Western Digital plants hit by contamination complications, creating massive 6.5-exabyte memory shortage

A whopping six.five-exabyte shortage is at present on the menu for Western Digital due to a contamination issue at the company'south retentivity manufacturing plants in Japan. Western Digital clarified that certain materials were contaminated resulting in the hampering of normal production capacity, though further details have still to be disclosed. The company and articulation-venture partner Kioxia Holdings Corp are actively working to get the manufacturing units back up to speed and then that normal operational capacity can be reinstated as rapidly as possible.

six.v exabytes translates to half dozen.5 billion gigabytes. Co-ordinate to TrendForce, "the consequences of this latest incident may push the cost of NAND Wink in Q2 to spike 5~ten%." (via Tom'south Hardware) The same written report indicates that these amercement account for approximately 3% of Western Digital's total annual output, and the total fallout has yet to exist adamant since Kioxia's losses oasis't withal been tallied up.

For additional context on Western Digital and Kioxia's articulation ventures, there were reports dorsum in 2022 that the two were due to merge, though nothing developed publicly on that front end.

As for how this contamination incident affects average consumers, consider the existing technology headaches already being incurred by the global scrap shortage, then gene in Western Digital's reduced annual output every bit a outcome of its found predicament. It is a trouble folding over itself.

In addition to Western Digital's comments on the situation, Kioxia has a statement as well, stating that 3D BiCS wink has been affected, while 2D NAND flash memory production is predictable to keep every bit usual.

Updated February 2022

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