Thank you for the detailed coverage of how the semiconductor industry in Taiwan has adapted so that it can successfully deal with earthquakes such as the most recent in Hualien. This was first-class content. It is a measure of how well Taiwan has developed building codes and industry practices that so little disruption was caused, and so few lives were lost compared to the 1999 earthquake. Naturally, my condolences go to anyone affected by the incident.
And unfortunately quite a contrast with Turkey, which had a similar reckoning in the same year, and also passed stronger codes, but unfortunately corruption and short term economic priorities took hold, and the vast majority of buildings either got waivers or just ignored the codes, so 60,000 died there in the 2023 double quakes.
@mesiroy1234 This topic has nothing to do with America, and nothing to do with socialism. Anyway, many Americans don't know what socialism really is. They just apply the label to anything they see as left of their average center-right biases.
Nice video. As usual. I’ve been present at two smaller US fabs that suffered squirrel attacks (squirrel across HV transformer). Fab evacuation, lost WIP, re-qualifying all the tools, and re-stabilizing the fab and stepper environmentals turn into an all-hands on deck situation.
Same situation with me and my colleagues. We encountered power dips in the past. We have recovered broken tools, controllers become faulty, vacuum trips, wafer crashed etc. If only the company continously maintained and invested in back up UPS, for our tools...
LOL! The first time was in Aloha, Oregon... summer 1999, I think. They made a competitor's fab badge for that toasted squirrel. The second was in Redondo Beach, California... probably between 2010 and 2015.
@@ntabile I experienced a power dip in a fab where the local power company accidently dropped only one phase of the three phases on incoming power. It wasn't the phase the 110-volt tapped off of, so the lights never even flickered. It was unnerving being in the subfab when the lights stayed on, but it got very quiet when all of the tools and vacuum pumps shut down.
I clearly remember the 921 quake. My company did the design for Fab 6. Ten minutes after the quake stopped a TSMC manger friend called to see if I wanted to go see if my building was still standing, "Pick me up in front of my apartment in 20 minutes". Not too much damage, none of my systems but it was just a shell then.
Truly amazing improvements. I remember back when production product (WIP) was repeatedly ruined when the new train came into the industrial park station, simply due to the routine seismic vibration caused by a train coming in. Well done.
The moment I heard about the earthquakes I thought of all the people, you, and TSMC. I am so glad you are OK. A lot of credit needs to go to all the people who worked to make sure buildings and infrastructure where up to improved earthquake building codes.
I was waiting for you to post this... when I saw the news I thought: 'asianometry will have a video out by monday that'll actually cover the details im interested in' Thank you, rip to the victims and best wishes for their families.
I'm glad I found this channel. Nice to hear someone comment on semiconductors production who actually know what they're talking about. Very detailed and to the point, thank you!
The question of high-tech in that difficult area was answered by Japan, resource-less and prone to natural disasters, decades ago - it not only works, but thrives. Same as frozen Scandinavia, or submerged Land of the Nether. Like the oldest tree in the world sitting on a wind-swept mountain edge or entrepreneurs surviving a difficult childhood, what doesn’t kill you makes you strong.
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165 are you forgetting how the CCP hates having any trade with other countries? The CCP creates "X at home" versions of anything made outside the CCP, refusing to let the originals into the country. Don't go throwing rocks in glass houses.
Thank you for the quick turnaround for this. I've been looking forward to it. Thank you for the respect paid to those who lost their lives. Also... spoiler . . . . . as a massive Godzilla fan and knowing about G-Force found the moment of levity at 4:42 is laugh out loud funny. I'm not the only one who thinks of Godzilla when I hear G-Force. A good way to break things up.
