Taiwan to Ration Wafer Supply
More pure water needed for fabs.
May 5, 2011 in Chips, Efficiency, Environmental, Finance, Microprocessors
On May 20 Taiwan will start phase 2 of wafer rationing according to a report by AsiaOne quoting the Taiwanese minister for Economic Affairs. The first phase was introduced on April.
Rationing will apply to the areas of Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, and Changhua, where among others fabs from UMC and TSMC are located.
The reason behind he rationing is low water levels. High purity water is needed for semiconductor manufacturing.
To overcome the shortages UMC will try to locate outside suppliers, but this is getting increasingly difficult, as a lot of raw wafers come from Japan, where production has ground to a halt after the earthquake and tsunami that resulted in rationing of power.
TSMC will increase the recycling of water to approximately 85% according to the report. Time to prepare for the supply and demand dance. S|A
Good. Companys will have to recycle water to keep production. If TSMC raise its recycling to 90%, they’ll reduce their need for new water in 33%.
The only way to push companys to save water is making it more dificult to get.
This is indeed water rationing not wafer. I felt like wafers are important commodity to be rationed.
Water rationing, not wafer rationing. Taiwan is water rationing. Seriously……….. LOL!!!
Any thoughts on what/who might actually be effected?
i.e. – AMD and nVidia for discrete GPUs? Memory chip manufacturers? ARM suppliers? Atom suppliers? Disk controller chips? Glue chips of any/all kinds?
I imagine this doesn’t really effect Intel and AMD CPU chips as I’m under the strong impression that most of their CPU production is actually in other parts of the world.
So .. who’s really most likely to be impacted? I mean .. other than our wallets.
Everything except Intel chipsets and processors and AMD processors might be affected – some smartphone components (not iPhones, though, as they’re made by Samsung), USB controller chips, maybe memory… and when the supply side suffers, prices increase.
GloFo to the rescue..?