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TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

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Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#21

Post by tetha »

hofrogs wrote: post #10
tetha wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some mods in modded minecraft had that and it's a very punishing mechanic unless implemented well. It eats all of your power and usually also very expensive items very quickly usually. Assume you have like 600RF/tick generated, common with certain generator constellations. 1 tick - 1024 RF and one input consumed, crafting fails due to not enough power. 1 tick wait, 1 tick, 1024 RF and one input consumed, ... This can…

GregTech doesn't use RF though, at least it didn't. Machines pull packets of amps through the wires from the generators/batteries, the whole system is pretty interesting. Also high-level circuits have to be manufactured in cleanrooms with a pretty complex tech chain.

Oh GTs power is absolutely not RF. Back in the day, even GTs power could be cruel though. You could over-volt your machines and thus void machines you spend literal days on crafting. And the cables in the process too. And you could lose your entire infrastructure once it rained and you had no roof :)

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#22

Post by perihelions »

Some HN threads about the past incidents mentioned in OP,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17686310 ("Computer Virus Cripples Several Taiwan Semiconductor Plants (bloomberg.com)"—2018, 100 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214952 ("TSMC's Photoresist Material Incident: $550M Loss (anandtech.com)"—2019, 15 comments)

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#23

Post by tetha »

squigz wrote: post #11
tetha wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some mods in modded minecraft had that and it's a very punishing mechanic unless implemented well. It eats all of your power and usually also very expensive items very quickly usually. Assume you have like 600RF/tick generated, common with certain generator constellations. 1 tick - 1024 RF and one input consumed, crafting fails due to not enough power. 1 tick wait, 1 tick, 1024 RF and one input consumed, ... This can…

Out of curiosity, which mods are this cruel? I've been playing GT (modern) lately and even it doesn't void your machine's items unless you break the machine itself.

Oh this was in the days of yore of modded 1.4 and early 1.7. I don't remember specific mods, I just remember the pain and frustration of this happening.

I'm currently playing Stoneblock 4 and have been playing GT:NH and Nomifactory some time ago, and the more modern mods have learned a lot from those old janky things. Heck, back in the day every mod had a different power system and you needed a nonsense amount of conversion infrastructure, unless the modpack did a lot of work to combine all of this somehow, haha.

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#24

Post by Animats »

This was apparently a Linde installation custom built for TSMC in Arizona.[1] Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon are extracted from air on-site and purified. That's Linde's primary business; liquefying and distilling air. This isn't some little local company or a company operating outside their area of expertise.

Those gases are storeable, so it's surprising there wasn't enough tank capacity to deal with outages.

The site plan [2] shows "Gas Plant 1", and future "Gas Plant 2" and "Gas Plant 3". The gas plants are across a small road from the fab and feed the plant directly. Once Gas Plants 2 and 3 were built, there would be redundancy, but at this stage, there isn't a backup. The plan doesn't show a large tank farm, so they can't store gases in bulk.

[1] https://www.aztechcouncil.org/utility-company-makes-progress...

[2] https://semiwiki.com/forum/threads/tsmc-phoenix-arizona-fab-...

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#25

Post by limagnolia »

itake wrote: post #15
agentifysh wrote: post #12

seems like what is often downplayed or silent on American media is the cultural mismatch between TSMC taiwanese engineers and their american counterparts so it always comes to those out of the loop as a bit of a surprise but from what I've read from individual Taiwanese workers and their feedback its clear that there is significant regret from one side. and it doesn't seem to limited to just TSMC but another large co…

Perhaps if the US workers earned OT like TW workers do, the "culture" gap would shrink.

Is OT "overtime"? How is it legal not to pay overtime in any US factory? Unless they are salaried (exempt)?

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#26

Post by coredog64 »

agentifysh wrote: post #12

seems like what is often downplayed or silent on American media is the cultural mismatch between TSMC taiwanese engineers and their american counterparts so it always comes to those out of the loop as a bit of a surprise but from what I've read from individual Taiwanese workers and their feedback its clear that there is significant regret from one side. and it doesn't seem to limited to just TSMC but another large co…

There are like half a dozen semiconductor manufacturers in Phoenix that were here before TSMC arrived. There's a robust pipeline from ASU to these same manufacturers. Can we please just stop with the nonsensical notion that "Americans don't know how to fabricate semiconductors"?

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#29

Post by FaradayRotation »

angelgonzales wrote: post #5

This isn’t very big news. Issues occur during bring-up often. Linde’s processes are possibly so power intensive that failing over to generator power is not possible. TSMC is right to put Linde on notice since Linde should have a PFMEA and control plan to eliminate any root causes for downtime. I suspect in the long term TSMC has plans to insource this if the issue persists. Scrap happens sometimes during manufacturin…

In many ways I agree with you, but the problem statement (constrained/exhausted gas supply from vendor) makes it seems like this was not just line down, but the whole factory stopped for a few hours. Line down is a miserable migrane but still managable... while a whole factory stoppage makes a lobotomy seem like a good idea. It also sounds like there was not enough forewarning to park critical customer wafers in a "safe" stage of the process.

Even so, I also would still call this another monday at a semiconductor factory. Welcome! Here we play a nearly endless game of whack-a-mole. Here's your mallet and your towel. Now whack enough of the moles hard enough until they stop coming back (at least through the same holes). Beware the alpha moles.

By any road, I am surprised to see even this high-level perspective on a quality event disclosed to the mainstream public; I thought this was not standard practice. I enjoyed the read.

Re: TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

#30

Post by rtkwe »

tantalor wrote: post #4
bob1029 wrote: post #3

> forcing the facility to shut down for at least a few hours > As a result, the company had to scrap thousands of wafers Anything involving wet chemistry, photoresist, furnaces, etc. is very time-constrained. You can't let wafers sit around indefinitely. Certain process steps must be followed up very quickly to avoid scrap. This is why you dont see redundant power for manufacturing lines. A 3nm line needs hundreds of…

Good idea for a Factorio mod? A new failure mode resets output progress back to zero if you lose power or some other input while crafting. You could design circuit networks to cut power to non-essential systems so the rest of the factory can keep producing.

Power brownouts are pretty rare outside of the very early game. It's too easy and cheap to massively over produce power for that to really harm players outside the early game so I don't think there'd be much interest. Usually brownouts rapidly develop into full blown blackouts and black restarts as your miners reduce output during the brownout often leading to a reduction in incoming fuel leading to even less power being generated in a self consuming cycle.
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