TSMC Arizona Outage Saw Fab Halt, Apple Wafers Scrapped

This was apparently a Linde installation custom built for TSMC in Arizona.[1] Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon are extracted from air on-site and purified. That's Linde's primary business; liquefying and distilling air. This isn't some little local company or a company operating outside their area of expertise.

Those gases are storeable, so it's surprising there wasn't enough tank capacity to deal with outages.

The site plan [2] shows "Gas Plant 1", and future "Gas Plant 2" and "Gas Plant 3". The gas plants are across a small road from the fab and feed the plant directly. Once Gas Plants 2 and 3 were built, there would be redundancy, but at this stage, there isn't a backup. The plan doesn't show a large tank farm, so they can't store gases in bulk.

[1] https://www.aztechcouncil.org/utility-company-makes-progress...

[2] https://semiwiki.com/forum/threads/tsmc-phoenix-arizona-fab-...

This isn’t very big news. Issues occur during bring-up often. Linde’s processes are possibly so power intensive that failing over to generator power is not possible. TSMC is right to put Linde on notice since Linde should have a PFMEA and control plan to eliminate any root causes for downtime. I suspect in the long term TSMC has plans to insource this if the issue persists. Scrap happens sometimes during manufacturing, if the writer only has journalism experience and no manufacturing experience then they may not have a conceptual understanding of acceptable first pass yield. After all, the TSMC logo features failing parts!

> forcing the facility to shut down for at least a few hours

> As a result, the company had to scrap thousands of wafers

Anything involving wet chemistry, photoresist, furnaces, etc. is very time-constrained. You can't let wafers sit around indefinitely. Certain process steps must be followed up very quickly to avoid scrap.

This is why you dont see redundant power for manufacturing lines. A 3nm line needs hundreds of megawatts to operate. You cant clear queued lots without a fully functional line. There's not much you could save by keeping part of the line operational.

Some HN threads about the past incidents mentioned in OP,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17686310 ("Computer Virus Cripples Several Taiwan Semiconductor Plants (bloomberg.com)"—2018, 100 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214952 ("TSMC's Photoresist Material Incident: $550M Loss (anandtech.com)"—2019, 15 comments)

seems like what is often downplayed or silent on American media is the cultural mismatch between TSMC taiwanese engineers and their american counterparts

so it always comes to those out of the loop as a bit of a surprise but from what I've read from individual Taiwanese workers and their feedback its clear that there is significant regret from one side.

and it doesn't seem to limited to just TSMC but another large company as of recent that receive icey reception for their large investment in America manufacturing.

i think this is a big reason why lot of these jobs simply wouldn't stay in america as the consumer would not be able to foot the costs added by "cultural premium" faster than what innovation can reduce.

Does it further delay the launch of M5 Max/Ultra?

In September

the rebels have hit the tibonna gas supply I see

[dead]

guys is it me or sonnet 4.5 just became like 10x worst ?