NANDpocalypse - 6 Exabytes lost

[LukeSavenije]

Sources: @VegetableStu, Anandtech

 

 

Toshiba Memory and Sandisk/Western Digital's joint venture Flash Forward disclosed this Friday that an unexpected power outage in the Yokkaichi province in Japan on June 15 affected the manufacturing facilities. as the moment of writing, production facilities are partially halted and they are expected to resume operations by mid-July.

 

Quote

Western Digital says that the 13-minute power outage impacted wafers that were processed, the facilities, and production equipment. The company indicates that the incident will reduce its NAND flash wafer supply in Q3 by approximately 6 EB (exabytes), which is believed to be about a half of the company’s quarterly supply of NAND. Toshiba does not disclose the impact the outage will have on its NAND wafer supply in the coming months, but confirms that the fabs are partially suspended at the moment. Keeping in mind that Toshiba generally uses more capacity of the fabs than WD, the impact on its supply could be significantly higher than 6 EB with some estimating that it could be as high as ~9 EB.

 

Both companies are assessing the damage at the moment, so the financial harm of the incident is unclear. Not even counting potential damage to production tools and other equipment used at the fabs, 6 EB of NAND cost a lot of money. Furthermore, analysts from TrendForce believe that a consequence of the outage will be some loss of confidence from clients of both companies, which will have a financial impact as well.

 

The Yokkaichi Operations campus jointly owned and run by Toshiba and Western Digital produces about 35% of the global NAND output in terms of revenue, according to TrendForce. At present, the manufacturing base has five production facilities (Fab 2, Fab 3, Fab 4, Fab 5, and Fab 6) as well as an R&D center, all of which were affected by the outage. Three fabs within the campus produce 3D NAND flash, whereas another two are used to make special-purpose types of memory.

 

This leaves Intel/Micron, Samsung and SKHynix to fill the gap. If they can? we'll see, otherwise we can all prepare for the second part of the NAND-pocalypse

[Levent]

So approximately 50 million 120G ssds.

Holy fuck, that seems like A LOT.

[SenKa]

Im sure Samsung And SK Hynix could hold up most of the NAND market by themselves, adding Micron to the mix? I would be amazed if we even noticed in any way other than Toshiba and WD hiking their SSD prices.

 

I have never owned RAM or an SSD that came with non Samsung or SK NAND chips, save for my optane drive that is obviously Intel/Micron.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Why wasn't this stuff battery backed?

[TVwazhere]

 

Well shit, thats a lot. I think the only saving grace is that unlike Nandpocalypse 2017-2018 it was all of the manufacturers, not just one of them. 

[LukeSavenije]

2 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Why wasn't this stuff battery backed?

insert good question meme here

 

4 minutes ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

Im sure Samsung And SK Hynix could hold up most of the NAND market by themselves, adding Micron to the mix? I would be amazed if we even noticed in any way other than Toshiba and WD hiking their SSD prices.

yeah, but still... Samsung mostly works for themselves, SKHynix is mostly Dram, not NAND and micron/intel mostly do it for themselves too

[Sakkura]

It's only about six thousand terabyte-sized SSDs.

 

Me fail math? Unpossible!

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Why wasn't this stuff battery backed?

Given the power of the equipment needed to make Nand, they probably can't sustain the draw needed for any period of time. The production facilities probably only have generators for emergency lights and etc. 

[Dylanc1500]

6 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

It's only about six thousand terabyte-sized SSDs.

Just a heads up, you need to move the decimal a couple more places. It would be million, not thousand. Check out @TVwazhere's post.

[SenKa]

1 minute ago, LukeSavenije said:

insert good question meme here

 

yeah, but still... Samsung mostly works for themselves, SKHynix is mostly Dram, not NAND and micron/intel mostly do it for themselves too

I did accidentally cross terms. RAM likely won't be affected much, as DRAM is almost solely Hynix and Samsung. NAND is spread out a little more, but I really don't think it will be that noticeable in the grand scheme as things as Samsung was slapped on the wrist for price fixing during the last NAND shortage.

 

Is 6 exabytes quite a bit of a drop in production? Of course. Will us as consumers feel it as much as the last shortage? I doubt it. But, I may eat my words. I will say I picked quite a good time to pick up 32GB of GSkill Trident Z RGB even if, to my dismay, it was SKHynix and not Samsung as I was made to believe. I was still rather pleased with my overclock and I got such a good deal I wasn't bothered

 

 

[iamdarkyoshi]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Given the power of the equipment needed to make Nand, they probably can't sustain the draw needed for any period of time. The production facilities probably only have generators for emergency lights and etc. 

True, but given how much this outage will cost them, you'd think they could afford a battery backup solution

[Lady Fitzgerald]

12 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Why wasn't this stuff battery backed?

