A 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Taiwan’s eastern coast Wednesday morning local time is likely to cause some disruption to the semiconductor supply chain, multiple media sources are reporting. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, has reported stopping operations to perform inspections. The company supplies chips to companies such as Nvidia Corp. 

DigiTimes Asia reported last year that four of TSMC’s top customers are well-known in the automotive chip market including NXP, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and Sony. Often the chips are resold by TSMC’s customers to automakers or Tier 1 component suppliers, the article says. 

The company reported it would likely restart operations Wednesday evening after inspections are complete, Reuters reported. 

The news outlet says ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment needed to make advanced process nodes, such as 4/5nm and 3nm, was shut down for eight to 15 hours. 

“Barclays analysts said some highly sophisticated semiconductor fabs need to operate seamlessly 24/7 in a vacuum state for several weeks and the halts would disrupt the process, pushing up pricing pressure in the sector,” the article says.

This could cause a “short-term hiccup” for electronics manufacturing in upstream products and higher prices for lower inventory levels. 

Investor’s Business Daily says it expects only minimal disruption from the earthquake on the chip market. 

“But the disaster renews concerns about having too much leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing located in one region,” the trade publication says. 

Global concerns have already been mounting with mainland China considering the island a renegade provenance. 

TSMC currently is building new plants in the U.S. and Japan. 

Other Taiwan chipmakers also halted operations including Micron Technology and United Microelectronics. 

Chip shortages hobbled the auto industry in the years following the pandemic. However, early 2024 predictions expected chip supply to reach pre-pandemic norms this year. 

“We expect that new-vehicle inventory will approach pre-pandemic norms in 2024, reaching nearly 3 million units — three times the chip-shortage low — and days’ supply will remain at healthy levels,” Cox Automotive said in December.  “We will be back to normal.” 

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