TSMC is taking a nap, and the global consumer electronics industry is panicking.
At midnight on August 3, TSMC's 12-inch wafer factory and operation headquarters in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, China, production line was shut down due to a virus in the computer. A few hours later, the same situation occurred at TSMC's Fab14 factory in Tainan Science Park and the Fab15 factory in Taichung Science Park. The
accident has attracted global attention. TSMC issued a statement on August 4 saying that some factories will return to normal within a short period of time, while others will return to normal within one day. On August 5, it claimed to have recovered by 80%. On the afternoon of August 6, it was declared that all returned to normal. On August 7, a relevant person from TSMC confirmed to the China Business News reporter that all the company's production lines resumed work.
TSMC announced on August 5 that the impact of this incident on revenue in the third quarter of 2018 was about 3%, and the impact of gross profit margin was about 1%. On August 6, it changed its statement and said that "the impact of revenue will be reduced to 2%. Previously, TSMC expected revenue in the third quarter of 8.45 billion to US$8.55 billion. In other words, TSMC's losses ranged from at least US$169 million to US$171 million (approximately RMB 1.152 billion to RMB 1.166 billion).
TSMC confirmed that the main impacts were advanced processes such as the 12-inch production line and 7-nanometer production process. Wang Yanhui, Secretary-General of the China Semiconductor Investment Alliance, told reporters that overseas manufacturers such as Apple, Qualcomm , Superwei (AMD), and Nvidia, as well as Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei HiSilicon, and Bitmain are all TSMC 7-nanometer customers. At present, the industry is most concerned about whether the new iPhone 3 product launched in September every year will be affected.
"Manual Negligence"
In accordance with the requirements of the Taiwan Stock Exchange of China, TSMC held a briefing on the incident on the afternoon of August 6. In the materials provided by relevant TSMC personnel to reporters, TSMC President Wei Zhejia confirmed at a briefing on the afternoon of August 6 that the virus encountered by the company this time was a mutant virus of the ransomware "WannaCry" (Chinese name, want to cry) that broke out worldwide last year.
"WannaCry" is a "worm-style" ransomware software that will automatically spread using Microsoft Windows system vulnerabilities. The infected computer will be implanted with a blackmail virus, resulting in a large number of files being encrypted. The virus will prompt you to pay a certain amount of Bitcoin before it can be unlocked. Statistics show that the "WannaCry" ransomware affected at least 200,000 computers in 150 countries last year, causing at least US$8 billion in losses.
Therefore, after the "poisoning" incident, there was a conspiracy theory that TSMC might be hacked or even existed in the industry. For example, there is a speculation that TSMC's office network and production line control network are isolated, and the production line control network is not directly connected to the Internet and is completely closed. Therefore, this incident should not be a hacker attack, but may be caused by internal personnel bringing virus-infected mobile storage devices into the factory and connecting production equipment.
The Liberty Times in Taiwan disclosed that the virus was successfully implanted into TSMC's internal system through the Japanese silicon wafer transmission system commonly known as "Tianche". While the "Port 445" of the Windows 7 operating system was not closed, it continued to spread and caused a large-scale shutdown of the production line.
Regarding the various speculations and analysis of the outside world, Wei Zhejia clearly stated: "There are no insiders, and there are no hackers. This incident is completely man-made negligence."
According to Wei Zhejia's explanation, the "WannaCry" variant virus encountered by TSMC this time was brought in when new equipment was installed in the Hsinchu Science Park factory, and the unpatched Windows 7 operating system that runs key processes in the production facilities spread to the Tainan Science Park and the Taichung Science Park factory buildings.
"Previously, TSMC's strategy to prevent viruses was to first prevent the drug from being installed and then go online. This mistake was that when installing the new machine, it did not quarantine and ensure that there was no virus before connecting to the network, which eventually caused the virus to enter the company's network." Wei Zhejia said.
According to Wei Zhejia, all TSMC machines use the Windows 7 operating system, but they have not been "patched".Why didn't the system be upgraded or patched? , deputy general manager of 360 Industrial Internet Security Department, Li Hang , analyzed that because some industrial control systems are likely to be unable to continuously upgrade the system, they cannot be upgraded regularly like personal computers.
