WD expects to produce six exabytes less flash NAND due to power outage

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 06/29/2019 07:12 AM | source: westerndigital | 29 comment(s)

Western Digital will produce six exabytes less flash NAND memory than planned due to a power outage at its Toshiba Memory Corporation joint venture on June 15, the company reports. An exabyte is 1000 petabytes = 1million terabytes = 1billion gigabytes.

The power failure occurred on Saturday, June 15 in the Yokkaichi region in Japan. The incident affected the facilities of the joint venture between Toshiba and Western Digital, which meant that, among other things, the process tools for processing wafers for the production of nand memory did not function for a short time. TrendForce reports that the power outage lasted only thirteen minutes. Daughter division of TrendForce DRAMeXchange, which analyzes memory prices, expects the prices for 2d-nand to rise as a result of the incident, while the price reductions for stacked 3d-nand may flatten out.

- WD - SAN JOSE, CA - Jun 27, 2019

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) announced that on Saturday, June 15, an unexpected power outage occurred in the Yokkaichi region in Japan, affecting production operations at the flash fabrication facilities operated by the company's joint venture partner, Toshiba Memory Corporation. The power outage impacted both the facilities and process tools and Western Digital is working closely with its joint venture partner to bring the facilities back to normal operational status as quickly as possible.

Western Digital continues to assess the impact of this event. The company currently expects the incident will result in a reduction of Western Digital's flash wafer availability of approximately 6 exabytes, the majority of which is expected to be contained in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020.

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mohiuddin
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Posts: 862
Joined: 2010-11-06

#5685519 Posted on: 06/29/2019 03:45 PM

6 exabytes equal 6 million terabytes - which would be ~15-20 million SSD drives, given the popularity of 256GB and 512GB disks.
This year SSD shipments are projected to be ~280 million SSD drives , ~70 million per quarter.

So that's about 20-30 percent of the world's total manufacturing capacity in Q1 2019.

So a 13min power outage did that... hmm...

anticupidon
Senior Member

Posts: 5605
Joined: 2008-03-06

#5685539 Posted on: 06/29/2019 05:01 PM

I don't buy it.
Just another movie from the same director, same actors and same outcome.
Rising prices, by all means.

alanm
Senior Member

Posts: 9999
Joined: 2004-05-10

#5685543 Posted on: 06/29/2019 05:05 PM

I don't buy it.
Just another movie from the same director, same actors and same outcome.
Rising prices, by all means.
In highly competitive market with sharply decreasing NAND pricing, who would be brave enough to raise prices?

Warrax
Senior Member

Posts: 131
Joined: 2007-01-08

#5685564 Posted on: 06/29/2019 05:57 PM

What a lame excuse to increase prices.

alanm
Senior Member

Posts: 9999
Joined: 2004-05-10

#5685578 Posted on: 06/29/2019 06:43 PM

What a lame excuse to increase prices.

LOL.. conspiracy theorists abound.. here, there, everywhere

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