Almost 4% Of Global NAND Flash Destroyed For March

[Lurick]

A recent power outage at one of Samsung's facilities in South Korea has destroyed roughly 3.5% of the global NAND flash supply for March, in a single 30 minute period. A brief power outage caused the destruction of roughly 50,000 to 60,000 V-NAND flash wafers. While it does seem like a lot, the good news is the production line itself was not damaged and is back online and churning out more chips. I hope the impact is minimal in the long run, which Samsung seems to believe as well, as they have a stockpile already which should allow them to fulfill short term needs while the facility resumes production.

 

Quote

A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s fab near Pyeongtaek, South Korea, disrupted production and damaged tens of thousands of processed wafers. Media reports claim that the outage destroyed as much as 3.5% of the global NAND supply for March, which may have an effect on flash memory pricing in the coming weeks.

The outage happened on March 9 and lasted for about 30 minutes, according to a news story from Taiwain-based TechNews that cites further South Korean reports. The report claims that the outage damaged 50,000 to 60,000 of wafers with V-NAND flash memory, which represent 11% of Samsung’s monthly output. The report further estimates that the said amount equates to approximately 3.5% of global NAND output, but does not elaborate whether it means wafer output or bit output.

 

 

Link:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12535/power-outage-at-samsungs-fab-destroys-3-percent-of-global-nand-flash-output

[Nicnac]

wow. shows how dependent the whole industry is on one supplier. This is not good

[Carclis]

I guess this'll give them an excuse to raise prices. Gotta recoup them costs...right?

[ravenshrike]

6 minutes ago, Lurick said:

destroyed roughly 3.5% of the global NAND flash supply

Um, no, it destroyed 3.5% of the output for march, or a bit under a third of a percent for the year. So any medium term effects of this will be negligible, although there may be a minor price increase in the short term.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, ravenshrike said:

Um, no, it destroyed 3.5% of the output for march, or a bit under a third of a percent for the year. So any medium term effects of this will be negligible, although there may be a minor price increase in the short term.

Adjusted to be more clear. Thanks for the point out

[leadeater]

No no no no nooooooo. Please no more bad news about memory and flash production.

[Trixanity]

It almost seems intentional at this point. Why on Earth would you not have backup power for critical applications?

 

Imagine if hospitals said the same: whoops 12 patients died; sorry we forgot to plug in emergency power.

[Murasaki]

Time to stock up on SSDs.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

It almost seems intentional at this point. Why on Earth would you not have backup power for critical applications?

They would do, it was probably a power distribution failure.

[XenosTech]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

They would do, it was probably a power distribution failure.

People seem to forget the backup systems are prone to failure too

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, XenosTech said:

People seem to forget the backup systems are prone to failure too

It's even better when it's the backup system that causes the failure in the first place lol.

[XenosTech]

Just now, leadeater said:

It's even better when it's the backup system that causes the failure in the first place lol.

lmao that happened the first week of this internship... the generators kicked in by accident and blew a transformer outside and the power went out. When your work day ends at 9:30 lol

[yian88]

Yeah right, and the prices will double because 3%of supply is gone, more market tricks so they make x2 money from the nand stockpiles they have.

[Sniperfox47]

I don't really get where people are saying the price is going to jump up. There's been a supposed shortage for what? A year now? And you walk into your local supermarket and thumb drives are still 30CAD for a 32GB thumb drive just like they have been for 3 or 4 years.

 

Unless things are substantially different in the US and Europe than they are here in Canada...

[Doobeedoo]

Nooo. Can we stop with memory/NAND price increase. It's definitely nowhere near as bad as graphics cards prices but yeah. 

That cheap 1TB SSD dream. 

[Techicolors]

2 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Nooo. Can we stop with memory/NAND price increase. It's definitely nowhere near as bad as graphics cards prices but yeah. 

That cheap 1TB SSD dream. 

seriously need low prices on larger SSDs. games are getting larger and loading far more stuff 

[Doobeedoo]

1 minute ago, Technicolors said:

seriously need low prices on larger SSDs. games are getting larger and loading far more stuff 

Yeah, I mean i have boot SSD. More than fine. Though would like a larger one for games. It's commodity for sure having a large SSD for like mass storage other than just small one for boot. 

Got 4TB HDD space as well, it's near full. But still HDD for games like FFXV with such storage requirements. They're cheap. 

[Okjoek]

How F***ing convenient.

[RadiatingLight]

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

I don't really get where people are saying the price is going to jump up. There's been a supposed shortage for what? A year now? And you walk into your local supermarket and thumb drives are still 30CAD for a 32GB thumb drive just like they have been for 3 or 4 years.

 

Unless things are substantially different in the US and Europe than they are here in Canada...

Flash drives use slower NAND, but even there the price drops that should happen with normal advancement of tech hasn't happened. the price is just staying where it was 3 years ago.

 

However, RAM is where it really sucks. 16GB DDR4 goes for $150USD (200CAD) for the slowest set, and nicer kits can cost upwards of $200USD

[Bouzoo]

5 hours ago, Nicnac said:

wow. shows how dependent the whole industry is on one supplier. This is not good

I am not sure what you would expect from the industry where that one supplier is the biggest player with ~38% market share. 

I know I know, we all want that competition, which is by far the most favorite word on this forum, but this is not a cheap competition, and I'm getting the feeling people that are expecting magic and miracles to happen.

 

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

No no no no nooooooo. Please no more bad news about memory and flash production.

So... time for good news?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-semiconductors/samsung-electronics-says-to-start-building-new-china-memory-chip-line-this-month-idUSKCN1GR06M?il=0

https://www.techpowerup.com/242195/chinas-tsinghua-unigroup-to-manufacture-3d-nand-flash-for-intel

http://www.eenewsanalog.com/news/chinese-3d-nand-flash-coming-year

 

Which for reasons unknown were not featured here.

[Nicnac]

7 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

I am not sure what you would expect from the industry where that one supplier is the biggest player with ~38% market share. 

I know I know, we all want that competition, which is by far the most favorite word on this forum, but this is not a cheap competition, and I'm getting the feeling people that are expecting magic and miracles to happen.

 

I'm not expecting anything ^^ Just saying this is not good (obviously)

[ravenshrike]

3 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

I don't really get where people are saying the price is going to jump up. There's been a supposed shortage for what? A year now? And you walk into your local supermarket and thumb drives are still 30CAD for a 32GB thumb drive just like they have been for 3 or 4 years.

You'll see at most a 10% price increase in the short term, with the only exceptions being people trying to price gouge because of the news and not because of increased costs to aquire the chips. There's nothing really critical launching in the next two months that would see ony different sort of behavior. Now, if this had happened during the lead in to the iPhone launch it would be a different matter.

[TopWargamer]

Still more stable than investing in Bitcoin.

[GilmourD]

On 3/17/2018 at 7:17 AM, Nicnac said:

wow. shows how dependent the whole industry is on one supplier. This is not good

Quadrotriticale

 

[ravenshrike]

14 minutes ago, GilmourD said:

Quadrotriticale

 

Tribbles, the poor man's substitute for flat cats.