TSMC's Fab 14B Photoresist Material Incident: $550 Million in Lost Revenue
TSMC[*] on Friday revealed more details regarding an incident with a photoresist material at its Fab 14B earlier this year. The contaminated chemical damaged wafers on TSMC's 12 nm and 16 nm lines, and the company now expects the full impact of the event to reduce their revenue by a whopping $550 million in the first quarter.
TSMC said that a batch of photoresist it used included a specific element which was abnormally treated, creating a foreign polymer in the photoresist. The problem was detected late when the wafer yeilds were lower than expected. As it turns out, consequences of the photoresist incident at Fab 14B were more serious than initially calculated by TSMC. There are media reports claiming that between 10,000 and 30,000 wafers were affected and had to be scrapped, but TSMC has never confirmed either of the numbers.
According to media reports, the affected companies include HiSilicon/Huawei, NVIDIA, and MediaTek, but TSMC has not disclosed names of its customers that suffered from the incident. The only thing that TSMC does confirm is that it has already negotiated new delivery scheduled with its customers.
[*] TSMC: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Previously: TSMC Fab 14 B hit by Massive Wafer Defection due to Chemical Contamination, 16/12nm Production Line
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TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is reportedly dealing with the quality of its silicon wafers causing suspended production at one of its plants. Impact is to chips having 16/12nm features and major vendors such as NVIDIA are reportedly affected.
Translated from Chinese:
TSMC (2330) Nanke 14 Factory today (28th) reported the use of substandard chemical raw materials, causing paralysis of tens of thousands of wafer production. In this regard, TSMC confirmed and pointed out the detailed quantity and damage caused. Subsequent statistics and processing are underway and will not change the financial forecast for this quarter.
TSMC's Fab 14 B plant in Nanke has a problem with wafer quality defects today, mainly because TSMC imports a batch of substandard chemical materials, which causes wafers to be defective in the production process, but the problem is in the production process. It is impossible to check out that the number of wafers affected by the film has exceeded 10,000 pieces, and the production line has been temporarily suspended. Since 14 customers cover NVIDIA, MEDIATEK, Huawei Hisilicon and other heavyweight customers, the market is concerned about whether the operation is affected.
Also at Hard|OCP.
Toshiba & WD NAND Production Hit By Power Outage: 6 Exabytes Lost
Toshiba Memory and Western Digital on Friday disclosed that an unexpected power outage in the Yokkaichi province in Japan on June 15 affected the manufacturing facilities that are jointly operated. Right now, production facilities are partially halted and they are expected to resume operations only by mid-July.
Western Digital says that the 13-minute power outage impacted wafers that were processed, the facilities, and production equipment. The company indicates that the incident will reduce its NAND flash wafer supply in Q3 by approximately 6 EB (exabytes), which is believed to be about a half of the company's quarterly supply of NAND. Toshiba does not disclose the impact the outage will have on its NAND wafer supply in the coming months, but confirms that the fabs are partially suspended at the moment. Keeping in mind that Toshiba generally uses more capacity of the fabs than WD, the impact on its supply could be significantly higher than 6 EB with some estimating that it could be as high as ~9 EB.
Both companies are assessing the damage at the moment, so the financial harm of the incident is unclear. Not even counting potential damage to production tools and other equipment used at the fabs, 6 EB of NAND cost a lot of money. Furthermore, analysts from TrendForce believe that a consequence of the outage will be some loss of confidence from clients of both companies, which will have a financial impact as well.
1 exabyte = 1 million terabytes.
Related: TSMC Fab 14 B hit by Massive Wafer Defection due to Chemical Contamination, 16/12nm Production Line
TSMC Contamination Issue Expected to Result in $550 Million in Lost Revenue
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday February 22 2019, @01:02AM (2 children)
couple of idle curiousities
.
- was bad product actually shipped
- was reduced yield just a percentage thing, e.g. 50% fail when expecting 20%
.
photoresist [wikipedia.org]
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Friday February 22 2019, @03:26AM
Photoresist my ass, the "contaminant" was the night shift using the wafer ovens to bake mooncakes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by liberza on Friday February 22 2019, @01:51PM
Sounds like no bad product was shipped, they were able to detect the lower yields. As for reduced yield, if enough die on the wafer fail, the whole wafer might need to be scrapped to protect customers from bad product.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @01:25AM
They just want to avoid tax on $550 million of profits. They probably shipped all the wafers and got their customers to pay them in cash.
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday February 22 2019, @01:26AM
This wouldn't happen if they had a properly secured border to keep foreign elements out. I think they should build the wall 10 microns taller and get China to pay for it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday February 22 2019, @02:42AM (1 child)
So, they either trusted the supplier, who is now fucked, or they didn't do any sort of quality control on incoming chemicals.
I recently read a Max Gergel book. He was a chemist from WW2 to the 70s. Seems purity controls weren't a thing until 1960 or so, and that made him and his company tighten up their processes.
Fun Fact: Max's company used to just take chemical byproducts out to the back yard and dump them. Now his old company site is an EPA supersite.
It's late and I'm lazy, you can find the Gergel book here: http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/ [sciencemadness.org] Have fun, that is a hell of an info dump.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @03:46PM
As long as Max Gergel gets rich and doesn't land in jail, then that's great for Max Gergel.