Renesas hit again as TSMC wafer fab suffers power outage
Renesas has now seen the third wafer fab location it uses to make automotive ICs hit by an outage. TSMC’s Fab 14 had allocated wafer capacity to Renesas to substitute for its own Naka wafer fab that experienced a fire on March 19 and where operations are yet to resume.
The shutdown of Samsung’s S2 wafer fab in Austin, Texas, late in February was also expected to have hit Renesas (see Qualcomm, Tesla, Renesas hit by Samsung’s Texan winter).
TSMC’s Fab 14 wafer fab is responsible for about 4 percent of TSMC’s 300mm wafer output and 2 percent of total foundry 300mm wafer output. It runs relatively mature manufacturing processes at 40, 45, 65 and 90nm and makes automotive MCUs, CMOS image sensors for customers.
However, automotive chips are some of those that are in shortest supply during an ongoing supply shortage that is now expected to last into 2022.
Uninterruptible power supplies kicked in when the power went out but nonetheless there will have been disruption to equipment and work in progress. The power was restored at 7:30pm on April 14, according to TrendForce which states that it believes it could take two to seven days to recalibrate equipment and return to normal operation.
TrendForce said that Fab14 had been engaged to provide manufacturing for Renesas, whose own 300mm wafer fab in Naka experienced a fire on March 19 (see Renesas wafer fab fire worse than first thought).
As a result automotive MCUs are expected to be hit by the power outage.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
Renesas wafer fab fire worse than first thought
Qualcomm, Tesla, Renesas hit by Samsung’s Texan winter
Germany to boost chipmaking after automotive supply chain failure
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