# Massive Fire at SK Hynix Facility in Wuxi, China



## btarunr (Sep 4, 2013)

A massive fire broke out this afternoon (local time), at a SK Hynix production facility in Wuxi, China. At this moment, pictures and videos of the fire are swarming through local social networks, and there are no official announcements by either the local authorities, or the company itself. Incidentally, this isn't the first fire accident at an SK Hynix manufacturing facility, a Korea-based fab suffered one in February 2008. The facility hit by fire is rumored to be one that handles packaging (placing bumped dies inside ceramic or plastic shells, and labeling them). If the extant of damage to the facility is high, it might affect NAND flash prices more than DRAM, since the company recently prioritized NAND flash over DRAM for the facility.



 

 



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## Jstn7477 (Sep 4, 2013)

I hope this doesn't mean those fancy Samsung 840 series SSDs will see a price hike. At least it was supposedly just a die packaging facility and not a fab.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 4, 2013)

Well...  F**k me,  it looks like gpu, ram and ssd prices are going to spiral into oblivion and inflate so hard your going to bust a blood vessel just like the hard drive factory flood in Thailand


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## Lu(ky (Sep 4, 2013)

I wonder if this will effect the new DDR4 memory in 2014 and if so will it push it back even more..


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## Fourstaff (Sep 4, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> I hope this doesn't mean those fancy Samsung 840 series SSDs will see a price hike. At least it was supposedly just a die packaging facility and not a fab.



Samsung runs their own fab, but what is to stop them from taking advantage of this and posting record profits?


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## Prima.Vera (Sep 4, 2013)

Guys don't be paranoid. Is just 1(one) factory, there are dozens in the world, relax.


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## LDNL (Sep 4, 2013)

Just another excuse to increase prices. They're already in that meeting with all the other companies talking about how wide the effect will be and if it will make the world stop turning.


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## punani (Sep 4, 2013)

This might be enough reason for me to finally go get me one of those SSD's


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## Hood (Sep 4, 2013)

Maybe if they paid their workers more than $1 an hour, they wouldn't have so many "accidental" fires...


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## Fourstaff (Sep 4, 2013)

Hood said:


> Maybe if they paid their workers more than $1 an hour, they wouldn't have so many "accidental" fires...



Higher wage bill, no excuse to blame factory fires for price increases, I wonder why


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## Lu(ky (Sep 4, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Guys don't be paranoid. Is just 1(one) factory, there are dozens in the world, relax.



Yeah like oil company's they never raise there prices after one little refinery goes down.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 4, 2013)

punani said:


> http://meestekas.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/gof13.gif


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## adulaamin (Sep 4, 2013)

I don't plan to upgrade until DDR4 but I hope this won't affect video card and SSD prices as my next upgrade would be a video card (waiting on what performance level AMD's next card will produce before I decide) and I plan to buy another SSD.


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## de.das.dude (Sep 4, 2013)

what if they purpose fully created the fire to increase prices


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## hhumas (Sep 4, 2013)

few years back flood raised the prices of hard disks and they are still unstable .. now this


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## Crap Daddy (Sep 4, 2013)

Well, coming from chipHell it is possible to be fake, photoshopped.


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## remixedcat (Sep 4, 2013)

Oh god not the HDD shitmageddon all over again


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## fynxer (Sep 4, 2013)

Hey, you can clearly see on the smoke that it's insurance fraud. They did it just to increase world market memory prices.

Hynix directors are already in a crisis meeting discussing what to do with all the extra money the coming years, new yacht anyone


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## Ferrum Master (Sep 4, 2013)

OH SONY and PS4, hit in the balzzz too...

I am off shopping


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## Jorge (Sep 4, 2013)

I laugh every time someone suggests that a fire or other event "might" raise prices. Prices are based on what the public will bear, not on cost of production. If there is an industry monopoly such as with RAM or HDDs or whatever, then the unscrupulous price gouge any chance they get. There are no limits to financial greed for the evil.


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## Ikaruga (Sep 4, 2013)

I hope nobody got hurt there.


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## Fx (Sep 4, 2013)

I wonder if Milton moved to Wuxi, China. 

On a serious note, this sucks.


