BEIJING, China. Is likely that the biggest earthquake Taiwan since 1999 cause some disruption throughout Asia’s semiconductor supply chainanalysts said, after chipmakers from TSMC to UMC to halt some operations to inspect facilities and relocate their employees.
The powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake shook the eastern coast of Taiwan near county Hualien Wednesday morning, killing nine people and wounding 800.
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The island plays a huge role in the global supply chain of chipsas it is home to the largest chip manufacturer in the world, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC)which supplies chips to Manzana and Nvidia.
The country is also home to smaller chipmakers, including UMC, Vanguard International Semiconductor and Manufacturing of semiconductors powerchip.
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Although the majority of Its facilities are not near the epicenter of the earthquakemany of the companies said that They had evacuated some of their manufacturing plants and closed some facilities for inspections.
TSMC said on Wednesday that Work at its construction sites, which has been stopped, will resume after inspectionswhile affected facilities are expected to restart production overnight.
He chip makerwhose facilities in Hsinchu, Tainan and Taichung have experienced varying degrees of interruptionsmay have to delay some shipments and increase wafer input to compensate for this, the consultancy said Isaiah Research.
They said that TSMC operations in Tainan for advanced process nodes were temporarily suspended. Furthermore, the team extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which is crucial for advanced nodes, stopped at the site for a period of eight to 15 hours.
The Barclays analysts said some highly sophisticated semiconductor factories need to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a vacuum state for several weeks and interruptions will affect the process, increasing pressure on prices in the sector.
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This could cause a “short-term setback” in electronics manufacturing in product-centric economies upstreamlike Japan and Koreaas well as in product-centered economies downstreamas China and Vietnam, they said.
The report noted that Lower inventory levels would allow Taiwanese and Korean chipmakers to increase prices.