Taiwan earthquake to hit some chip output, cause Asia supply chain disruptions

Taiwan’s biggest earthquake since 1999 is likely to cause some disruption across Asia’s semiconductor supply chain, analysts say, after chipmakers from major Apple supplier TSMC to UMC halted some operations to inspect facilities.
The powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan’s eastern coast near Hualien County on Wednesday morning, killing at least nine people and injuring at least 800.
Liam Mo and Brenda Goh for Reuters:
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The island plays an outsized role in the global semiconductor supply chain as it is home to the world’s largest chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) which supplies chips to the likes of Apple and Nvidia and smaller chipmakers including UMC, Vanguard International Semiconductor, and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing.
While most of their facilities are not close to the earthquake’s epicenter, many of these firms said they had evacuated some of their manufacturing plants and shut down some facilities for inspections.
TSMC, whose facilities in Hsinchu, Tainan and Taichung have experienced varying degrees of disruptions, may have to delay some shipments and increase wafer input to compensate for this, consultancy Isaiah Research said in a note.
TSMC’s Tainan operations for advanced process nodes, such as 4/5nm and 3nm, were temporarily suspended, they said. In addition, the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment crucial for these advanced nodes was halted at the site for a period of 8-to-15 hours.
Barclays analysts said some highly sophisticated semiconductor fabs need to operate seamlessly 24/7 in a vacuum state for several weeks and the halts would disrupt the process, pushing up pricing pressure in the sector.

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MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like Taiwan’s chip industry will right itself relatively quickly, but, unfortunately, expect the death and injury toll to rise as at least 26 buildings have collapsed.
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