The post-earthquake assessment of the semiconductor and panel industries in Taiwan by TrendForce

Previously, there were consecutive earthquakes in Taiwan. As an important town in the semiconductor industry, this type of natural ecological disaster will more or less affect the world’s semiconductor supply. Following the recent strong earthquake, TrendForce made a relevant assessment of the semiconductor and panel industries in Taiwan.

For the wafer foundry, due to the shock absorption design, the vibration inside the factory will be one level smaller than the outside, and no manufacturer has reported damage to the production facility for the time being. The worst case at this stage is that the manufacturer needs to perform initialization operations after the device system crashes.

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Nanya Technology said that it has shut down the machine for inspection, and even if there is damage to the wafer, there will be sufficient inventory to ensure the supply. Micron asked engineers to carefully check the equipment and inventory, and there was no loss for the time being. According to the established procedures, TSMC conducted personnel evacuation in the clean room to ensure safety, and the system is currently operating normally. UMC stated that according to standard procedures, a small number of devices have activated the self-protection mechanism and need to be restarted.

As for panel manufacturers, as the industry is in a downward cycle, the serious oversupply problem has caused major factories to reduce production recently, and the capacity utilization rate is relatively low, so the impact is limited. According to the survey, in recent days, many types of equipment have also slowed down production or shut down for inspection, and they will resume normal operation after confirming that there is no problem. Some panel manufacturers took advantage of this opportunity to extend the maintenance period of their equipment to cope with the weakening market demand.

In terms of passive components, also due to the slowdown in end-market demand, the capacity utilization rate has declined recently and has remained at around 70% since July. At present, manufacturers have sufficient inventory. It is said that the inventory days exceed 90 days. Even if production is slightly affected, a stable supply can be guaranteed.