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An earthquake in Taiwan has the semiconductor and computer industries concerned about potential impact on the supply of critical devices.

The unfortunate thing about having almost all your (large semiconductor fabrication) eggs in one basket, is the risk associated with losing that basket.

TSMC is the world's most high-profile and valuable maker of hi-tech semiconductor devices and until we know exactly how much (if any) damage has been produced by the large quake, lots of people are looking very nervous.

With the demand for AI hardware at an all-time high and with TSMC positioned as the world's leading fabricator of the devices used to build these systems, prices could skyrocket as availability is impacted.

Even things such as GPUs could see a significant price-spike if production is disrupted for any length of time. In fact, if you're a gambler, you might want to run out and clean the shelves of your local computer store of its CPUs and GPUs in anticipation and with the goal of making a healthy profit in the months to come.

I would expect however, that anyone building a hugely valuable semiconductor foundry in a geologically active part of the world, would have taken plenty of steps to mitigate the risk of damage caused by seismic events.

If you're thinking "no worries, I'll just use Intel-based silicon instead of AMD or NVIDIA" then you may have to think again. It turns out that Intel has been getting quite a bit of its own silicon built by TSMC in Taiwan. It has been forced to do this due to some rather poor choices that were made inrespect to adopting extreme UV technology a few years back. There's some background in this Reuters story.

The more I realise just how vulnerable we are to single point failures in our modern technological world, the more I wonder if anyone's paying attention and preparing for those failures. Surely it's not just a case of "fingers crossed and full-speed ahead"?

We're probably long overdue for another CME of Carrington Event magnitude, climate change is dramatically increasing the frequency of extreme weather events and political instability threatens to ignite even more military conflicts on many fronts. The level of risk to our fragile technology infrastructure seems to grow on an almost daily basis.

Ah well, time to plant a winter garden, price up some solar panels and do some risk management of my own. No point in going "full-prepper" but even a small number of mitigations may prove invaluable in the months and years ahead.

Carpe Diem folks!

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