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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

#91

Post by bombcar »

hofrogs wrote: post #89
bombcar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah people talk about GT:NH being this super tedious hard pack, but it actually has tons and tons of quality of life fixes to the various mods that make it up - and voiding materials is something that is almost nearly gone (iirc very early on a single block, even steam, losing power would lose the materials, which made learning early steam (especially the alloy smelter) really painful).

GT:NH is a very interesting software project in itself, a long-living open source environment with devs maintaining forks of a lot of mods included in the pack and backporting features and fixes to 1.7.10, custom tools for development/planning and a lot of spreadsheets with data

They got Minecraft 1.7.10 and mods to run on modern Java. That's amazeballs.

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

#92

Post by itopaloglu83 »

FaradayRotation wrote: post #29
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 "s…

Just curious, would a full factory stoppage require recalibration or revalidation of certain equipment? Or is it more like an atmospheric issue that only affects the product.

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

#93

Post by franktankbank »

sevensor wrote: post #90
cosmic_quanta wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you use the term "fled"? Any interesting story? From the outside, I would love to participate in semiconductor manufacturing.

The semiconductor manufacturing process is so ridiculously cool that they have to make the working conditions terrible to keep the plant from being flooded with junior engineers. I worked in ion implant, which means I was responsible for honest-to-god particle accelerators working right. But you pay for the cool factor in sweat. Pager duty isn’t a thing you take turns with. It’s your duty to carry a pager, always, fr…

> designed to make it hard to enter numbers in it. This was so that you wouldn’t change them too often

That's some big brain management idea right there. I suppose there was probably a reason for it but it sounds like when you do make a change it would be likely to cause an error because of poor ergonomics.

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

#94

Post by franktankbank »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #92
FaradayRotation wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "s…

Just curious, would a full factory stoppage require recalibration or revalidation of certain equipment? Or is it more like an atmospheric issue that only affects the product.

I'm also curious. Its not like the power went out and machines unsafely shutdown though.

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

#95

Post by itopaloglu83 »

tarsinge wrote: post #87
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…

Why do you think it’s cultural and not a skill issue? For example Tim Cook said they produce in China not because of costs but skills https://www.benzinga.com/markets/25/04/44783543/when-tim-coo...

I remember the example of Apple where they spent twice as much the Marshall Plan in China and created entire infrastructure to train people with high skill. So, it’s a form of stop hitting yourself game. You cannot just skip training an entire generation in the US and expect all the high skills to just exist.

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

#96

Post by cosmic_quanta »

sevensor wrote: post #90
cosmic_quanta wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you use the term "fled"? Any interesting story? From the outside, I would love to participate in semiconductor manufacturing.

The semiconductor manufacturing process is so ridiculously cool that they have to make the working conditions terrible to keep the plant from being flooded with junior engineers. I worked in ion implant, which means I was responsible for honest-to-god particle accelerators working right. But you pay for the cool factor in sweat. Pager duty isn’t a thing you take turns with. It’s your duty to carry a pager, always, fr…

It's unsettling to read that my software job is entirely dependent on all of this, seemingly unsustainable, work.

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

#98

Post by lazide »

agentifysh wrote: post #69
lazide wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire approach is different. Especially with Taiwanese engineers, their entire focus is whatever work they are doing. Everything else (quite literally), their wives handle. Americans typically ask for things like work life balance, non abusive working hours, etc. they also don’t (anymore) have the type of family life setup that allows them to actually focus so much - being pulled into child care duties, or takin…

hmmm this is interesting I was always the impression Taiwanese wives were more progressive and men had to do lot more lifting vs other regional cultures in east asia my original thinking after reading some of the anecdotes from TSMC engineers is that they were obsessively dedicated which means extreme hours from North American culture its also the same in places like Samsung where the company treats employers very we…

I guess the question is what you mean by ‘progressive’?

The ones I met would make Mormon trad wives look liberal, but perhaps by mainland expectations? (I doubt it though, mainland is relatively liberal for women)

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

#99

Post by sevensor »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #96
sevensor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semiconductor manufacturing process is so ridiculously cool that they have to make the working conditions terrible to keep the plant from being flooded with junior engineers. I worked in ion implant, which means I was responsible for honest-to-god particle accelerators working right. But you pay for the cool factor in sweat. Pager duty isn’t a thing you take turns with. It’s your duty to carry a pager, always, fr…

It's unsettling to read that my software job is entirely dependent on all of this, seemingly unsustainable, work.

I don’t think it’s unsustainable, it’s just an unpleasant result of supply and demand in the labor market. In Taiwan, TSMC hires PhDs to do this. Maybe there’s a smarter way to run a fab, but labor costs are a tiny fraction of capital costs, and “grind through recent college grads” has worked so far, so why change?

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

#100

Post by hollerith »

sevensor wrote: post #90
cosmic_quanta wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you use the term "fled"? Any interesting story? From the outside, I would love to participate in semiconductor manufacturing.

The semiconductor manufacturing process is so ridiculously cool that they have to make the working conditions terrible to keep the plant from being flooded with junior engineers. I worked in ion implant, which means I was responsible for honest-to-god particle accelerators working right. But you pay for the cool factor in sweat. Pager duty isn’t a thing you take turns with. It’s your duty to carry a pager, always, fr…

So, semi manufacturing treats its employees like the video-game industry does, for the same reason.
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