I can't afford to donate but I genuinely think what you're doing is awesome and I hope you keep it up for years to come. Looking forward to visiting Taiwan!
there's something really heartwarming about hearing that the costs, both human and economic, of similar magnitude earthquakes have been reduced by orders of magnitude in just a couple decades
In my fab experience, everything in photo was rerun, everything else was really sorted by condition. Most other operations were 2-3 wafer loses. Batch diffusion could be repaired for 98% of the time at .18
I indeed heard a fellow Dutch (who often dabbles in politics) mumble: "Who builds a fab in a earthquake prone area? They would be better to build a fab here.." After which I sarcastically remarked: "Yes, building a fab in a river delta, below sea level, is much much better.."
I was in the Bay Area when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. The power went out on the baseball game I was watching with some friends and then we heard him and felt a bump. And then we started hearing sirens and we went outside to a park that can see across the bay to watch smokes starting to rise from burning building
Your closing comments are important. While it is most cost effective to only prepare for the most likely disasters, wealth is all about diminishing returns. Earthquakes can happen in historically stable areas, so we can either be nihilists, or we can redirect some discretionary spending towards these less likely but still possible events.
I live in Mexico, and Mexico city has a similar early warning system, as the faults are mostly 400-500km away along the coast. In an ideal case, it can give up to 70 seconds of advance warning to the city. Let me tell you, those are the most terrifying seconds you'll likely experience
EQ accelerations are sometimes quoted as percent of g. So 0.15g would be 15% of g. Makes it a little more intuitive to understand how severe the shaking was. Great video, really informative ! Thanks...
Astonishing that so much is produced in an earthquake area with relatively little disruption. So many problems solved that are critical to keeping that crazy equipment running.
@@fjalics Could be not cost effective, that is why management didn't care to maintain our tools with UPS. Some more, battery back ups are some more a fire hazard if not maintained or contained effectively.
This will certaily be something added in the future as prices on storage keep comming down. It will become commonplace everywhere going forward anyway to control energy costs. Charge up during the day when power is cheap or free to use during night time when it will be more expensive.
I send prayers out to those who lost their lives and suffered injury in the recent earthquake, and a great deal of respect for the engineers whose hard work kept the damage to the level that it is right now. Indeed when you have your priorities set straight, earthquakes are just another engineering problem that we need to deal with. Remembering the earthquake in Turkey last year it's a relief when material damage to fabs can be the topic of discussion so soon after the event.
Top notch coverage, this time of an ongoing story. Thankfully the casualty count has been relatively low, due in part to the preparedness of the country. It would be much worse in many countries due to less rigorous building codes and enforcement. I wonder if the fabs have considered their own power generation and battery backup systems on a large scale. Whilst it’s obvious for plugging intermittent power supply to cover dips in supply, it would be a massive undertaking to make a completely solar powered fab, which at this point is likely unfeasible. Still, on site generators such as those used by big data centres would allow for a clean shutdown, in tandem with large battery packs to handle the switch over delay, which I suppose is already the case for most of these manufacturers. I’ve no idea if there’s enough real estate nearby to allow for a solar plant, but every available rooftop could/would be covered. The semiconductor industry has no excuse to be a laggard when it comes to solar cells and battery packs. Once again, great job on the video.
Any news on why the warning system didn't work in Taipei? Usually the phone gets a message and the speaker in the apartment I live in starts screaming in mandarin :)
Yes this was discussed extensively on Taiwanese news. In short, the text warning system is based on the initial estimate of the quake’s strength (keep in mind we are talking about seconds after the quake occurs). In the case of the recent quake, the first estimate was 6.2 and second at 6.8 at the epicentre. In both cases, the predicted strength for Taipei was below 4, which happens to be the threshold for sending the text warning. (Anything
A peak ground acceleration of 0.15g seems low to me. I lived through the 1994 Northridge quake, which had a peak ground acceleration of 1.8g in some places.
Someday semiconductor fabs will inevitably operate their own molten salt or molten sodium small modular nuclear reactors onsite... while it doesn't guarantee no power interruptions in an earthquake or CME, the small size of small modular reactors and sCO2 turbines, as well as the lack of transmission lines would reduce much of the risk of power bumps/ interruptions... not to mention, the electricity would likely be cheaper than from any other supplier.
