Large-scale power outage in Dresden, a major wafer manufacturing center in Germany, may affect GlobalFoundries, Infineon Technologies, etc.

According to foreign media reports, a large-scale power outage occurred in Dresden, the capital of Saxony in eastern Germany, one of the major semiconductor centers in Europe. It is reported that up to 95% of the area is within the power outage range, affecting as many as 300,000 households and companies, including GlobalFoundries, Infineon Technologies and Bosch, which have factories in the area.

According to media reports, a 110 kV system in Dresden was accidentally touched by a balloon and short-circuited on the 13th of this month, resulting in unstable power supply and a large-scale power outage, which lasted for 1-2 hours. Dresden is one of the important wafer fab clusters in Europe. The power outage not only impacted the production of local factories of GlobalFoundries, Infineon, and Bosch, but also further aggravated the global chip shortage, making the supply and demand situation even worse.

It is also worth noting that the Infineon fab affected by the power outage is not only an important supplier of automotive chips, but also an important supplier of MOSFET and power management chips. Before the power outage, MOSFET and power management chips were already in great shortage in the market. The power outage may make the shortage even worse.