Sudden power drop event in Nanke Park! TSMC responds

On the evening of the 27th, a sudden power drop in Nanfang Science Park ("Nanke"), one of the three major science parks in Taiwan, caused some production line equipment of Nanke manufacturers to be affected. The Nanke Park gathers semiconductor manufacturing/foundry/packaging and testing companies including TSMC and UMC.

The report pointed out that what triggered the incident was that the outsourced manufacturer accidentally dug up power supply-related facilities during construction, which caused an instantaneous drop in the power supply of the park.

It is well known in the industry that Taiwan, China is a global semiconductor production center, and the South Science Park, one of the three major science parks in Taiwan, also gathers many semiconductor manufacturing / foundry / packaging and testing manufacturers.

Although the power reduction time was short, some manufacturers in the park still said that the production line equipment was affected. In particular, Nanke, as the production base of TSMC's advanced process (5nm and 4nm), the leading wafer foundry, has been paying close attention to whether TSMC's advanced process has been affected for a while.

It is reported that the voltage of TSMC's Nanke 18A plant has dropped by 90%. TSMC's response: limited impact

It is worth mentioning that before TSMC responded to this matter, a news from the market pointed out that the voltage of TSMC Nanke 18A factory suddenly dropped by 90% on Wednesday evening. Sudden voltage sags cannot be tolerated, thus potentially leading to large-scale processing of wafer waste, further affecting wafer yields on TSMC's 5nm and 4nm processes.

The source emphasized that TSMC's 18A fab is the main manufacturing base for TSMC's 5nm and 4nm processes, which makes this step-down likely to have a greater impact on operations than before, especially for customers using the above process, such as Apple, AMD , Mediatek, NVIDIA, QUALCOMM and other manufacturers are expected to be affected to a certain extent.

It should be noted that none of the above-mentioned news related parties have publicly commented, and the authenticity of the news has yet to be further verified.

Subsequently, in response to power incidents and market rumors, TSMC clarified at the speaking window that there was a brief voltage drop in the Nanke factory area in the evening, and there was no complete power outage. Therefore, the affected equipment is limited, and operations will not be affected after gradually returning to normal.