The pharmaceutical industry uses the same big-onion construction techniques and place their cleanrooms at similar locations, depending on the infrastructure required by the process used. Probably it‘s all based on the designs used by the Manhattan Project. Thank you for the update, sincerely wish you and all affected well
Its times like these that make me appreciate living somewhere with basically no natural disasters. Life is already stressful enough i dont know how i would sleep at night knowing that the very earth below me could basically shake me to death at any moment
You're good! You pray and hope that people are mostly safe and have consoled those who are greatly affected. Anyway, That is why some Taiwanese fabs in Singapore is operating and expanding, no earthquake here. EDB of Singapore is partly investing on those fabs too.
NJ quake scared the hell outta me. It didn't compute that what I was feeling was an earthquake. I thought there was a massive explosion miles and miles away or something.
When you spoke about the lithography machine that was damaged when the sprinklers went off - why did you use a visual of a lawn sprinkler rather than a fire suppression sprinkler? Was it for humour?
This level of technical achievement and precision is just absurd now and coupled with AGI coming, we can't be far from traveling the cosmos with FTL tech.
Fabs and earthquakes. Always reminds me of intel late 90s, california. Earthquake insurance how much? Okay earthquake proofing ⅓ the cost. Were good. Btw that was a one off install against yearly insurance. So solid bases (ie whole buiding on same rigid raft) , rubber bearings and auto shutdown of equipment now just routine. Big insurance played the FA card then lost the premiums when fabs earthquaked proofed the buildings. And received their justified FO. Lol
I thought these fabs would have data centre level of power quality and supply reliability. Of course, I have no idea how much power these places use which may make such systems too expensive and not at all practical to operate on site. Interesting report, thank you.
Given the severity and previous casualties I'm amazed and thankful that this time there were much less casualties. Of course it still could be better, but I remember 1999 and compared to this one - it was much worse.
I'm not a financial advisor, but the reason that TSMC isn't crazy over valued like some other tech companies is probably that they're enormously predictable in their future income. They book wafer agreements 3-5 years in advance, build fabs that can fulfill that demand and then run them at ever lower margins until they're "worn out". This means they can't suddenly invent a hot new thing and become the latest fad overnight. But they have consistently delivered on their profit projections, and since they produce for every player in the AI space (Even Intel is using them for their NPUs, instead of using their own fabs for that), Apple, a hefty portion of the Android phone market, and most the PC space in general, I think you could do worse than buy TSMC stock. That is, if you buy stocks to generate passive income. If you buy stocks in the hope they'll gain value, so you can sell them for a profit, then TSMC is probably not the best bet.
TSMC is underestimated, mainly because of what the Western media said: "Taiwan is the most dangerous place in the world"--.China prepares to invade Taiwan When Intel CEO Gelsinger fought for U.S. chip subsidies, he kept repeating this sentence but had to hand over chip foundry to TSMC.
Thx for the update. Comparing the earthquakes in Taiwan (or anywhere along the Circum-Pacific seismic zone) with those in New Jersey, is a bad example. Not all areas in the world are equal when it comes to earthquakes. Not by a long shot
Taiwan is an amazing place. I mean the economic growth, political transformation and leading technological power in the space of 2 generations. If any country (I know the political power of that statement but it has all the features of a country) can bounce back from this, it is Taiwan. Sympathies to all those who lost their lives, lost loved ones, or are injured. Keeping you in my thoughts.
It is that political, industrial, economic and cultural transformation that has led me to become a supporter of Taiwan as a country (recognised or not) and to try to learn as much of their history as I can.
I support tsmc and their resolve during these natural disasters. They are inarguably the best at what they do. Predictably, I do think that the world pulled out of Scotland as a fab location far too soon especially considering these conditions of geographic stillness and silence, also considering the extreme extents of Scotland's energy glut.
