Electronics

Semiconductors that have not been curtailed in previous years have not been able to "escape" this year.

Just today, ASE Kunshan Company has been in a state of power rationing and shutdown, and has arranged for all employees to leave.

At the same time, a notice of power rationing and production suspension began to circulate.

The notice stated that ASE Kunshan received an emergency notification from the local government on September 26 due to the policy of double reduction of energy consumption. After active consultation with government departments, it strived to complete the production of the products on the machine within one day. The power limit period will be adjusted from 8 o'clock on September 27th to 24 o'clock on the 30th.

During the power cut, the factory will have no output.

It is worth noting that ASE is not the only supplier in the semiconductor supply chain affected by the "power curtailment".

These semiconductor-related companies have been cut off for power cuts, involving supply chains such as Apple and Tesla

According to the official account of the China Semiconductor Forum, since the 22nd, a number of A-share listed companies have issued announcements stating that in response to local "dual energy consumption control" requirements, the production lines of themselves or their subsidiaries have been temporarily suspended.

Earlier, there were reports from Taiwanese media that the curtailment had impacted many important suppliers of Apple and Tesla.

Semiconductor-related companies that are known to have been subjected to power cuts include:

Hon Hai-based companies, Yisheng Precision Industry, and an important component supplier of Apple and Tesla said on the 26th that in accordance with the city’s policy of suspending industrial electricity use, the Kunshan plant will temporarily suspend production from September 26 to October 1. ；

Kang Erfu Holdings, the supplier of iPhone acoustic components, announced that the Suzhou plant will be suspended from 5th to noon on the 30th and will call inventory to support customer needs;

Several chip packaging and testing service providers from Intel, Huida, and Qualcomm received notices requesting factory shutdowns in Jiangsu Province for several days;

Changhua Technology, the semiconductor packaging material supplier of NXP, Infineon and ASE, announced to the outside world that work would be suspended from the evening of the 26th to the end of the month;

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Judging from the current public information, most of the products affected this time are packaging and testing and component supply. As for wafer production, it is currently unknown.

After the factory’s power cut, someone was already on the way to grab the goods

In fact, as early as when the power rationing started, many people in the industry had already begun to worry about affecting the semiconductor-related industries.

The actions of ASE and other factories this time have confirmed this concern.

For downstream semiconductor packaging and testing and module factories, power outages will cause factory production shutdowns, longer delivery cycles, and increased production costs. To make matters worse, the second half of the year has always been the traditional peak season for consumer electronics, and it is already facing shortages.

According to the latest report released by the market analysis agency, the chip delivery period in August this year has reached about 21 weeks, which is 6 days longer than the delivery period in July, and is the longest record since 2017.

According to the current situation, the deadline for power curtailment of semiconductor-related factories is concentrated on September 30. If it is only a few days, the impact on the semiconductor industry is still limited.

But the problem is also here. The current power limit notice is only for September. As for the power limit policy after October 1, there is no relevant news at present, which is like an untimely bomb.

And just after the news was exposed, many screenshots of the circle of friends were also circulating on the Internet. Some people predict that the chip will usher in a new wave of price increases, and more people are already on the way to grab the goods:

Semiconductor has always been a big energy consumer

For a long time, semiconductors have been large energy-consuming consumers, and have extremely high reliance on the continuous supply of electricity.

As for how much energy it consumes, let's take TSMC as an example.

In 2019, the power consumption of TSMC’s global plants reached 14.33 billion kWh. Of the 240 billion kWh of electricity generated in Taiwan Province, TSMC alone accounted for 6%, which is comparable to Shenzhen’s residential power consumption in one year.

Where is so much electricity used? According to the answer of Zhihu netizen @Integrated Circuit Science, there are mainly the following aspects:

One is refrigeration and constant temperature control. The temperature of the entire clean room is basically controlled at 22°C throughout the year;

The second is the lithography machine equipment, which can be called the most energy-consuming equipment in the entire production line. An EUV lithography machine needs to consume 1,000 kWh of electricity per hour, and the power consumption is close to 10 million kWh in a year. In TSMC, there are dozens of EUV lithography machines, and hundreds of other types of lithography machines. The power consumption can be imagined;

The third is heat treatment and ion equipment. The process of chip production often involves thousands of degrees of high temperature, and the energy consumption is amazing;

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Once the power supply is discontinuous, the impact on semiconductor companies is also huge.

Just in 2010, a factory in Toshiba suffered an instantaneous low voltage power supply accident, which lasted 0.07 seconds.

At that time, because of this 0.07 seconds, multiple devices at the Toshiba factory stopped operating and were not able to restart until 2 days later. The chain effect of this is that Toshiba's NAND production capacity dropped by nearly 20% in January 2011, and the direct economic loss reached 20 billion yen (approximately RMB 1.18 billion).

Just this year, some factories of TSMC also suffered sudden power outages.

For example, in April, the Nanke Fab14 P7 plant suffered a power outage. Although soon, TSMC relied on diesel generators to restore power and cooperated with Taiwan Power to restore normal power supply. At that time, the industry estimated that about 30,000 wafers were affected, and the loss amount was NT$1 billion (approximately NT$1 billion). RMB 230 million).

Although most of the people affected by the current curtailment are packaging and testing and component supply, and wafer manufacturing has not been involved, the loss is already inevitable.

At the same time, it also brings a lot of variables to the already serious "core shortage".