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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Athlonite
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Joined: 2007-11-09

#5685731 Posted on: 06/30/2019 12:57 PM

Oh come on now your trying to tell us that a multi billion dollar fab doesn't have a continuous power supply good for a few days at least without the national grid

I just don't believe that to be true

DmitryKo
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Joined: 2011-08-08

#5685748 Posted on: 06/30/2019 02:37 PM

Sure, why not install a 100 MW backup power plant in the basement, just in case of an event that lasts a few minutes once in a lifetime?

A complete power outage on a production facility which uses industrial-grade voltage could only be alleviated with a multi megawatt-hour class battery backup station - these are still a rarity in Japan, and overall they are ordered and maintained by local power grid companies, not by individual industries.

abula
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Joined: 2002-01-24

#5685780 Posted on: 06/30/2019 05:33 PM

I hope it doesnt turn out like DDR4 price fixing fiasco or the HDD shortage due to the flooding..... but WD + Toshiba produce around 35% of the NAD, only Samsung is bigger, lets hope SK Hynex and Micron see this as an opportunity to grab some market share instead of join the price gauging that kinda looks is going to happen.

Dimitrios1983
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Joined: 2018-03-01

#5685851 Posted on: 07/01/2019 12:46 AM

Well for sure I will be buying a new drive ASAP.

Athlonite
Senior Member

Posts: 1313
Joined: 2007-11-09

#5685873 Posted on: 07/01/2019 04:39 AM

Sure, why not install a 100 MW backup power plant in the basement, just in case of an event that lasts a few minutes once in a lifetime?

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