Because they use yellow light as general illumination to prevent damage to things like that are light sensitive. It's basically a kind of darkroom for photography. There are a lot of chemicals and materials in a fab that are designed to cure when you expose it to blue or ultraviolet light. By using yellow light, they prevent such materials from receiving stray photons that could degrade or outright destroy the material before it's ready to use.
We really do not have earthquakes in Central Europe (still we can have artificial ones in areas of heavy coal mining), but this is not a point. With earthquake risk for Taiwan and Japan, this is something that due to human ingenuity and technological development you are clearly able to manage and overcome. Now it looks like that it is brought down (at least a this power levels) to being merely an inconvenience. Actual danger to semiconductor industry in Asia comes not from nature, but from good, old human appetite for power and control. In this case danger comes from communist regime that controls most of China, but wants to control so much more.
Thank you for the detailed coverage of how the semiconductor industry in Taiwan has adapted so that it can successfully deal with earthquakes such as the most recent in Hualien. This was first-class content. It is a measure of how well Taiwan has developed building codes and industry practices that so little disruption was caused, and so few lives were lost compared to the 1999 earthquake. Naturally, my condolences go to anyone affected by the incident.
And unfortunately quite a contrast with Turkey, which had a similar reckoning in the same year, and also passed stronger codes, but unfortunately corruption and short term economic priorities took hold, and the vast majority of buildings either got waivers or just ignored the codes, so 60,000 died there in the 2023 double quakes.
All Asianometry content is first-class content.
Amrican will call soicalisem
@mesiroy1234 This topic has nothing to do with America, and nothing to do with socialism. Anyway, many Americans don't know what socialism really is. They just apply the label to anything they see as left of their average center-right biases.
Nice video. As usual.
I’ve been present at two smaller US fabs that suffered squirrel attacks (squirrel across HV transformer). Fab evacuation, lost WIP, re-qualifying all the tools, and re-stabilizing the fab and stepper environmentals turn into an all-hands on deck situation.
Same situation with me and my colleagues. We encountered power dips in the past. We have recovered broken tools, controllers become faulty, vacuum trips, wafer crashed etc. If only the company continously maintained and invested in back up UPS, for our tools...
Squirrel attacks are the worst.
the world is so small... are you talking about F15?
LOL! The first time was in Aloha, Oregon... summer 1999, I think. They made a competitor's fab badge for that toasted squirrel.
The second was in Redondo Beach, California... probably between 2010 and 2015.
@@ntabile I experienced a power dip in a fab where the local power company accidently dropped only one phase of the three phases on incoming power. It wasn't the phase the 110-volt tapped off of, so the lights never even flickered. It was unnerving being in the subfab when the lights stayed on, but it got very quiet when all of the tools and vacuum pumps shut down.
I clearly remember the 921 quake. My company did the design for Fab 6. Ten minutes after the quake stopped a TSMC manger friend called to see if I wanted to go see if my building was still standing, "Pick me up in front of my apartment in 20 minutes".
Not too much damage, none of my systems but it was just a shell then.
Nice work on the quick turnaround!
Truly amazing improvements. I remember back when production product (WIP) was repeatedly ruined when the new train came into the industrial park station, simply due to the routine seismic vibration caused by a train coming in. Well done.
The moment I heard about the earthquakes I thought of all the people, you, and TSMC. I am so glad you are OK. A lot of credit needs to go to all the people who worked to make sure buildings and infrastructure where up to improved earthquake building codes.
Same, after i heard that the human cost was aparently low my thoughts went straight to how the would affect semiconductor production.
I was waiting for you to post this... when I saw the news I thought: 'asianometry will have a video out by monday that'll actually cover the details im interested in'
Thank you, rip to the victims and best wishes for their families.
Taiwan and Japan dealing with earthquakes very well. (Remember the earthquake in turkey where hundreds of buildings collapsed)
160 000 buildings collapsed or where sevearly damaged in Turkey.
Thanks for the quick update!
It's admirable how you share specialized and insider knowledge on such an accesible way.
I'm glad I found this channel. Nice to hear someone comment on semiconductors production who actually know what they're talking about. Very detailed and to the point, thank you!
