TSMC Resumes Construction After Being Shut Down By The earthquake

(CTN News) – The world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), announced on Thursday that it had resumed construction work at its construction sites in the earthquake-hit country, after a day of inspections.

As a result of the quake, there had already been fears of chip supply disruptions, since TSMC produces a large share of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, and among its customers are Apple and Nvidia, the world’s leading AI chip manufacturer.

It has been revealed that TSMC’s initial tests on its Taiwan-based chip fabs have shown that they are operating normally as far as safety systems are concerned.

Despite the evacuation of some factories, the company said all of its employees were safe and had returned to their workplace shortly after the earthquake had occurred.

As a result of the damage caused to a small number of tools at certain facilities, operations were partially impacted, the company said, adding that the damage did not affect critical chip-making tools such as those required for extreme ultraviolet lithography, which are crucial to the process of making chips.

The tools are produced by TSMC Dutch firm ASML Holding and are estimated to cost in the range of $150 million each.

A company spokesman explained that certain production lines that faced the greatest impact were likely to take more time to return to fully automated production after the disaster.

TSMC announced on Thursday that as of Thursday, it had recovered 80% of the tools it had recovered at its fabrication facilities. There is an expectation that new fabric factories, such as Tainan’s Fab 18 will be able to resume full operation by the end of the night.

As a result, the company’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange were up approximately 3 percent.

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