Flash memory price to rise on Kioxia material contamination
Flash memory prices could jump 5 to 10 percent after material contamination at two wafer fabs run as joint ventures between Kioxia Corp. and Western Digital Inc.
Kioxia said that in late January contamination of a material used in its manufacturing processes is suspected to have occurred at its Yokkaichi Plant in Mie prefecture and its Kitakami Plant in Iwate prefecture. This has impacted the production of 3D NAND flash memory at both plants. The company said.
Western Digital said that the event would impact its access to at least 6.5 exabytes of NAND flash memory. This is about 6.5 billion Gigabytes. ABloombergreport referenced Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers saying the comment implies the total shortfall, including Kioxia’s share of production from the plants, would be about 16 exabytes. That equates to about 10 percent of the total market consumption of NAND flash in a quarter.
Contamination on the rise
The companies did not discuss the nature of the contamination in detail. However, as manufacturing has moved down to the nanometer scale it is becoming harder to specify materials and be sure of how they will perform in production. TSMC and Micron have both been hit by material supply contamination in recent years. Merck and Palantir have formed a joint venture called Athinia to address investigation of process materials across the supply chain (seeMerck, Palantir partner to ease semiconductor process development).
Kioxia said it does not expect shipments of conventional 2D NAND flash memory to be hit.
在这一事件之前TrendForce公顷d forecast that the NAND Flash market would see slight oversupply acorss the entire year. “However, the impact of WDC’s material contamination issue is significant,” the market researcher said, in a statement. The statemement added: “The consequences of this latest incident may push the price of NAND Flash in Q2 to spike 5 to 10 percent.”
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