The question of high-tech in that difficult area was answered by Japan, resource-less and prone to natural disasters, decades ago - it not only works, but thrives. Same as frozen Scandinavia, or submerged Land of the Nether. Like the oldest tree in the world sitting on a wind-swept mountain edge or entrepreneurs surviving a difficult childhood, what doesn’t kill you makes you strong.
So does the PRC ... amidst the unjust tariffs, sanctions and embargoes imposed by the U$A.
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165 Likewise ROC, given all the threats and bullying of other countries not to recognise Taiwan by the PRC.
@@rogink
Fake news and disinformation 🤡
PRC never threathen another country to not "recognize" ROC 🇹🇼 .
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165 are you forgetting how the CCP hates having any trade with other countries? The CCP creates "X at home" versions of anything made outside the CCP, refusing to let the originals into the country. Don't go throwing rocks in glass houses.
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165東突、圖博、南蒙古、滿州、香港也是！（笑
thanks for this, i was genuinely curious how they handled this
Thanks for the heads up. I hadn't heard about this quake at all.
Was hoping you’d make a vid on this, thanks so much, love the vids as always
Condolences to all in Taiwan. best wishes for a speedy recovery for all hurt and their families from Oslo, Norway.
Thank you for the quick turnaround for this. I've been looking forward to it. Thank you for the respect paid to those who lost their lives. Also...
spoiler
.
.
.
.
.
as a massive Godzilla fan and knowing about G-Force found the moment of levity at 4:42 is laugh out loud funny. I'm not the only one who thinks of Godzilla when I hear G-Force. A good way to break things up.
Hollywood wokness ... giving the Oscar award to Godzilla instead of The Creator .
I can't afford to donate but I genuinely think what you're doing is awesome and I hope you keep it up for years to come. Looking forward to visiting Taiwan!
Well done video sir.
Thank you Jon, I have been waiting for this. Lots of people asked how the semiconductor industry was doing.
I still have lots of family in Taiwan on my father's side. It's good that most modern buildings are built to handle earth quakes
It's very close to Japan and was a colony of it. I wonder how much knowledge they got from them.
@@H0mework Quite a lot, I think. Asianometry has previously covered the Japanese industrial influence on Taiwan in his videos.
@@GodmanchesterGoblin
None at all .
ROC 🇹🇼 modern building code adopted from the U$A and Japan .
@peekaboopeekaboo1165 I just mentioned the Japanese influence... I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
there's something really heartwarming about hearing that the costs, both human and economic, of similar magnitude earthquakes have been reduced by orders of magnitude in just a couple decades
In my fab experience, everything in photo was rerun, everything else was really sorted by condition. Most other operations were 2-3 wafer loses. Batch diffusion could be repaired for 98% of the time at .18
Was wondering if you would make a video on this. Very insightful!
I indeed heard a fellow Dutch (who often dabbles in politics) mumble: "Who builds a fab in a earthquake prone area? They would be better to build a fab here.."
After which I sarcastically remarked: "Yes, building a fab in a river delta, below sea level, is much much better.."
Nice work as usual Jon!
Our earthquake, centered in NJ, was only a 4.8. Prayers for the lost and injured in Taiwan.
😃
4.8, fuggedaboudid
@@DSAK55lmao
Pretty sure the West Coast has the same problem as Taiwan and Japan though!
I was in the Bay Area when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. The power went out on the baseball game I was watching with some friends and then we heard him and felt a bump. And then we started hearing sirens and we went outside to a park that can see across the bay to watch smokes starting to rise from burning building
Your closing comments are important. While it is most cost effective to only prepare for the most likely disasters, wealth is all about diminishing returns. Earthquakes can happen in historically stable areas, so we can either be nihilists, or we can redirect some discretionary spending towards these less likely but still possible events.
I live in Mexico, and Mexico city has a similar early warning system, as the faults are mostly 400-500km away along the coast. In an ideal case, it can give up to 70 seconds of advance warning to the city.
