The PC hardware market was experiencing a drop in prices due to a sharp drop in demand for components. Everything seemed to be going well for the end user, until nature scared us. There have been several earthquakes in taiwan up to 6.9 degrees, but, Will they affect PC and PS5 sales?
You may not know it, you have no obligation to know it, but a lot of the chips on the market are made in Taiwan. The Taiwanese founder TSMC is the one that produces all AMD graphics and processors. Additionally, it manufactures the PS5 console chip, which is designed by AMD.
Taiwan suffers a wave of earthquakes
According to the Taiwan Meteorological Department, between Saturday and today, there have been more than 20 shallow earthquakes of a magnitude of up to 6.6 degrees. A few hours ago it would have been an earthquake of up to 6.9 degrees.
The information indicates that the 6.9 magnitude earthquake was very superficial, at a distance of only 7 kilometers. It seems that the previous seismic movements were preliminary. These seismic movements caused the collapse of a building, the derailment of a train in a station and the fall of several bridges. Currently, there is no concise data on the existence of deaths.
These movements had major impact in the plants of semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC has its facilities in this country located off China. The positive is that the the earthquake has arrived to the very attenuated plant, since it was detected a magnitude of 4.
For all we know, TSMC He had to evacuate your staff
Apparently there is no material and personal damage in the Taiwanese foundry. Nope He was seen affected Furniture of electricity and water, which is also positive. So currently operations are continuing and everything is working normally.
In principle, there are no production problems and there should be no impact on the market. But, if there are more powerful aftershocks, it’s unclear what might happen.
Specially protected factories
A chip production factory contains very delicate machinery that is worth a lot of money. In addition to these machines, as we have mentioned, they use gases and chemicals that are dangerous to people’s health. This makes important protections necessary before possible seismic movements.
A semiconductor factory in Taiwan must be protected against earthquakes of magnitude greater than 7. The reason for this requirement is that we are talking about very delicate materials and dangerous chemicals. For earthquakes between magnitudes 4 and 5, automatic shutdown protocols are established to prevent damage.
Logically, any stoppage or possible problem in the installations, as well as a lack of supply, is a major incident. When this happens, you must remove any wafer that has started the production process. Cleaning the line and restarting it means huge downtime until production can restart.