TSMC hit by virus – Expects shipment delays

TSMC hit by virus - Expects shipment delays

TSMC hit by virus – Expects shipment delays

TSMC, one of the world’s leading chip makers, has been hit by a variant of the WannaCry virus, forcing the company to shut down systems in their Tainan, Hsinchu and Taichung facilities. 

All of these facilities have now returned to full operational capacity, though the virus caused operations to be suspended in some facilities for up to a day, delaying several chip orders. 

TSMC currently supplies most of today’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, including Apple, AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, with chip delays having a potential knock-on effect for each of these companies. 

The virus was introduced to TSMC’s systems when a supplier installed infected software onto their systems without first conducting a virus scan. This is the first time that TSMC has had a virus attack affect their production lines, which run on an isolated network. TSMC now plans to create new mechanisms to protect their production hardware moving forward, with TSMC’s CEO stating that “We now realise it is not possible for humans not to make mistakes”.

Right not it is unclear how this delay will impact TSMC’s customers, as if this virus hit 7nm production it could affect AMD’s next-generation CPU and graphics card production as well as Apple’s next generation of custom iPhone silicon. 

  

TSMC hit by virus - Expects shipment delays

TSMC’s initial damage report seems to indicate that the company will lose 2% of their Q3 2018 revenue due to this incident, though this will result in losses of around $170 million.

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