Let me tell you, those are the most terrifying seconds you'll likely experience
EQ accelerations are sometimes quoted as percent of g. So 0.15g would be 15% of g. Makes it a little more intuitive to understand how severe the shaking was. Great video, really informative ! Thanks...
what? who doesn´t know that 0.15 is 15%?
Really, really good video. Thank you.
you're making some of the best content on this website.
Mans is on the grind, I love these videos sm
Great work as always. My heart with families affected by the earthquake
THANKS FOR INFORMING US!
I was wondering about this!
Man, you are well-informed. Great job, this is fascinating stuff. Thanks for all your work.
awesome content , im grateful. just can i recommend put a little gain in your output general volume ?? it helps a lot
Astonishing that so much is produced in an earthquake area with relatively little disruption. So many problems solved that are critical to keeping that crazy equipment running.
On the topic of reliability, I'm curious regarding how robust their backup power is in the case of a grid failure.
Maybe they should install some Tesla Megapacks.
Power seems to be the achilles heel for all chip plants, not just Taiwan.
@@fjalics Could be not cost effective, that is why management didn't care to maintain our tools with UPS. Some more, battery back ups are some more a fire hazard if not maintained or contained effectively.
@@ntabile LFP batteries don't catch fire.
This will certaily be something added in the future as prices on storage keep comming down. It will become commonplace everywhere going forward anyway to control energy costs. Charge up during the day when power is cheap or free to use during night time when it will be more expensive.
So cool. Love all the ref images. Gonna be really helpful for our video game that we’re making.
Excellent report. Many thanks for all your fine work! 🎉😊
I send prayers out to those who lost their lives and suffered injury in the recent earthquake, and a great deal of respect for the engineers whose hard work kept the damage to the level that it is right now. Indeed when you have your priorities set straight, earthquakes are just another engineering problem that we need to deal with. Remembering the earthquake in Turkey last year it's a relief when material damage to fabs can be the topic of discussion so soon after the event.
Thanks Jon, very kind for informing.
For the algorithm 👊. Loooove your channel.
Respect on the Details. Cheers Mate
So good the hear this from a trusted source. Thanks.
Top notch coverage, this time of an ongoing story. Thankfully the casualty count has been relatively low, due in part to the preparedness of the country. It would be much worse in many countries due to less rigorous building codes and enforcement.
I wonder if the fabs have considered their own power generation and battery backup systems on a large scale. Whilst it’s obvious for plugging intermittent power supply to cover dips in supply, it would be a massive undertaking to make a completely solar powered fab, which at this point is likely unfeasible. Still, on site generators such as those used by big data centres would allow for a clean shutdown, in tandem with large battery packs to handle the switch over delay, which I suppose is already the case for most of these manufacturers.
I’ve no idea if there’s enough real estate nearby to allow for a solar plant, but every available rooftop could/would be covered. The semiconductor industry has no excuse to be a laggard when it comes to solar cells and battery packs.
Once again, great job on the video.
The image of that tilted building is pretty crazy.
5:38 damn that must've been expensive, why don't they use inert gas fire suppression system? seen even pretty low-end server rooms using them
Any news on why the warning system didn't work in Taipei? Usually the phone gets a message and the speaker in the apartment I live in starts screaming in mandarin :)
Yes this was discussed extensively on Taiwanese news. In short, the text warning system is based on the initial estimate of the quake’s strength (keep in mind we are talking about seconds after the quake occurs). In the case of the recent quake, the first estimate was 6.2 and second at 6.8 at the epicentre. In both cases, the predicted strength for Taipei was below 4, which happens to be the threshold for sending the text warning. (Anything
A peak ground acceleration of 0.15g seems low to me. I lived through the 1994 Northridge quake, which had a peak ground acceleration of 1.8g in some places.
Thank you, Jon.
Anthony
I find it amazing that 17,000 wafers were in process at once.
It takes something like 6-8 weeks to get from one end of the production line to the other.
