TSMC suspends chip production and evacuates workers after the strongest earthquake in Taiwan
The world’s largest manufacturer of advanced semiconductors, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.), has shut down some chip production lines and evacuated employees from its plants. This happened after the strongest earthquake in Taiwan in 25 years.
This was reported by Bloomberg.
The company is a major contract chip manufacturer for Apple and NVIDIA. Now it had to withdraw workers from certain areas. The damage caused by the 7.4-magnitude earthquake on the island’s east coast is still being assessed. A smaller local competitor, United Microelectronics Corp. also suspended production at some plants.
The fact is that chipmakers’ equipment is extremely sensitive to the slightest vibrations, not to mention earthquakes, and a single incident can completely render entire batches of products unusable. However, TSMC said that the security systems are operating normally, and the safety of personnel is ensured in accordance with the company’s current protocols for such an event.
Earthquakes in Taiwan, as well as in the surrounding region in general, are not uncommon due to the high tectonic activity in these places. At the same time, the island is a source of 80-90% of advanced semiconductors for advanced computing in AI, smartphones, and other high-performance industries.
Industry experts and politicians have repeatedly drawn attention to the danger of “concentrating” virtually all of the world’s advanced semiconductor production in one place on the planet – in addition to natural threats, there are obvious geopolitical threats from China.
U.S. politicians have repeatedly put pressure on U.S. and Taiwanese companies, including TSMC, to diversify their chip production geographically. However, it will take a long time to implement the company’s production projects in Japan and the United States, and American “colleagues” such as Micron Technology Inc. and manufacture their products mainly in Taiwan.
