6.5 Exabytes of tainted 3D NAND
As if the shortage of components for making video cards, DDR5 and other chips for consumer electronics (Raspberry Pi, automotive) were not enough, perhaps SSDs will soon need to be added to this list. In fact, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) and Western Digital, two of the largest NAND producers, have unfortunately reported that some contamination problems have led to the loss of (at least) 6.5 Exabytes (billions of Gigabytes) of flash memories. >Specifically, according to the press release from Kioxia, the problem involved its production of 3D BiCS flashes, widely used for SSDs, but that of 2D flash was not affected. This is a considerable loss, which could lead to an increase in the prices of the products that use it: first of all SSDs, but also USB sticks and smartphones. According to an analyst interviewed by Bloomberg, the damage could reach as many as 16 Exabytes.
If we refer to TrendForce data, Western Digital and Kioxia occupy 32% of the entire NAND market and this incident it will affect production in the first quarter of this year. Analysts of the company have predicted that this will lead to a 5 to 10% increase in NAND flash memory prices in the second quarter, which will likely impact SSD costs as well. Unfortunately, this is not the only drawback inherent in the production of flash memories. In fact, Samsung was recently forced to close its factory in Xi'an, China, due to COVID-19.
if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_hardware_d_mh2_1"). is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_hardware_d_mh2_1 slot id: th_hardware_d_mh2"); } A few weeks ago, Microsoft finally released an update that fixes the SSD performance bug in Windows 11, bringing it back to the same level as Windows 10. For more details, we recommend that you read our previous article.