Yesterday’s fire at Kioxia’s Fab 6 foundry in Japan could cause a two-week halt in production of NAND flash memory at the plant.
The fire broke out in a single machine in a clean room and was extinguished before the Fire Brigade arrived. Overall production in most of the plant is expected to be resumed within two weeks.
Aaron Rakers, a Wells Fargo senior analyst, estimates there will be a “less than a one per cent impact (or 0.8 exabytes) to total global NAND supply in 1Q20 if a two-week resumption is achieved.”
The Chinese language TechNews website reports (thank you, Google Translate) that most of the NAND wafers on the production line can be recovered through a re-work process.
Kioxia operates a joint venture with Western Digital in the flash foundry business.
