As is tradition, after we received hopeful news yesterday about Samsung's investing in the expansion of their flash production we now have bad news out of Micron. DRAMeXchange reported a nitrogen leak in Micron's Taoyuan fab which prompted an evacuation and the possible stillbirth of ~60,000 wafer starts, or about 5.5% cut in the amount of RAM available by the end of the month. Trendforce also reported the same incident and numbers.
Micron has released a statement contradicting these stories, stating that while there was an incident, there was no real impact to the business or to employees. One hopes that is the more accurate report as that particular Fab produces LPDDR4, which is already in high demand and short supply. Indeed, another story mentions that SK Hynix and Toshiba's 3D NAND production was well below expectations and that the supply of NAND for iPhones may fall short by as much as 30%.
This would imply that any impact on Micron's RAM production, even if nowhere near the amount mentioned by the press, would have a large effect on the market in the coming quarters. Samsung will certainly try to capture some of this demand, but the upgrades to their Fabs are still a while off and they are already operating at close to maximum capacity. Fingers crossed we don't hear bad news from GLOFO tomorrow morning!
"Micron Technology has issued a statement regarding recent reports about its fabrication facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Micron clarified that there was no nitrogen leaking incident nor evacuation of personnel. A minor event did occurred at the facility, but operations are recovering speedily without material impact to the business."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- John McAfee and Intel settle name battle @ The Inquirer
- Microsoft's redesign of Skype is really upsetting almost everyone @ The Inquirer
- U wot M8? Oracle chip designers quietly work on new SPARC CPU @ The Register
- OpenBSD Will Get Unique Kernels On Each Reboot @ Slashdot
- Create a user called '0day', get bonus root privs – thanks, Systemd! @ The Register
- Cha-ching! NotPetya hackers cash out – but victims won't ever see that data again @ The Register
Wasn’t the report saying that
Wasn’t the report saying that even if micron factory was completely offline it only represent 5% of the global production ?
Micron deny, but even a temporary 5% reduction should be immaterial to availability.
literally in there verbatim
literally in there verbatim "about 5.5% cut in the amount of RAM available by the end of the month"
and yes, in a market that is already under supplied, ~5% will be noticeable, you can't just ship a product with 95% of the Flash.
“Fingers crossed we don’t
“Fingers crossed we don’t hear bad news from GLOFO tomorrow morning!”
Well AMD has that amended wafer agreement so production would not be totally borked. GF is using a 14nm process licensed from Samsung but maybe the 7nm GF process will be different. AMD should be fine with Navi going to a more modular smaller die size that can be easier done across GF’s fabs, and AMD needs to make sure that at 7nm there is some separate GF fabs that are using that 7nm process with at least one being in the US, and other locations spread far apart so natural disasters are not so much of a problem, ditto for any political problems that may disrupt production.
Apple’s NAND/DRAM supply issues need to be more supported by Apple investing with its fab partners on maybe more production facilities(Lines/fabs) whose construction is financed by Apple as Apple has done in that past. Apple has the dosh to play “Bank OF Apple” when it comes to securing more investment along with Apple’s fab partners for more new fab capacity so maybe it’s time for Apple to put more of its hundreds of gigabucks cash reserves into some supply chain infrastructure investments.
Supply Chain management is Cook’s forte so maybe he needs to start the process rolling or even Apple’s supplies will be subject to more disruption. Maybe Apple can outright own some fabs and lease them to its fab partners with the fab partners responsible for fab/fab machinery upkeep and fab process R&D with those fabs production going mostly to Apple with any excess capacity remaining used for others production.
Nitrogen leaks.
So thats the
Nitrogen leaks.
So thats the new code word, for the hard drive industry its storm floods.