Someday semiconductor fabs will inevitably operate their own molten salt or molten sodium small modular nuclear reactors onsite... while it doesn't guarantee no power interruptions in an earthquake or CME, the small size of small modular reactors and sCO2 turbines, as well as the lack of transmission lines would reduce much of the risk of power bumps/ interruptions... not to mention, the electricity would likely be cheaper than from any other supplier.
"...to keep their fabs, and people, safe"
In that order
lol, things on that world are like that, sadly the euv machines cost like 300 millions each, lithography is expensive af
Thank you ! Your videos are Awesome !!
The pharmaceutical industry uses the same big-onion construction techniques and place their cleanrooms at similar locations, depending on the infrastructure required by the process used.
Probably it‘s all based on the designs used by the Manhattan Project.
Thank you for the update, sincerely wish you and all affected well
Its times like these that make me appreciate living somewhere with basically no natural disasters. Life is already stressful enough i dont know how i would sleep at night knowing that the very earth below me could basically shake me to death at any moment
You're good! You pray and hope that people are mostly safe and have consoled those who are greatly affected. Anyway,
That is why some Taiwanese fabs in Singapore is operating and expanding, no earthquake here. EDB of Singapore is partly investing on those fabs too.
thank you for answering the first question I had, when heard about the quake.
NJ quake scared the hell outta me. It didn't compute that what I was feeling was an earthquake. I thought there was a massive explosion miles and miles away or something.
Interesting this was so low impact when I remember a brief power cut being a disaster for Korean fabs.
The warning did work, check your phone settings. On some phones it has to be turned on manually. Stay safe
When you spoke about the lithography machine that was damaged when the sprinklers went off - why did you use a visual of a lawn sprinkler rather than a fire suppression sprinkler? Was it for humour?
Could be humour, may also be the availability of stock footage
Great video, I was always wondering how the fabs handle earthquakes, such sensitive equipment such as E-UV machinery processing wafers!
This level of technical achievement and precision is just absurd now and coupled with AGI coming, we can't be far from traveling the cosmos with FTL tech.
0:54 by using rolling foundations like they use in every hospital around the world?
10:09 floating piles hmmmmmmmm
Imagine drilling an anchor for the shelves and costing $100000 in damage from the dust. Crazy these facilities can exist at all
Thank you for your work
For the size of the quake the loss of life was remarkably low, not to demish those who lost loved ones.
Fabs and earthquakes. Always reminds me of intel late 90s, california. Earthquake insurance how much?
Okay earthquake proofing ⅓ the cost. Were good. Btw that was a one off install against yearly insurance.
So solid bases (ie whole buiding on same rigid raft) , rubber bearings and auto shutdown of equipment now just routine.
Big insurance played the FA card then lost the premiums when fabs earthquaked proofed the buildings. And received their justified FO. Lol
was looking forward to your next video after what happened in Taiwan. hope you're ok
I thought these fabs would have data centre level of power quality and supply reliability. Of course, I have no idea how much power these places use which may make such systems too expensive and not at all practical to operate on site.
Interesting report, thank you.
Given the severity and previous casualties I'm amazed and thankful that this time there were much less casualties. Of course it still could be better, but I remember 1999 and compared to this one - it was much worse.
Maybe an essay on Taiwan's power grid? If it's interesting.
I'm sitting here watching this video in norcal and feeling the ground start to shake. We have quakes all the time around here.
people in taiwan: suffering from the earthquake in Taiwan
people not in taiwan: ohm, will my new iphone got delayed?
Thanks, I was worried
Why isn't TSMC worth more???? Should I buy some share???
Because it'll be gone once China launches the missiles.
