Western Digital Loses Six Exabytes of NAND Flash Due to Contamination

Western Digital Loses Six Exabytes of NAND Flash Due to Contamination

In a brief press release sent out by Western Digital, it claims the two companies have ceased production at their Yokkaichi and Kitakami flash fabrication facilities due to the incident without specifying exactly what happened. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the announcement is the Western Digital says the damage is “at least” multiple petabytes of flash, as it’s only accounting for its losses so far but not its partner’s. Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers estimates that when Kioxia’s loss is taken into account, the number could be as high as 16 exabytes, as reported by Bloomberg. The news outlet states that this amount of memory is approximately 10 percent of all flash sold worldwide in a quarter. According to PCMag Western Digital and Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) provided 24 percent of global SSD capacity last year. Industry analysts Trendforce predict that the incident is so severe it will cause the price of NAND flash to increase in Q2 between five to ten percent.

Western Digital Loses Six Exabytes of NAND Flash Due to Contamination

In a statement, Kioxia said only part of its 3D BiCS FLASH production line was affected, but oddly, the statement says that’s just an assumption at this time. The company wrote, “It is assumed to be caused by components containing impurities in a specific production process of the 3D flash memory.” The contamination has not affected its 2D flash operation, allowing it to ship from its inventory while it works to rectify the issue on its 3D NAND production line. Trendforce notes in its advisory linked above that currently Western Digital and Kioxia are currently producing client SSDs and eMMC cards for embedded storage.

This type of news is not exactly what the DIY PC building scene needs right now, as SSDs have largely been able to avoid the shortages roiling the GPU and CPU world for the past two years, and as far as we can tell nobody is scalping SSDs…yet. One silver lining is at least the factory wasn’t shut down due to COVID-19, which is what happened to industry giants Samsung and Micron in late December of 2021 when the Chinese city of Xian imposed very strict travel restrictions due to an outbreak of COVID-19. This resulted in reduced staffing at manufacturing plants in the area for both companies. Samsung also lost 71,000 wafers during last year’s power and water outage in Texas due to winter storms that ravaged parts of the state and caused the company to shut down its fab for an entire month. At least WDC and Kioxia don’t have those types of scenarios to overcome in getting their operation back online.

Continue reading

Google Pixel Slate Owners Report Failing Flash Storage
Google Pixel Slate Owners Report Failing Flash Storage

Google's product support forums are flooded with angry Pixel Slate owners who say their devices are running into frequent, crippling storage errors.

Qualcomm’s New Snapdragon 888 Will Power Flagship Android Phones in 2021
Qualcomm’s New Snapdragon 888 Will Power Flagship Android Phones in 2021

The 888 comes with a new CPU design, integrated 5G, and a massive GPU boost. It's shaping up to be the most significant update to Qualcomm's flagship system-on-a-chip (SoC) in years.

Current x86 vs. Apple M1 Performance Measurements Are Flawed
Current x86 vs. Apple M1 Performance Measurements Are Flawed

There's an intrinsic difference between x86 and ARM CPU designs that makes comparing performance difficult — and it didn't get noticed in the initial wave of coverage.

A File Sharing App With 1 Billion Downloads Has a Major Security Flaw
A File Sharing App With 1 Billion Downloads Has a Major Security Flaw

Trend Micro says SHAREit is a security nightmare that could allow intruders to sneak a peek at your data or even install malware. Perhaps most troublingly, the developers have not responded to Trend Micro's warnings.