피시킬에 300mm Fab 이 있죠? 여기서 뭘 주로 만들고 있을까요? G5?

 대만의 지진 사태때와는 비교도 안되게 이번 정전으로는 거의 영향을 안받은 모양이군요.

 (나중에 추가, 와우- 매킨토시용  PowerPC G5, Nvdia 사의 GeForce FX graphics 칩 등을 생산하는군요.)

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IBM, NY 반도체공장 일시 생산 중단


    (뉴욕=연합뉴스) 세계 최대의 컴퓨터 업체인 IBM사는  뉴욕을  포함한 미 동부지역에 발생한 정전사태로 인한 전력부족을 완화하기위해 14일(현지시간) 뉴욕주 이스트 피시킬에 위치한 반도체 공장에서의 생산을 중단했다고 이 회사의 대변인이 15일 밝혔다.

    빌 오를리 IBM 대변인은 "이 공장에서의 조업중단으로 근로자 5천200명은  하루동안 집으로 돌아가 쉬었으나 공장은 내일 (16일) 재가동에 들어갈 수 있을  것으로 예상하고 있다"고 설명했다.



    그는 또 "애플 컴퓨터사를 비롯한 고객사들이 사용하는 칩을 생산공급하고 있는 IBM은 이같은 일시 조업 중단에 따른 생산 차질 물량을 조만간 회복할 수 있을  것"이라고 강조했다.

    버몬트주 벌링턴에 위치한 IBM의 다른 반도체 공장은 이번 대규모 동시다발  정전사태에도 불구하고 영향을 받지 않았다.

    IBM사와 같은 대기업들은 여름에 전력수요가 급증하는 기간에 전력사용을  줄일 경우 전력 사용료율을 할인받게 된다.

    chk@yna.co.kr
(끝)

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 August 15, 2003
IBM Fab Idled by Blackout
By Mark Hachman

Power outages struck IBM's computer chip fabrication plant in East Fishkill, N.Y., affecting production as key products for Nvidia and Apple ramp up.
The largest U.S. blackout ever struck New York on Thursday, leaving part of six U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario without power, an area where an estimated 50 million people live.

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That area included Dutchess County, N.Y., home of IBM's newest chip foundry in East Fishkill. IBM officials said Friday that the plant had been shut down by the blackout, halting the production lines for about two days.

"Our main fab in Burlington [Vermont] was unaffected; there was a power blip but that wasn't an issue," IBM spokesman Bill O'Leary said. "The Fishkill area was hit in fact, as you know, and the fab was affected."

When the power went down, the heavily-automated fab shifted into maintenance mode, halting the line and slowing down the production tools so that critical components in the semiconductor lithography tools weren't affected, he said. Even establishing the amount of time the fab is expected to be down was difficult, O'Leary said, because the power outage took down the company's voice mail system.

With power restored, IBM engineers on Friday afternoon were bringing up the tooling equipment, and preparing to begin production. "At a guess, I'd have to say later Saturday," O'Leary said of the production timetable.

Local power agencies asked IBM and surrounding businesses to reduce power and turn off air-conditioning systems, O'Leary said. Most employees at the Fishkill plant were sent home. Central Hudson Gas & Electric, which serves the area, also implemented rolling blackouts on Friday to ease the pressure on the state's electrical grid, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported.

IBM's 140,000-square-foot facility in East Fishkill is a critical piece of infrastructure for many companies including Analog Devices, Qualcomm and Xilinx. The $2.5 billion facility produces 300-mm wafers using a mix of 130-nm and 90-nm manufacturing processes. However, the facility also serves as a foundry for IBM's PowerPC G5 chip, used by Apple's Power Mac G5, which is ramping production in anticipation of a scheduled launch this month. In March, IBM also said production of Nvidia's GeForce FX graphics chip would begin this summer at the Fishkill facility.

Analysts said IBM and other foundries typically have a series of backup generators and other failsafes on hand to keep the line up and running for a short period of time, and then to slowly halt the production process after a prolonged delay.

"It would definitely last long enough to bring down the equipment in a safe manner," said Joanne Itow, a foundry analyst at Semico Research. "It doesn't affect the equipment in any way."

In 1999, an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck Taiwan, sending shock waves rolling though the island's chip foundries and blacking out the island. Chip production was halted for days as the foundries assessed the damage and restarted the production lines. However, the halt in production rippled through the supply chain, placing critical components on allocation and halting some OEM manufacturing. For example, the quake halted assembly of Apple's Powerbook notebooks for a week.

But analysts say that the Taiwan quake cracked critical components in the foundries' furnaces, forcing them to be replaced. A simple power outage will affect production, but not as seriously.

"There are two issues: you want to make sure there are no safety issues, such as dealing with chemicals," said Risto J. Puhakka, a manufacturing analyst with VLSI Research. "Second, there is the minimal economic damage with respect to work in progress in wafers.

"My guess, without checking with them, is that the loss they see will be a loss of production for a few days until they bring everything back," Puhakka added.