I'm not a financial advisor, but the reason that TSMC isn't crazy over valued like some other tech companies is probably that they're enormously predictable in their future income. They book wafer agreements 3-5 years in advance, build fabs that can fulfill that demand and then run them at ever lower margins until they're "worn out". This means they can't suddenly invent a hot new thing and become the latest fad overnight. But they have consistently delivered on their profit projections, and since they produce for every player in the AI space (Even Intel is using them for their NPUs, instead of using their own fabs for that), Apple, a hefty portion of the Android phone market, and most the PC space in general, I think you could do worse than buy TSMC stock. That is, if you buy stocks to generate passive income. If you buy stocks in the hope they'll gain value, so you can sell them for a profit, then TSMC is probably not the best bet.
TSMC is underestimated, mainly because of what the Western media said: "Taiwan is the most dangerous place in the world"--.China prepares to invade Taiwan
When Intel CEO Gelsinger fought for U.S. chip subsidies, he kept repeating this sentence but had to hand over chip foundry to TSMC.
Q1 INTL massive loses. CEO is Kissinger . Same as Henry K.
Patrick Paul Gelsinger@@carloschu7127
Probability for earthquakes is not equal everywhere. And New York is probable location.
Just looking at the density of lines in the digram at 10:46, are the labels for "compression" and "dilation" switched?
What about building the factory on a boat on a lake?
I saw places saying it was actually a 7.4 earthquake and not 7.2
7.2 ML or 7.4 to 7.6 MW
Glad you’re safe.
🌏: _April, fool!_
This was one the 1st things tsmc factory how it survives in earthquakes
Thx for the update. Comparing the earthquakes in Taiwan (or anywhere along the Circum-Pacific seismic zone) with those in New Jersey, is a bad example. Not all areas in the world are equal when it comes to earthquakes. Not by a long shot
Geeez... When Japan had an Earthquake in 2015/2016, Sony's CCD factories were impacted for 12 months!
yo love your videos, i was hoping i could propose a interesting video idea, a deep dive into RandNLA?
pretty good that they could resist the quake. if i could get away with playing quake on company time, i definitely would.
Thank you for the informative news segment about TSMC during the Taiwan’s 7.2 Magnitude Earthquake. 👍🙏🙂
Taiwan is an amazing place. I mean the economic growth, political transformation and leading technological power in the space of 2 generations. If any country (I know the political power of that statement but it has all the features of a country) can bounce back from this, it is Taiwan.
Sympathies to all those who lost their lives, lost loved ones, or are injured. Keeping you in my thoughts.
It is that political, industrial, economic and cultural transformation that has led me to become a supporter of Taiwan as a country (recognised or not) and to try to learn as much of their history as I can.
a maid cafe that i go to in taipei one maid...her family make seismic sensors for tsmc.
I support tsmc and their resolve during these natural disasters. They are inarguably the best at what they do. Predictably, I do think that the world pulled out of Scotland as a fab location far too soon especially considering these conditions of geographic stillness and silence, also considering the extreme extents of Scotland's energy glut.
All the best to the Taiwanese families that suffered from this earthquake 🙏
Fabs are built like a bunker.
with aplomb!
PS: "darling, did the Earth move for you too?"
Love your videos! I have a question, why is the stock picture inside a fab that yellow pic at 4:40 ? Are they all yellow inside?
Because they use yellow light as general illumination to prevent damage to things like that are light sensitive. It's basically a kind of darkroom for photography. There are a lot of chemicals and materials in a fab that are designed to cure when you expose it to blue or ultraviolet light. By using yellow light, they prevent such materials from receiving stray photons that could degrade or outright destroy the material before it's ready to use.
Yes for Lithography. As mentioned and replied by Gameboygenius
because mexicans are good at dealing with drugs
We really do not have earthquakes in Central Europe (still we can have artificial ones in areas of heavy coal mining), but this is not a point. With earthquake risk for Taiwan and Japan, this is something that due to human ingenuity and technological development you are clearly able to manage and overcome. Now it looks like that it is brought down (at least a this power levels) to being merely an inconvenience.
Actual danger to semiconductor industry in Asia comes not from nature, but from good, old human appetite for power and control. In this case danger comes from communist regime that controls most of China, but wants to control so much more.
They took it like a champ