TSMC Arizona Outage Saw Fab Halt, Apple Wafers Scrapped
8 comments
·November 24, 2025bob1029
> forcing the facility to shut down for at least a few hours
> As a result, the company had to scrap thousands of wafers
Anything involving wet chemistry, photoresist, furnaces, etc. is very time-constrained. You can't let wafers sit around indefinitely. Certain process steps must be followed up very quickly to avoid scrap.
This is why you dont see redundant power for manufacturing lines. A 3nm line needs hundreds of megawatts to operate. You cant clear queued lots without a fully functional line. There's not much you could save by keeping part of the line operational.
tantalor
Good idea for a Factorio mod?
A new failure mode resets output progress back to zero if you lose power or some other input while crafting.
You could design circuit networks to cut power to non-essential systems so the rest of the factory can keep producing.
tetha
Some mods in modded minecraft had that and it's a very punishing mechanic unless implemented well.
It eats all of your power and usually also very expensive items very quickly usually. Assume you have like 600RF/tick generated, common with certain generator constellations. 1 tick - 1024 RF and one input consumed, crafting fails due to not enough power. 1 tick wait, 1 tick, 1024 RF and one input consumed, ... This can void 10+ items / second, which can hurt very badly. Even for common items in fact.
It also tends to kick you while you're down, because it only kicks in if everything else is already failing. Then the only thing to continue functioning is the thing voiding your energy and your expensive items. Or even worse, if you did one miscalculation about your power grid, and then all of your resources are gone, often before you can react.
It can be interesting in the right packs, but it is Gregtech level hardness.
ActorNightly
Someone needs to make the whole chip manufacturing process into a factorio like game and let the gamers optimize it, then build the factories around that.
sidewndr46
Isn't that what spoilage is?
taurath
In September
joecool1029
But first being reported now: It was only speculation on the financial reports before this. How quickly do they normally report disruptions like this?
I wouldn't think it would have to be too quickly since I've heard about fab disruptions from fires and such since the early 2000's. Probably just sometime after quarterly reporting to set the record straight? Why not in the report?
This isn’t very big news. Issues occur during bring-up often. Linde’s processes are possibly so power intensive that failing over to generator power is not possible. TSMC is right to put Linde on notice since Linde should have a PFMEA and control plan to eliminate any root causes for downtime. I suspect in the long term TSMC has plans to insource this if the issue persists. Scrap happens sometimes during manufacturing, if the writer only has journalism experience and no manufacturing experience then they may not have a conceptual understanding of acceptable first pass yield. After all, the TSMC logo features failing parts!