An unexpected power interruption hit the areas of Linkou, Taishan, and Xinzhuang in New Taipei City in Northern Taiwan, and a few chipmakers with factories in these areas were noted to have been affected. According to a report by TechNews (machine translated), “Micron’s Taoyuan and Taichung factories have dropped voltage due to the lightning strike on August 13, and Micron confirms that all colleagues are safe and operating as usual.”
Factories of memory maker Micron and its partner, Nanya Technology, experienced some form of interruption in their manufacturing process. However, there were also rumors that Micron’s dry etching and wet processes may have been affected by the voltage drop.
On the other hand, Nanya Technology suffered from a 20-minute power loss. Even though the factory’s uninterruptible power supply (UPS) kicked in for most of its crucial components, like the lithography and etching areas, company management is still checking if other systems that a UPS didn’t protect received some damage.
Overall, we expect the impact of the power outage to be minor. The affected companies still have inventory in each production line, and supply is still deemed sustainable. However, we cannot discount the global impact of a disruption at this level, especially as Micron and Nanya are some of the biggest global chip suppliers.
For example, a Micron fab suffered a one-hour power outage in 2020, and the market responded with an increase in DRAM prices. A disruption happened again a few days later when a 6.7-magnitude earthquake hit the area, reducing graphics DRAM output and causing prices to spike again.
These events show us how fragile our semiconductor supply chain is. With most of the most advanced chips produced in vulnerable hot spots like Taiwan and South Korea, flare-ups in the area could result in a global chip winter. Even the U.S. recognizes this, saying that a Chinese seizure of TSMC would devastate the American economy.
While the U.S. is investing billions of dollars via the CHIPS Act to jumpstart homegrown semiconductor research, development, and production, experts say that TSMC will still lead global semiconductor manufacturing until 2032. So, until we reach a time when the manufacture of leading-edge chips is spread out across the world, the global digital ecosystem is at risk from any major event in the area, whether natural or human-made.
