TECH NEWS – A 7.4 magnitude earthquake has hit Taiwan, and the largest chip maker TSMC has been affected: production has been halted and a fraudster has been convicted.

Hualien, an eastern city in Taiwan, was hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake at 7:58 a.m. local time yesterday, killing about 2,400 people. The country is prone to earthquakes, but has not experienced one of this magnitude in 25 years. A TSMC spokesperson said that after initial investigations everything was found to be in order, but production was suspended and this statement was released: “TSMC’s safety systems are operating normally. To ensure the safety of employees, some fabs have been evacuated in accordance with company procedures. We are currently confirming the details of the impact.”

And DigiTimes reported that the support columns and beams at TSMC’s N3 fab had cracked and production had been halted. The EUV machines were shut down and the walls of the research lab also cracked due to the quake. One of the production lines in Hsinchu was also broken. Silicon wafers were severely damaged, but production resumed later in the day. Although TSMC has taken several safety measures since the 1999 incident (Jiji, September 21, 1999, magnitude 7 earthquake), the company suffered approximately $62 million in damages (despite insurance compensation) and it is still unclear how many chip shipments were affected. In addition to manufacturing chipsets for Mac, Apple Watch and iPhone products, TSMC also has good relationships with Nvidia, AMD, MediaTek and Qualcomm, and their products could be affected.

In 2013 and 2014, a Taiwanese woman sold fake TSMC shares to three women, claiming to be an employee of TSMC and Apple’s primary manufacturing partner, Foxconn, and claiming that she could secure shares for them at a cheaper price. Since then, the value of TSMC’s stock has risen significantly, and the scammer has made a lot of money from her victims (nearly $1 million). She collected that much money through a series of scams, most of which involved pretending to be an employee of HTC, a Taiwanese electronics company. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for using forged and falsified documents.

There are still other scandals involving TSMC…

Source: WCCFTech, NPR, DigiTimes, UDN