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Thread: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

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    TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Over 10,000 wafers of defective chips (for 14 customers) produced before error detected.
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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    It will affect some of AMDs last gen production and Nvidias GPU side IIRC?

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Yeah, AMD's 16nm XBoxOne and PS4 chips may be affected, and pretty much all of Nvidia's 12/16nm GPUs, depending on what they were running in the fab at the time.

    AMD's 7nm stuff is fine, and most of AMD's 14nm is made at GlobalFoundries.

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Nvidias year starts as bad as it ended...

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    I wonder if cards that have already been shipped to distributers are affected by this - we could end up seeing some high fail rates with the early RTX cards

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by Zepra View Post
    I wonder if cards that have already been shipped to distributers are affected by this - we could end up seeing some high fail rates with the early RTX cards
    I've already had a Zotac RTX 2080 Ti Amp that failed within 2 weeks. Obviously could just have been a random failure but ?

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    I mean, it's only 10,000 chips - their monthly output is probably much higher, perhaps even an order of magnitude more

    Can't see it having much, if any effect tbh
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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    This sounds to me like TSMC were relying on the supplier's own quality control instead of implementing a quality control at the fab. I wonder if there will be a big change in the way things are processed from now on, especially as chips become ever more complex.

    Quote Originally Posted by MrRockliffe View Post
    I mean, it's only 10,000 chips
    It's 10,000 wafers, of which each will provide hundreds, if not thousands, of chips.

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by MrRockliffe View Post
    I mean, it's only 10,000 chips - their monthly output is probably much higher, perhaps even an order of magnitude more

    Can't see it having much, if any effect tbh
    It will still have an effect, plans may have to be pushed back over missed quotas and targets. Plus, the claims over missed targets/quotas will mean someone is out of pocket!

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by Hoonigan View Post
    It's 10,000 wafers
    Ah, in which case, not good news

    Just had a quick look, their fab has a rated monthly output of 100,000 wafers, so they'll have lost 3 days ish worth of production, and then an extra few days to account for resetting everything etc

    Probs looking at 7-10 days of production. Not sure if it'll have much of an affect, as it's also spread over 14 different customers.
    Last edited by MrRockliffe; 30-01-2019 at 02:39 PM.
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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by MrRockliffe View Post
    Ah, in which case, not good news

    Just had a quick look, their fab has a rated monthly output of 100,000 wafers, so they'll have lost 3 days ish worth of production, and then an extra few days to account for resetting everything etc

    Probs looking at 7-10 days of production. Not sure if it'll have much of an affect, as it's also spread over 14 different customers.
    How long does it take to get machines back up to temperature, or for certain chemicals to be purged from systems? Things like that. This could have a much bigger knock-on effect than we realise.

    Fingers crossed it's nothing big, otherwise it's just another way for companies to try and bump price up artificially.

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by Hoonigan View Post
    Fingers crossed it's nothing big, otherwise it's just another way for companies to try and bump price up artificially.
    Shhhhhh! Don't give them ideas!

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by MrRockliffe View Post
    Ah, in which case, not good news

    Just had a quick look, their fab has a rated monthly output of 100,000 wafers, so they'll have lost 3 days ish worth of production, and then an extra few days to account for resetting everything etc

    Probs looking at 7-10 days of production. Not sure if it'll have much of an affect, as it's also spread over 14 different customers.
    The thing is they *finish* 100000 wafers a month, but last I heard it was about 3 months from start to finish for a wafer to go through a line.

    TSMC have got through much worse in the past, so I'm sure they'll have good recovery plans in place. But if customers are told they have another 3 months to wait for their orders to turn up after rebooting the line, that could really impact some products.

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Quote Originally Posted by Hoonigan View Post
    It's 10,000 wafers, of which each will provide hundreds, if not thousands, of chips.
    Not if the bulk of affected wafers are Turing dies.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: TSMC production impacted by substandard chemicals

    Bad Photoresist Costs TSMC $550 Million, ouch.
    https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1334336

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