TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scale and Reporting of the Incident

  • Outage happened in September but only now described in detail; earlier it appeared as vague hints in financials.
  • Some commenters think this level of disruption is “another Monday” in fab bring-up and not especially newsworthy.
  • Others note that a whole-factory halt (as opposed to a single line down) is severe and likely why investors reacted.
  • Several people are surprised TSMC publicly disclosed even a high-level quality event at all.

Fragility of Semiconductor Processes

  • Many steps (wet chemistry, photoresist, furnaces) are strongly time-bound; wafers can’t sit idle long without being scrapped.
  • You generally can’t “partially” run a cutting-edge line: 3nm tools consume huge power, and you can’t clear queues without a full line.
  • Detailed ex-fab commentary:
    • Loss of airflow and vacuum rapidly increases particle contamination.
    • High-vacuum chambers can take weeks to requalify if they lose vacuum.
    • Tools depend on continuous conditioning and steady consumption of gases/chemicals.
    • Consumables can degrade quickly when not flowing.
    • After a full stop, engineers must revalidate tools and segments before trusting them with production wafers.

Power and Gas Infrastructure (Linde, Redundancy)

  • TSMC AZ reportedly has substantial backup generators because even millisecond power blips can cause long tool downtime.
  • The specific failure was tied to an on-site Linde air-separation plant (N₂/O₂/Ar).
  • Commenters are surprised at the apparent lack of large buffer tanks or second gas plant, given that these gases are storable.
  • Future additional gas plants at the site would provide redundancy; currently there’s effectively a single point of failure.

Operational and Economic Impact

  • Scrapping “thousands of wafers” is framed by some as routine scrap in context; the real hit is fab downtime, not material cost.
  • One commenter emphasizes this is classic high-volume manufacturing: a constant “whack-a-mole” of quality and availability issues.

Labor, Culture, and US vs Taiwan

  • Extended debate on whether problems in Arizona are mainly cultural (work ethic/expectations) or economic/skills.
  • Taiwanese engineers are described as intensely focused, with home life structured to support long hours; US engineers more likely to demand work-life balance.
  • Pay structures differ: in Taiwan, compensation is heavily bonus/OT-driven and lower in absolute terms; in the US, base pay is higher but exempt status limits overtime pay.
  • Some argue US fabs can absolutely fabricate chips (Phoenix already has multiple fabs); the hard part is matching TSMC’s scale and labor model under US labor laws and costs.

Working Conditions in Fabs

  • Former fab engineers describe the work as technically fascinating but “soul crushing”:
    • Permanent pager duty, very long shifts, and regular 12-day stretches.
    • Legacy, hard-to-change software and intentionally painful UX to discourage frequent parameter tweaks.

Game / Simulation Analogies

  • Several comments riff on modeling fab constraints (power loss, spoilage, time-limited recipes) in games like Factorio, Minecraft mods, and Mindustry as a way to illustrate how unforgiving these processes are.