Power outage in Germany's major wafer town may affect global automotive chips and MOS transistors
Recently, according to foreign media reports, an unexpected power outage occurred in Dresden, Germany. Within two hours, the power supply of the entire city became intermittent. Although the power outage is not long, but as the center of European automotive chip fabs, Infineon, GF, Bosch and other fabs in Dresden will all be affected.

A supply chain revealed that Infineon not only produces automotive chips, but is also an important supplier of MOSFETs and power management chips. Power failures will result in automotive chip production, which will affect the production capacity of global automotive chip manufacturers.

Compared to Infineon, GF is in better condition. It has two local energy supply centers that are independent of the public grid, which prevents GF from suffering huge losses. However, even so, according to a GF spokesperson, there was a power outage. It still has a slight impact on production.

GlobalFoundries will install a Fab 1 fab in Dresden. The fab process technology includes 22FDX, 28SLP, 40/45/55NV and BCDLite technology. The fab produces automotive, mobile, IoT and industrial Related chips.

In the past two years, Bosch has just built a 1 billion euros (approximately RMB 7.5 billion) semiconductor factory in Dresden, covering an area of ​​about 100,000 square meters. It has already started production in July this year. This time, it was unexpected. Was affected by the power outage.

Generally speaking, for a fab, a 1-2 hour power outage does not matter. The factory will be equipped with an uninterruptible power system to support it, which has little impact on wafer production. However, the power outage in Germany caused dresden and surrounding cities to fall into chaos according to foreign media reports. The local police even said at the beginning of the incident that it could not be ruled out that this might be an attack.

If the power outage has an impact on the production of automotive chips, it will make the global automotive chip market worse. Many automakers in the United States and Japan cut production or shut down due to insufficient chip supply in August and September. If the power outage in Dresden affects the production of automotive chips, it will be bad news for automakers.

Not only automotive chips, but Dresden's fab also produces a large number of MOSFETs. In the current market, Infineon, ST, TI MOSFETs and chips are extremely scarce. According to industry insiders, there were already Many MOSFET-related manufacturers are less affected by the lack of materials, resulting in lower revenue than expected. The power outage has also further imbalanced the supply and demand of MOSFETs in the market.

There have been many power outages in fabs this year. For example, at the beginning of the year, Samsung’s Austin fab in the United States was affected by a snowstorm and forced outages, causing the global chip market to fall into a wave of shortages.

Samsung’s factory in Austin is huge. According to data, the global monthly production capacity of 12-inch wafers is about 5 million, and Samsung’s factory accounts for almost 5% of the world’s total production capacity, that is, every month. The production volume reached 250,000 pieces. And the unexpected power outage of Samsung's factory has caused the global core shortage situation to become more serious.

In addition, in April, there was a sudden power outage in TSMC's Fab14 P7 plant. The industry estimated that 30,000 wafers were affected, and the loss amount was about NT$1 billion (equivalent to RMB 230 million). The factory mainly produces electronic chips for automobiles, and the main reason for the power outage is the abnormality of the cables in the Nanke ultra-high voltage substation.

Looking at the power outages in the fab in recent times, it can be seen that since chip manufacturing itself is a huge resource-intensive industry, according to relevant statistics, the power consumption of a TSMC company accounts for 5 of Taiwan’s total power consumption. %. According to TSMC’s own disclosure, in 2019, TSMC’s global electricity consumption reached 14.33 billion kWh, while Taiwan’s green energy power generation in 2019 was only 14 billion kWh, which is still a little short of full supply to TSMC.

Excluding accidental factors such as natural disasters and man-made disasters, in order to minimize power outage losses, it is also necessary to establish a backup power supply at night. For example, GF suffered only minor damage in the power outage in Dresden. However, the construction of additional electrical equipment will inevitably increase the cost of the fab, which requires manufacturers to weigh themselves.