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Comment by stewpy | Hacker News Reader

Are fabs knocked offline?

TSMC is extremely prepared for earthquakes. The YouTuber Asionmetery has a good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNKF21B01NQ

Its incredible what they do in terms of accuracy in a place with so much seismic activity.

From what I understand (I used to live in the main city for that), even the vibration from local trains are a factor

wow that is crazy attention to detail it must be so negligible but significant enough for the production

TSMC still evacuated. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-evacuates-production-lin...

when the entire building shakes you really can't prepare for that

The standard operation is to stop and check if any machine was out of calibration. So yes

I don't see any major TSMC fabs[0] near the epicenter in Hualien. The Taichung fabs are closer but on the western side, while the Tainan fabs are pretty far away from the quake.

Edit: There will be some disruption as TSMC has evacuated employees[1]. No structural damage reported, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/tsmc-evac...

I'm hopeful for the 3nm Tainan fabs, but I expect disruption at the Taichung and Hsinchu fabs since the quake was felt in Taipei. It's common for the equipment to be recalibrated and tested, if you can feel an event. I suspect this was felt in the west. Hopefully, not down for a week, if everything is good.

Hopefully, the towns and people on the east coast are OK, but this one is big.

edit- Since there are reports of shaking in Kaohsiung (farther south than Tainan), I'm less hopeful for the southern fabs.

This was my first thought also. I know they have seismic isolation tech, but how good is it?

It's really good, best in the world, specifically on the leading edge.

Issue is now probably bridges/ roads and other interlinking logistics - if this stuff holds up supply chain/ stops people getting to and from work that's an issue.

I wish this wasn't my first thought too, but it was. I can't imagine all those wafers are happy.

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