Infineon Plant and Samsung Line S2 Plant Were Powered Off and Shut Down, Affecting About 1 2% of the Global 12 Inch Total Production Capacity  

Samsung produces DRAM, NAND and smartphone SOC processors at its factory in Austin to provide services to customers including Intel and Qualcomm. Due to the growing demand of American customers, the Korean chip manufacturer plans to expand Austin's chip factory by 38.7 trillion won ($1.7 billion). Two Samsung Semiconductor plants in Austin account for about 28% of the company's total production capacity. After the power is turned off, Samsung and other chip manufacturers may suffer considerable production loss, damage and supply interruption.

In order to cooperate with the Texas government's power distribution measures to deal with the recent snowstorm, Samsung's line S2 wafer plant in Austin, Texas began to cut off some power and shut down on Tuesday (February 16) local time. Due to the early notice of power cut by the local utility Austin energy, the power cut of the plant was not an accident. According to the survey of semiconductor research division of trendforce Jibang consulting, the monthly production capacity of Samsung line S2 accounts for about 5% of the global 12 inch total production capacity; The affected production capacity will account for about 1 2% of the global 12 inch total production capacity. However, the actual affected time still needs to continue to observe the temperature rise. On the premise that the temperature is expected to gradually warm up on Friday (February 19) and the power supply will be restored periodically, it is preliminarily judged that it will take at least one week to fully resume work.

Trendforce Jibang consulting said that the main 14 / 11nm capacity of the plant is to produce Qualcomm 5g RFIC, and the remaining 65 28nm capacity is allocated to its own system LSI products; In addition, vehicle semiconductors such as Tesla and Renesas are also produced in this factory. Although Samsung has taken measures to deal with the power outage in advance, it is observed that there is no wafer damage and scrapping, and only some products need to face the extension of delivery time, under the market condition that the demand for various semiconductor terminals is still strong and the demand for automotive semiconductors is tight, resulting in the difficult demand for the production capacity of wafer foundry processes, the extension of delivery time adds tension to the market.

NAND flash controller has a low impact on production, and customers are eager to chase materials to brew the possibility of price rise

It is worth mentioning that although the plant has stopped manufacturing nand flash, it is still one of the plants in which Samsung LSI has put into operation 14 40nm NAND flash / SSD controller. Due to the low amount of films and the preparation in advance, it will only lead to a small extension of the delivery date and will not have a significant impact on the overall output. However, at present, PC OEM and data center customers have been preparing for price negotiation, and other major suppliers have responded to the limited supply of controller IC. Although this event has little impact on the production of NAND flash / SSD controller, it may still accept the price increase due to rush to chase materials during price negotiation. Although trendforce Jibang consulting maintained the expectation that client SSDs were roughly flat and enterprise SSDs fell slightly in the second quarter, it did not rule out the possibility of making the price trend more positive after some customers accepted the price increase.

Analysts say the shutdown of chip production in Texas may have a negative impact on the global semiconductor shortage. Liu Peichen, an analyst at Taiwan Economic Research Institute, said: "the global chip supply has been very tight, and Samsung's problems in Austin will intensify in the short term."However, he said that Asia has most of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the world, with Samsung accounting for 10% and Taiwan accounting for 70%. As the shortage continues, the global production of smart phones, cars and other electronic products has slowed down, and efforts are being made to increase low production. This article is compiled and released from the latest reports of Korea techtoday and trendforce.