(Financial World) Texas snowstorm intensifies global "core" shortage
China News Agency, Beijing, February 21 (Liu Liang) In the past few days, Texas in the southern United States has been hit by a snowstorm.
The analysis pointed out that due to the fact that some of the world's well-known chip suppliers set up factories in Texas, the tight power supply caused by extreme weather has made some semiconductor companies in the state idle. The snowstorm is expected to aggravate the global chip shortage.
Recently, the United States has been hit by extremely cold weather, and the temperature in many places hit new lows in recent years.
The picture shows a snow-covered highway.
According to many foreign media reports, Texas has recently been hit by a historic blizzard. Extremely low temperatures and freezing have increased the demand for electricity, causing the state's power grid to run overburdened and millions of residents are experiencing insufficient power supply. Even power outages.
According to the "Wall Street Journal" report, bad weather in many parts of the southern United States has caused some semiconductor companies in Texas to idle production capacity, which may exacerbate chip shortages.
The report also pointed out that a spokesperson for South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s largest chip manufacturers, said that the company operates two factories in Austin, Texas, and the local government asked Samsung to close the two factories on Tuesday.
At present, the factory is still waiting for the news from the local power supplier to resume production.
Citibank analysts said that the Austin plant accounts for about 28% of Samsung's total production capacity and is Samsung's manufacturing center.
Previously, Samsung was considering a $17 billion plan to expand its business in Austin.
According to the “Financial Times” report, Dutch chip company NXP and German semiconductor manufacturing company Infineon are the two major suppliers to the automotive industry. The two companies have also confirmed that they have closed their factories in Austin and said the companies directly notified the affected companies. Supply disruptions to customers.
The report pointed out that Austin local energy suppliers have asked all large manufacturers to reduce or shut down operations during the snowstorm to give priority to the needs of residential and healthcare facilities.
It is reported that the area around the state's capital, Austin, is home to several high-tech manufacturers, and location advantages such as local talent and low taxes have attracted these companies to settle in.
Many American technology and telecommunications giants are also located in the state.
"Forbes" news network reported that extreme weather may be more devastating than this.
According to reports, restarting these fabs is not just a matter of re-energizing.
"The manufacturing process of semiconductor chips is very complicated. There are hundreds of steps. Almost all steps require precise control of operating temperature. Manufacturing tools must be stabilized and restarting takes time. In this process, avoiding some yield loss will have Challenging."
When these factories are closed, many global automakers have been forced to cut production due to a shortage of global chips. According to the "Financial Times", due to the scale and complexity of the chip business, even a short time to close the factory can cause millions of dollars in losses. The reduction in chip production will make the global shortage of "cores" even worse. (Finish)