Observatory / Apple A9 order injury! Second half of the technology industry

Kaohsiung has a magnitude 6.4 earthquake, and wafer fractures have occurred in major fabs. Among them, TSMC Wafer 14 is producing OEMs for the Apple A9 processor. After two to three days of downtime, it will affect Apple's global supply chain production schedule. Based on the output of TSMC wafers for about 4 and a half months, it is estimated that the downstream production supply chain will start to ferment in June and July this year. The industry estimates that the global supply chain output loss will be as high as 10 billion yuan.

TSMC's Nanke Wafer 14 plant is mainly for 16nm and 20nm advanced processes, including the Apple A9 processor 16nm process for the plant. Other customers include: MediaTek's smart phone chip Helio series, China Haisi The Kirin 950 mobile phone chip, and Altera, which was acquired by Intel last year for $16.7 billion in programmable logic chip makers, was produced at TSMC Wafer 14 Plant.

The Kaohsiung earthquake has reached the standard of wafer machine shutdown. It is known that TSMC and UMC have already seen wafer fragmentation in the machine. The 16nm advanced process OEM Apple A9 is an important order for TSMC, and the 16nm mask is exposed. The number of layers is up to 80 layers, and each layer of wafer exposure work takes 3 to 4 days. Therefore, the shaking of the earthquake before exposure will cause the exposure reference position to be damaged and scrapped.

The industry estimates that the output of the Apple A9 processor is about 37 million per quarter. Based on the ratio of TSMC to Samsung, TSMC produces about 17 million units per season. It takes about four and a half months to produce the finished product to the customer. TSMC needs two to three days to resume work. It is estimated that the impact on Apple's global supply chain will be around June and July, which will result in a loss of tens of billions of output value in the supply chain.