To All,
here is the latest on the UICC fab fire...
UICC fab fire causes $416 million in damage
By Mark LaPedus
HSINCHU, Taiwan--The fire that broke out in United Integrated Circuits
Corp.'s new wafer fab here on Friday caused about $416 million worth of
damage, completely destroying the plant's production equipment, according
to managers at a press conference here today.
The blaze, which began on the first floor of UICC's 8-inch fab and quickly
spread to the plant's cleanroom, took 36 hours to completely extinguish,
according to Robert Tsao, chairman of United Microelectronics Corp.
(UMC), which is the lead shareholder of the Hsinchu-based silicon foundry
company. UICC is a joint-venture between UMC and seven North American
chip companies--ATI Technologies, ESS Technology, Integrated Silicon
Solution, Lattice Semiconductor, Oak Technology, Opti, and Trident
Microsystems.
On Friday, Oct. 3, the fire began around 5:50 p.m. In the days following the
fire, nearly all of the joint-venture partners said the shutdown of UICC's new
plant would have no measurable impact on their businesses (see early news
coverage). UICC's fab had just begun production this summer and now it
appears to be out of operation for at least one year.
Friday's fire apparently presents a bigger problem for UMC, which has
completely booked its existing 6-inch and 8-inch wafer-processing capacity.
The blaze knocked out about one-third of the total 8-inch fab capacity
available to Hsinchu-based UMC.
In an interview after today's press conference, UMC president John Hsuan
said it will take at least one year to repair the damages at UICC, but he
believed the foundry will resume operations in the future. ''We think we can
rebuild the fab,'' Hsuan said, without elaborating on the exact cause of the
fire.
The fire's heavy smoke '"slightly affected'' nearby 8-inch fabs operated by
UMC, but Tsao said two of the company's plants have resumed normal
operations. Also slightly affected was a third fab owned by a UMC joint
venture, called United Silicon Inc. That facility is still under construction and
won't be in production until early 1998, as originally planned, Tsao said.
In the meantime, UMC has taken several actions to juggle the IC production
in UICC's plant to its existing fabs in an effort to appease its customers.
In the short term, UMC has begun running wafers for its UICC customers in
its current 8-inch fab, dubbed Fab 3, as well as in United Semiconductor
Corp. (UMC), another wafer foundry venture in Hsinchu, according to
Hsuan.
USC had been running at full-capacity before the UICC fire, but USC
ceased production of UMC's own DRAM and SRAM lines in order to make
room for customers, according to Peter Chang, president of USC.
For a long-term solution, UMC expects to obtain additional foundry capacity
by signing an agreement with Taiwan DRAM start-up Nan Ya Technology
Corp., based in Taoyuan. Under the terms of the pending agreement, UMC
will obtain 10,000 wafers per month in Nan Ya's 8-inch fab processing
wafers with 0.35-micron technology, starting in the first half of next year.
Even though UMC claims it can now satisfy the foundry requirements for its
UICC customers, analysts raised some serious questions about the matter.
''Even if UMC does find some capacity, the product shipments (for UICC's
customers) will be delayed by at least one-and-a-half months or more,'' said
John Kuo, senior analyst with China Securities Investment Trust Corp. in
Taipei. |
