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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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:05AM (2 children)
AMD's upcoming parts should be "7nm" TSMC with some use of "14nm" GlobalFoundries. I'm not sure if the GPUs will use "14nm" components.
Still, many of AMD's golden eggs are in one basket now because of GloFo's retreat.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:14AM (1 child)
Agreed, but to be fair the same type of situation has also applied to Intel.
And given the numerous delays with Intel's 10 nm process node, they may arguably be worse off.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:11PM
Agreed, but Intel is in a position of printing money they don't really deserve. They probably have over 95% of the server CPU market right now. AMD has to fight tooth and nail just to survive, while Intel has plenty of room to fail and coast. So a fab-related issue would hit AMD harder than Intel. AMD is also just one of several TSMC customers, and they don't have control over what goes on at TSMC.
I guess if TSMC screws up big time, AMD will start holding discussions with Samsung, which would be one of the last bleeding-edge options available. Worst case scenario, AMD could pay Intel [intel.com] to fab some of its chips.
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(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:09AM (2 children)
All the other chip makers with fabs are examining the market right now to calculate how much this means they can raise their prices. (Not to mention how to spend their increased bonus this year .)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:39AM (1 child)
Just when the RAM memory prices were starting to fall after 2 years of collusion...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:33AM
Prices go UP UP UP and everybody's happy!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:25AM
Have the wafers become North Korean spies?
Defection does not mean "become defective"!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:07PM
A major player in the world's chip supply chain has been using poor quality inputs.
I wonder if this is the first time, or just the first time it made the news?
Too bad. It calls to question the reliability of a lot of gadgets.
TSMC must be pretty skilled if they can make chips with a poor quality inputs.
Just think what they could do starting from good stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:03PM
Chinese business dealings... typical.
American manufacturers have been bitten by crap chemicals made in the PRC; I wonder where TSMC's came from?