TSMC Arizona Outage Saw Fab Halt, Apple Wafers Scrapped
2 hours ago
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- TSMC's Fab 21 in Arizona experienced a production halt due to a power outage at an industrial gas facility operated by Linde.
- Thousands of wafers for clients like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD were scrapped as a result of the incident.
- The outage occurred in mid-September and was caused by a power fault at Linde's facility.
- TSMC's Arizona unit had a significant drop in net income in Q3, partly attributed to the outage.
- TSMC stated that overseas fab expansions would dilute gross margins starting from 2025.
- Fab shutdowns are rare for TSMC, which operates its facilities 24/7 to maximize expensive equipment usage.
- The financial impact of the outage was compounded by its timing late in the quarter, limiting recovery time.
- TSMC's new facilities and nodes typically have thin or negative profit margins initially.
- The incident highlights challenges Taiwanese manufacturers face when relying on non-Taiwanese vendors overseas.
- Past disruptions at TSMC have been caused by vendor-related issues, including a 2018 computer virus and contaminated photoresist in 2019.