Many of our readers may remember the so-called “hard drive crisis”, caused in large part by the floods that took place in Thailand a few years ago. The same thing usually happens whenever there is a fire, earthquake or power failure, which ends up having serious consequences in the hardware industry as it forces manufacturers to stop the production, which almost always goes hand in hand with a rise in prices due to lack of stock. .
Here’s how the earthquake in Japan affected the hardware industry
According to several Japanese media, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake shook Japan yesterday and caused power outages in many parts of the country. TrendForce market researchers rushed for information on the immediate impacts on semiconductor production, including factories operated by KIOXIA, Micron and SONY
After a thorough investigation, it fortunately appears that the aftermath of yesterday’s earthquake did not affect hardware manufacturers much, and those affected were able to resolve the issues in a short time. The earthquake had its epicenter off the coast of Fukushima around midnight local time, and although unfortunately at least 4 people were killed and more than 100 injured, it seems that production in terms of semiconductors was able to continue its course normally.
KIOXIA suffers damage in its wafer production
We start with KIOXIA, formerly Toshiba Memory, which is a leading NAND memory manufacturer. A few weeks ago we reported the closure of one of its production lines due to contamination problems, which had a very negative impact on production and that at the time it was stipulated that it would return its products more expensive by at least 10%. For this reason, KIOXIA’s K1 Fab plant, located in Kitakami, was not yet in full production when the earthquake occurred, which only affected the magnitude 5 area, therefore at the except for a few jolts, they had no problems.
However, it seems that this fact will force the manufacturer to take longer than he thought to bring the factory back to full capacity, since the manufacturer reported that the earthquake in Japan caused some series of wafers to remain “partially damaged”. Of course, the damage seems minimal and the production line is still in operation.
SONY, Micron and the rest
Starting with SONY, the Japanese manufacturer has 3 factories in areas relatively close to the epicenter of the earthquake, but no problems have been reported in any of them. However, as a precaution until a damage assessment is made, SONY has halted production of all three (they make storage media, semiconductors and image sensors).
Other lesser known but equally important semiconductor manufacturers are Sumco and Shin Etsu, also with semiconductor factories in the earthquake-affected area in Japan. TrendForce points out that wafer mills require extreme stability, so it’s likely that their production has been affected, although they haven’t made any official announcement in this regard. The same thing happens with Micronwho haven’t said a single word about whether or not the earthquake has affected their manufacturing.
Other manufacturers like Renesas have decided to temporarily close their factories in order to carry out a damage assessment, and this includes no less than 4 semiconductor wafer factories.
In short, it seems that although the damage was not severe, it affected Japanese semiconductor manufacturers, which means that it is possible that their production could be affected and, as a result, we consumers , will have to pay for these problems in the form of increased product prices.
