any reports of damage from tenant firms, saying only some machines in the Southern Science Park had been affected but that no material impact was expected.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel