Chip plants halt work due to Texas storm and Japan earthquake

 

Mother Nature is taking a toll on chip production, already critically low for auto semis, with a severe winter storm in Texas and a powerful earthquake off the coast of Japan in recent days that together injured or killed hundreds of people .

As ice and snow crippled Texas, Samsung’s Austin-based foundry Line S2 partially suspended operations on Feb. 16.  NXP Semiconductors and Infineon Technologies also suspended fab operations there.

The partial shutdown for the Samsung facility could last a full week and will have ripple effects on the availability of a variety of chips used by customers that include Qualcomm and Tesla for their 5G radio chips and auto chips, respectively, according to an investigation by analysts at TrendForce.

The Samsung fab is expected to begin a phased restoration of power on Friday, with full operations coming after at least a full week. Austin’s public utility Austin Energy was able to warn of an impending power blackout ahead of time or the impact on the fabs might have been much worse.

Off the coast of Fukushima Japan, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck on Feb. 13, halting wafer processing at Renesas’ Naka plant, which makes 40 nm auto microcontroller units for major customers that include Honda and Nissan, according to VLSI Research analyst Dan Hutcheson.  Operations resumed on Feb. 15, but full capacity was expected to last until Saturday, Feb. 20.

Hutcheson said the earthquake’s impact on Renesas are  “adding to auto IC woes.”

Renesas is a large semiconductor supplier for the auto segment with about 30% market share. Before the earthquake, Renesas had already announced supply constraints to last through the first half of 2021.

Back in Austin, the combined output of wafers from Samsung, Infineon and NXP is about 115,000 wafers per month in 300 mm wafer equivalents, or about 10% of the total U.S. capacity, based on a VLSI analysis.

Samsung’s S2 300 mm fab in Austin was completed in 2011, while NXP has two 200 mm facilities in the city, acquired from Freescale Semiconductor. Infineon has a 200 mm fab known as Fab 25 that was acquired from Cypress Semiconductor.

Samsung has plans to build another fab in Texas at a cost of $10 billion, but the storm’s impact on the state’s power grid has raised questions about Samsung’s intent.  Officials have raised concerns about the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electricity in the state’s power grid.  ERCOT and power companies it manages did not create a sufficient backup source for energy in the event of a catastrophic event, many analysts and officials have claimed.

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