Western Digital and its partner Jiaoxia (formerly Toshiba) have released a report that materials used to produce flash memory chips are contaminated, and unspecified pollution problems have affected several of their joint NAND production plants.
As part of a 20-year-old joint venture, CAO and Western Digital operate several NAND production plants. However, two of these factories, the Yokkaichi and Kiakami plants in Japan, have apparently stopped production due to pollution.
Western Digital said these issues affected up to 6.5 exabytes (EB) (1EB= 1024PB = 1024*1024TB, which affects more than 2 million pieces if calculated with a NAND capacity of 512GB). Given the severity of the outage, a significant impact on SSD supply is expected to be seen in the near future.
This is another setback for chip production at a time when the global semiconductor shortage continues. The two companies said they were working to get the plants listed in Yokokai and Kita to resume normal operations as soon as possible. However, neither company gave a precise timetable for a full resumption of production. However, given the long cycle times of 3D NAND flash memory (it can take two to three months to manufacture a 3D flash memory chip), any interruption will still have an impact in the months after the production restart.
Armored Man currently accounts for 8.5% of SSD capacity in 2021, while Western Digital accounts for 15.4%. The shutdowns of ARMOR AND WESTERN DIGITAL came after Samsung recently shut down its factories due to COVID-19 restrictions, all of which could eventually lead to a shortage of NAND-based products, triggering an increase in NAND prices.
![Sudden: Armored Man and Western Digital 3D flash memory materials are contaminated! Significant impact on SSD supply![fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)