Due to a sudden fire, Renesas' 12-inch chip production line stopped production!

Latest update time：2021-08-31 16:02

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On March 20, according to the official website of Renesas Electronics, a major Japanese automotive semiconductor manufacturer, a fire broke out in the N3 building (12-inch wafer production line) of its subsidiary in Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan at 2:47 am on March 19. Although the fire was extinguished at 8:12 am that day, the factory was forced to stop production.

Screenshot of Renesas official website

Renesas Electronics said that the fire did not cause any toxic gas leaks or employee injuries, but confirmed that some public facilities were damaged. As of 11:00 p.m. on March 19, it was temporarily unable to enter the clean room and determine the cause of the fire because the safety of the clean room where the fire occurred could not be confirmed.

According to the announcement, Renesas Electronics plans to conduct an on-site investigation led by the police and fire departments at 9:00 a.m. on March 20. Once the cause and impact of the fire are determined, they will be notified.

The production of the N3 building (300mm production line) will be temporarily suspended. The resumption of production will be announced through an announcement.

As for the adjacent N2 building (200mm production line) and WT building (tested), production is proceeding normally and products will continue to be delivered.

Renesas said the impact on manufacturing equipment, products on production lines and the financial impact on the company has not yet been determined and is under investigation.

The shortage of automotive semiconductors will be exacerbated

As we all know, there is an extremely short supply of automotive semiconductors in the world. Almost all major automakers have been affected by the chip shortage. Many automakers have been forced to reduce production, and some factories have even been forced to stop production. Recently, General Motors in the United States has even been forced to launch "chip-deficient" cars due to the chip shortage. Its light and full-size 2021 pickup trucks, including the Chevrolet and GMC brands, will not be equipped with fuel management modules.

Although at the end of January this year, some European and American car manufacturers used diplomatic channels to make TSMC agree to temporarily jump the queue to produce automotive chips in the form of "super urgent matters", even so, the delivery of the chips will still take nearly a quarter.

What is more serious is that in mid-February this year, a winter blizzard broke out in Texas, causing large-scale power outages across the state. Samsung Electronics' wafer factory in Texas, as well as local wafer factories of major automotive chip manufacturers such as Infineon, NXP, and Texas Instruments were also forced to suspend production.

According to the latest news, Samsung Electronics' wafer factory in Austin, Texas, has been shut down due to a local power outage and is still in a state of large-scale shutdown. It is expected that it will not be basically restored until mid-April. Samsung's wafer factory in Austin, Texas also manufactures related chips for Tesla.

According to NXP, its two wafer fabs in Austin, Texas have been shut down since February 15, local time. After the water, electricity and gas supply was restored on February 27, the staff immediately returned to the factory to carry out on-site recovery, evaluate the affected systems and recalibrate the equipment. The staff is currently evaluating the wafer work-in-progress (WIP) to ensure the quality of the products. According to the assessment, the damage caused by the winter storm, the subsequent water, electricity and gas outages, and the ongoing production restart have caused NXP's two wafer fabs in Austin to lose the equivalent of one month's wafer output so far.

It can be seen that the previous Texas winter storm caused the production suspension of Infineon, NXP, Texas Instruments and other automotive chip manufacturers in their local wafer fabs. Even if they can resume work and restart production soon, it will take some time to fully restore the previous production capacity. Overall, each wafer fab may lose at least one month's wafer production. This will undoubtedly further aggravate the current global shortage of automotive chips.

According to data from market research firm Gartner, the global total output value of automotive semiconductors in 2020 was approximately US$37.4 billion. The top five automotive semiconductor manufacturers were Infineon, NXP, Renesas, Texas Instruments (TI) and STMicroelectronics, which together accounted for 43% of the global market.

Now, the world's third largest automotive chip manufacturer Renesas Electronics' 12-inch wafer factory in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan has stopped production due to a fire. If the factory is shut down for a long time due to the fire, it will undoubtedly make the shortage of automotive chips worse. Even a short-term shutdown will have a greater impact, because once semiconductor manufacturing is interrupted, it will take a long time to restart production and restore the previous yield and production capacity.

It is worth mentioning that in response to the current chip shortage problem, Renesas Electronics recently stated that the chip shortage situation will continue until the second half of 2021.

Source: Chip Intelligence

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