Li Hang also said that it is difficult to upgrade or patch the system in the industrial environment. First, applications that can work normally during the upgrade or patch may be "manslaughtered" and cannot work; second, production must be suspended for system upgrades, and companies like TSMC will suffer a lot of losses after being shut down for one day; third, the 445 port of the Windows system is a long-term business port in the industrial environment, and even if patched, security problems may occur.
After the production line was shut down late at night on August 3, the news of the shutdown equipment reinstalling the software system from TSMC began to be transmitted from the morning of August 4. "To be on the safe side, ensure that the virus is not lurking elsewhere, work will resume on the entire line today (August 6)." Wei Zhejia said that after this incident, TSMC will introduce new information security measures and develop an automated detection system, and will adopt a dual insurance mechanism of manual + system detection to ensure that such incidents will not happen again.
affects the industrial chain
TSMC's main business is to produce chips specifically for chip design companies, and is the world's largest professional integrated circuit manufacturing service company. According to official data from TSMC, the company has 258 process technologies, and currently produces 9,920 different products for 465 customers.
public data shows that in the world's semiconductor foundry market, TSMC's market share exceeds 56%, far ahead of the second place Samsung Electronics (about 10%), and is a veritable "big brother". Especially in terms of advanced processes, TSMC currently accounts for about 70% of the world's revenue share.
Materials provided by TSMC relevant personnel show that TSMC has 3 12-inch wafer factories, 4 8-inch wafer factories and a 6-inch wafer factory in Taiwan, and also has a 12-inch wafer factory and a design service center in Nanjing.
Taiwan Hsinchu Science Park is the headquarters of TSMC, and several important factories are also located here. Among them, Fab 12, Fab 3 and Fab 5 of Hsinchu headquarters were all affected in this incident. Fab 12 is also the R&D headquarters of TSMC 12-inch wafer factory.
is located in the Fab 14 factory in Tainan Science Park, Taiwan, China. It is currently the main production base of TSMC's 16-nanometer process, and its orders and production capacity are already very full. In addition, the future research and development of TSMC's 5-nanometer and 3-nanometer process technology has also been located in the Tainan Science Park.
, and the Fab15 plant located in Taichung Science Park, Taiwan, China, is currently mainly a production base for TSMC's 28nm process and 7nm process. Among them, the 7-nanometer process is the most advanced semiconductor production process at present.
Wang Yanhui believes that 28nm and 16nm are mature processes, and TSMC has enough ability to quickly solve the problem. Even if it is affected by "poisoning", it can quickly restore production capacity after the production line is restored, but it may take more time on more advanced processes. For example, the 10-nanometer process that TSMC put into production last year took a quarter or even half a year to get the process yield to an ideal level. The 7-nanometer process that was affected this time was only started to be put into production this year by TSMC. It is currently in the process of improving yields. At this time, "poisoning" will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the improvement of process yields. After the resumption of production, TSMC will need to spend more energy to restore the production capacity of the 7nm process process and further improve the process yield.
Wei Zhejia also stated at the briefing meeting on the afternoon of August 6 that the more advanced the process, the higher the automation level of the machinery and equipment used, the more complex the control system, and the greater the difficulty of recovery.
Apple is TSMC's largest customer, and TSMC's 20% revenue is contributed by Apple. Public information shows that TSMC relies on its 7-nanometer technological leadership to squeeze out Samsung to become the exclusive manufacturer of Apple's new generation A12 processor. Starting from May this year, TSMC has begun mass-producing 7nm process chips, continuously increasing production capacity, and stocking up Apple's new product releases every fall.
At the briefing on August 6, when asked whether a customer (Apple) was stocking up for the fall new product release on a large scale. Whether this incident had an impact on the customer's terminal supply, Wei Zhejia emphasized on the one hand that the specific terminal is inconvenient to disclose, but the more advanced the production line, the harder it is to restore, so it has an impact on the customer. On the other hand, it also stated that some customers will experience delayed delivery, but they will definitely come back at full speed in the fourth quarter.
Qualcomm is one of TSMC's important customers and currently contributes about 6% of TSMC's revenue. The new generation of Snapdragon 800 series flagship chip also adopts TSMC's 7-nanometer production process. But people familiar with Qualcomm told reporters that Qualcomm's production and manufacturing are relatively diversified, and Samsung Electronics is also a Qualcomm foundry manufacturer, so the impact is limited.
Huawei HiSilicon is about to release the new chip Kirin 980, which uses TSMC's 7-nanometer production process. At present, it may be affected. But Huawei did not respond to this matter.
