ALBAWABA - Nvidia may impacted by the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Taiwan on Wednesday morning, according to reports, as the AI giant’s primary chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), has temporarily stopped production and evacuated its plants.
Taiwan's worst earthquake in at least 25 years, which shook Taiwan's eastern coast resulting in over 1,000 injuries and nine fatalities to date, is expected to result in a shortage of technological supplies like semiconductors and display panels, Reuters writes according to analysts, as impacted factories of the world's largest tech company start to operate again.
Following earthquake shocks of a magnitude of up to 5.0 in its scientific parks in Hsinchu, Longtan, Zhunan, and Taichung, TSMC stated that it has relocated employees from a few production locations.
Although TSMC indicated that the first examinations of its building sites were routine, with Nvidia stating "After consulting with our manufacturing partners, we don't expect any impact on our supply from the Taiwan earthquake," new reports appear to differ.
A number of tools in some areas of TSMC’s production had been damaged, which had a limited negative influence on operations, however, within ten hours following the earthquake, over 70% of the fabrication plant's tools had been recovered; with none of TSMC's vital tools being affected, the firm said.
tsmc sign in huge letters on a foundry in Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung City (Shutterstock)
Nvidia joins the Quantum Computing race with new supercomputers and General-Robot platform at GTCNvidia is the second-biggest customer of TSMC, underneath Apple, and it depends on the company to make the semiconductor chips that are used for its powerful graphics processing units and AI software chip systems, according to Fortune.
Per the financial expert Dan Nystedt, Nvidia, US’ third largest company with a $2.2 trillion in market value, paid the chipmaker $7.73 billion last year for its services, roughly 11% of TSMC's total profits.
Nvidia’s stock saw a 0.55 percent drop towards $889.64 per share in its recent trading session, a deviation from S&P 500’s daily boost of 0.11 percent.
