6 exabytes of NAND flash lost after power outage at Toshiba and WD NAND fabs

An unexpected power outage at Toshiba Memory and Western Digital's Yokkaichi Operations campus in Japan has resulted in a significant loss of NAND flash memory supply. The power outage, which lasted 13 minutes, is expected to lower the joint-venture's third-quarter NAND flash wafer supply by a massive 6 exabytes (EB).

This is estimated to be about half of the company's quarterly output. The five factories at the Yokkaichi Operations campus produce about 35 percent of the world's NAND output, in terms of revenue. A quick calculation learns this means about 16.5 percent of global NAND supply in Q3 is now off the table. It will be interesting to see how this will affect pricing. Production is expected to resume by mid-July.

Western Digital says that the 13-minute power outage impacted wafers that were processed, the facilities, and production equipment. The company indicates that the incident will reduce its NAND flash wafer supply in Q3 by approximately 6 EB (exabytes), which is believed to be about a half of the company’s quarterly supply of NAND. Toshiba does not disclose the impact the outage will have on its NAND wafer supply in the coming months, but confirms that the fabs are partially suspended at the moment. Keeping in mind that Toshiba generally uses more capacity of the fabs than WD, the impact on its supply could be significantly higher than 6 EB with some estimating that it could be as high as ~9 EB.

Via: AnandTech