Frequent Accidents: Ruisa Fire Intensifies The Shortage Of Automobile Chips Throughout The Year

On March 19, a fire broke out at the nako plant of Renesas, a Japanese automotive semiconductor giant, which shut down its 12 inch production line in its N3 building, adding to the already short market for automotive chips.

Nako factory is located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. It is also an important semiconductor production base of Renesas electronics. According to the announcement of Renesas electronics, a fire broke out on the first floor of N3 floor of nako factory in the early morning of that day, and some supporting public facilities were damaged.

On March 21, Saida Yingli, President of Renesas electronics, told the media including the 21st century economic report that the production of N3 building was temporarily suspended. The company would clean the clean room and replace the burned equipment, aiming to resume production within one month. According to Renesas electronics, the financial impact of stopping production of the N3 building will be about 17 billion yen a month.

However, the 8-inch production line of plant N2 building was not affected by the fire, and the production of N2 building (200 mm production line) and WT building (wafer test) was in normal operation and will continue to ship products.

As the world's top three automotive semiconductor companies, Renesas electronic's fire may aggravate the semiconductor supply problem. Shibata Yingli also expressed concern that the shutdown would have a significant impact on semiconductor supply. At a time when chip production capacity is limited, many large factories have been accident prone. Several analysts told reporters that the chip shortage is likely to continue until the end of this year.

It is planned to resume production within one month

Semiconductor manufacturing plants are very strict with the environment. What is the cause of the fire?

The police and fire department's on-site inspections have been completed and it has been determined that the source of the fire is the electroplating equipment, which is part of the N3 building (300 mm wafer line), according to Renesas. The heat resistance of the shell and plating bath of the equipment is relatively low, but the current overload of the equipment occurred, which caused a fire. However, the cause of the current overload and how to eventually lead to a fire are still under investigation.

So, how serious is the fire?

In terms of hardware equipment, the fire did not cause damage to the overall building, but some public facilities, such as pure water supply equipment and manufacturing equipment such as air conditioning, were damaged.

According to the announcement of Renesas electronics, the burning area is about 600 square meters, which is about 5% of the clean room area on the first floor of N3 building (12000 square meters). The number of manufacturing equipment burned down was 11, equivalent to about 2% of the total number of manufacturing equipment in the N3 building.

The senior management of Renesas also pointed out that for the products produced in N3 building, although the second floor of N3 building was not affected by the fire, the operation between the first floor and the second floor is integrated. Therefore, even if the second floor is operated separately, the product cannot be produced or transported.

Currently, Renesas electronics is cleaning up the site together with equipment manufacturers and partners, and plans to try its best to resume production within a month, but Renesas executives also mentioned that there may be some uncertainty.

For the terminal chips affected by fire, it is reported that 66% are automotive chips, 34% are infrastructure and IOT chips; if classified by chip type, 64% are MCU, 34% are SOC, and 2% are analog. Although Renesas is aiming to resume production within a month, it may take longer to return to the same capacity. Renesas electronics said, including semi-finished products, there is about a month of inventory.

Although N3 is shut down, can the 200 mm production line of N2 building undertake part of the capacity?

Chaitian Yingli said that although about two thirds of the products produced in N3 building can be replaced by internal or external manufacturing plants of Renesas electronics, due to the recent increase in demand for semiconductors, the situation does not allow all products to replace production immediately, and Renesas Electronics will consider producing as many products as possible as soon as possible.

At present, when the global foundry capacity is insufficient, automotive semiconductors are significantly affected by capacity crowding, according to trendforce Jibang consulting, such as 12 inch factory's vehicle MCU and CIS; 8-inch factory's automotive MEMS, discrete, PMIC and DDI. At present, the production lines of 12 inch plants at 28nm, 45nm and 65nm are most in short supply; at the same time, the nodes above 0.18um in 8-inch plants are also squeezed out.

The 12 inch production line was shut down in the fire, and the atmosphere of chip shortage was even more tense.

Car chips continue to be in short supply

The shortage of automobile chips is the superposition of many complex factors, and this year, the frequent accidents of many factories have increased the uncertainty of capacity recovery.

In addition to Renesas electronics, the cold wave in Texas in February caused a large area of power outages, leading to the shutdown of some production lines of many large factories.

For example, Samsung's wafer plant line S2 in Austin, Texas, began to shut down due to partial power failure on February 16. Trendforce Group Consulting pointed out in a report that the 14 / 11nm capacity of the factory is mainly to produce high-throughput 5g RFIC, and the remaining 65nm to 28nm capacity is allocated to its own system LSI products. In addition, some automotive semiconductors such as Tesla and Renesas are also produced in the plant.

At the same time, NXP has two 8-inch wafer plants in Oster, Texas, which mainly produce microcontrollers (MCU) and microprocessors (MPUs), power management devices, RF transceivers and amplifiers, and various sensors. Infineon's cypress also has an 8-inch Fab in Austin, which mainly produces 130 nm chips.

Renesas electronics, Infineon and NXP are among the top three suppliers of automotive chips in the world, all of which have suffered accidents.

According to IHS Markit's previous estimates, the shortage of chips could lead to a reduction of nearly 1 million light vehicles worldwide in the first quarter of 2021.

CITIC Securities report pointed out that the shortage of automobile chips continued, and the reasons for the shortage mainly include: the prediction of automobile manufacturers underestimated the demand for automobiles; the production capacity of consumer chips was preempted; the increase of 8-inch production capacity was limited, which was superimposed with the production reduction strike of Italian French semiconductor in Europe, AKM fire in Japan, snow disaster in Texas, etc. "We expect that it will take 2-3 quarters for the automotive chip tension to ease. Auto sales will recover from 2020q3, and it will take about two quarters from placing orders to chip shipment. We believe that the chip shortage may be partially alleviated by 2021q2, but the overall impact can not be eliminated until the fourth quarter. "

According to IC insights, the market size of automotive chips accounts for about 11% of the global semiconductor market, which is smaller than that of mobile phones and personal computers (both accounting for about 30%).

Although its proportion is not high, and it does not need the most advanced technology, the production capacity can not meet the demand for automobiles in a short time. At the present stage, only wafer manufacturers can try their best to allocate the existing capacity. TSMC also issued a statement that it would try to coordinate the production capacity.

A Senior Semiconductor analyst told 21st century economic reporter that TSMC, for example, did use its internal resources to discuss with other semiconductor customers to borrow some production capacity to support automotive chips and then return them in the next few quarters.

However, in his opinion, the effect of the current deployment is still limited. Even if some of the supply is relieved, as long as one part of the car is missing, it can not be produced. The automobile involves many parts. Therefore, it is hard to say how to alleviate it now. The shortage situation should continue until the end of this year.