Taiwan Quake Seen Crippling Chip Supply Chain

daleste

This is one good reason to locate new fabs in safer places. There are many reason for the choice of a location, but this should be at the top. The cost of a natural disaster is too huge to ignore. Back in the 80s, when I serviced automotive customers, they always asked for multiple sources. We had multiple fabs around the world where we could build the wafers. That always made them comfortable. The bad news is that moving the device to another fab takes time if it isn't already running there, maybe half a year. And that is only if the process is already there. The problem here will be capacity. Who has the capacity to take over what is being run in Taiwan right now?

1/16/2012 11:00 PM EST

sharps_eng

One theory why the great Eastern dynasties fell involved the high frequency of natural disasters in those regions. The Western dynasties are equally vulnerable, they just haven't been running very long.

High-tech manufacturing doesn't need the building to fall down to disrupt workflow. Severe vibration ruins work in progress, creates shortages at least. Local disruption of rivers, roads and other infrastructure create local manufacturing crises.
Multi-sourcing is standard defensive strategy in design, and you need to know where your parts are being made and how much buffer stock you should carry as insurance.

1/13/2012 4:57 PM EST

Nic_Mokhoff

so much for placing all your eggs in one basket. A cursory look at the earthquake demographics gives confidence Taiwan with its earthqauke construction codes can survive most tremblings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Taiwan

1/13/2012 1:50 PM EST