Battery backup would be capable of only providing power for lighting , etc. for a few minutes, or just a few seconds of production power production. It would take a second power source, such as backup generation that could be brought online in seconds or a second power feed from another source (any of which could be more expensive than the losses sustained from the outage).

[TetraSky]

How do you somehow lose 6EB of NAND in 13 minutes without power?

I smell bullshit here and feels like they just wanted a reason to raise the prices of NAND based products after they've been going down a lot lately.

[thorhammerz]

31 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Why wasn't this stuff battery backed?

The energy density of current-gen batteries are expensively inadequate.

[Dacien]

21 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Battery backup would be capable of only providing power for lighting , etc. for a few minutes, or just a few seconds of production power production. It would take a second power source, such as backup generation that could be brought online in seconds or a second power feed from another source (any of which could be more expensive than the losses sustained from the outage).

As someone who works in the electrical industry, a backup generator with ATS, the wiring, additional labor to install, whatever you throw at it, will never cost more than what was lost here. It is routine to have these backup generators even in uninteresting projects like apartment buildings. At least here in the states. I can almost guarantee that there was a malfunction in either their ATS or generator.

 

They would only need a short-term backup battery bank in the range of seconds before the generator took over, so that wouldn't have been the problem. If the short-term had failed, the outage would not have lasted 13 minutes, it would have lasted seconds.

[Leviathan-]

24 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

True, but given how much this outage will cost them, you'd think they could afford a battery backup solution

Imagine if you will the size of the battery and cost of maintenance, securely storing it and replacement. Etc Etc. Then the answer becomes more clear.

[S w a t s o n]

This sounds like complete bullshit to me. A 13 minute power outage has somehow ruined 6-9 Exabytes of nand wafers? I dont believe that for a second. This smells like a repeat of the single HDD factory flooding and everyone raising their prices because they could.

 

They said this is like half a quater's worth of production. You mean to tell me a 13 minute power outage ruined 1.5 months of wafers????

[LukeSavenije]

7 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

You mean to tell me a 13 minute power outage ruined 1.5 months of wafers????

aperiently, yeah

[2FA]

34 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

How do you somehow lose 6EB of NAND in 13 minutes without power?

I smell bullshit here and feels like they just wanted a reason to raise the prices of NAND based products after they've been going down a lot lately.

 

9 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

This sounds like complete bullshit to me. A 13 minute power outage has somehow ruined 6-9 Exabytes of nand wafers? I dont believe that for a second. This smells like a repeat of the single HDD factory flooding and everyone raising their prices because they could.

 

They said this is like half a quater's worth of production. You mean to tell me a 13 minute power outage ruined 1.5 months of wafers????

I'm no nanoengineer but the equipment used to produce NAND is really expensive and sensitive (nanometer scale after all) so I'm guessing that time frame includes calibration and verification of all the machinery.

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, Dylanc1500 said:

Just a heads up, you need to move the decimal a couple more places. It would be million, not thousand. Check out @TVwazhere's post.

Argh, I derped. Thanks.

[Dylanc1500]

2 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Argh, I derped. Thanks.

Eh, we all have days that it happens. You're welcome though!

[Anomnomnomaly]

Cue SSD price gouging from multiple retailers in 3......2.......1.........

[WereCat]

I call BS claims. 

 

If they lost 6Exabytes in 13min, they can make 6Exbytes in 13min which means that the production is so large that 6Exbytes doesn't matter since the production is so large that this is only a small fraction. 

[Lurick]

6 minutes ago, WereCat said:

I call BS claims. 

 

If they lost 6Exabytes in 13min, they can make 6Exbytes in 13min which means that the production is so large that 6Exbytes doesn't matter since the production is so large that this is only a small fraction. 

It's not just production in those minutes, it's the time to re-calibrate everything, validate it all comes back online and works properly, and all the other parts that ensure validation of proper output. Sure the title is misleading in that it makes you think that many wafers were destroyed though but there is a reason nobody shuts down large systems like these because it's far more expensive and time consuming to stop production for a period of time, no matter how short, and restart it all than it is to just keep churning things out and selling them for a loss.

[WereCat]

4 minutes ago, Lurick said:

It's not just production in those minutes, it's the time to re-calibrate everything, validate it all comes back online and works properly, and all the other parts that ensure validation of proper output. Sure the title is misleading in that it makes you think that many wafers were destroyed though but there is a reason nobody shuts down large systems like these because it's far more expensive and time consuming to stop production for a period of time, no matter how short, and restart it all than it is to just keep churning things out and selling them for a loss.

True but not everything needs recalibration. That's a corporate BS. I work in a similar company. It takes a day or two at most to fix a fail like this. Nobody likes to lose money. Not that kind of revenue as was mentioned. 

This seems more like a subterfuge to increase the cost of SSDs that were going low in price a lot. 

 

I still doubt that a fail of one company will affect the prices. Maybe stall them for a few more days