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## fynxer (Sep 4, 2013)

Jorge said:


> I laugh every time someone suggests that a fire or other event "might" raise prices. Prices are based on what the public will bear, not on cost of production. If there is an industry monopoly such as with RAM or HDDs or whatever, then the unscrupulous price gouge any chance they get. There are no limits to financial greed for the evil.




Hmmm, you have not been around for long. Ever heard of supply and demand...

If world production of memory goes down and the demand from industry exceed the supply then prices can double even triple.

This has happened several times in the past with both memory and harddrives.

Last victim was the harddrives, a flood happened in thailand almost a couple of years ago and
prices over doubled even tripled in some cases. The prices are still recovering and some time next year will they be back to normal. That is over two years recovery time for a flood at just hit one of the worlds harddrive factorys.

If this puts a 10% or more dent in the worlds production of dram and/or nand we are in for a price increase.

Some manufacturers have over capacity in their production but they often choose not to increase production so the can make more money. You could call them evil but they want to take every opportunity to make money and a fire like this is perfect for fueling their greed and lining their pockets with big money.

Seagate did it with harddrives, when WD had problems delivering after the flood seagate raked in big money by keeping the production level and letting the prices go up.

To early to tell today but in four to six week we should know the answer.


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## T4C Fantasy (Sep 4, 2013)

to bad these huge places don't have backup facilities for such occasions


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## suraswami (Sep 4, 2013)

hope this is not same stunt as HDD industry trying to boost their prices!


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## T4C Fantasy (Sep 4, 2013)

a few good things can come out of things like this, now they can upgrade their facility with all the latest machinery and in the end making better products and at a faster rate


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 4, 2013)

T4C Fantasy said:


> a few good things can come out of things like this, now they can upgrade their facility with all the latest machinery and in the end making better products and at a faster rate




Or they could just sit back and cry more like all the hard drive manufacturers did while they kept the inflated prices?


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## _JP_ (Sep 4, 2013)

Hasn't anybody come up with the conspiracy theory that the fire was set by someone working in for the HDD industry, to keep SSDs from getting attractive prices?
I mean, it was becoming a tendency, amongst enthusiasts at least, to only buy HDDs for large storage purposes. If prices skyrocket on SSDs...then you only have HDDs.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 4, 2013)

_JP_ said:


> Hasn't anybody come up with the conspiracy theory that the fire was set by someone working in for the HDD industry, to keep SSDs from getting attractive prices?
> I mean, it was becoming a tendency, amongst enthusiasts at least, to only buy HDDs for large storage purposes. If prices skyrocket on SSDs...then you only have HDDs.



That depends....

There arent that many players in the HDD Cartel but if i remember correctly Seagate & WD (either both or one of the two) were taken to court for price fixing and fined by the EU.

When you talk about SSDs however, its a much bigger market and there are a lot more players in the game and that makes trying to play the game a lot harder as every company has to agree on a story and keep their prices inflated


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## RCoon (Sep 4, 2013)

_JP_ said:


> Hasn't anybody come up with the conspiracy theory that the fire was set by someone working in for the HDD industry, to keep SSDs from getting attractive prices?
> I mean, it was becoming a tendency, amongst enthusiasts at least, to only buy HDDs for large storage purposes. If prices skyrocket on SSDs...then you only have HDDs.



Doubtful, HDD's are like £50 for 2TB, which seems like a decent price to me. Not to mention there is a huge price gap between SSD's, for example the 840 basic is one of the greatest SSD's for consumers, it holds and exceptionally low price for excellent performance. Then you take a Kingston SSD, that performs very average and costs more.
Samsung I think, will be OK during all of this, so their drives will likely stay cheap, and HDD's will stay as cheap as they are. More than likely the other brands will take a bigger hit, along with GPU's. Samsung chips are in short supply, and everybody else was using Hynix memory.


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## Fourstaff (Sep 4, 2013)

FreedomEclipse said:


> That depends....
> 
> There arent that many players in the HDD Cartel but if i remember correctly Seagate & WD (either both or one of the two) were taken to court for price fixing and fined by the EU.
> 
> When you talk about SSDs however, its a much bigger market and there are a lot more players in the game and that makes trying to play the game a lot harder as every company has to agree on a story and keep their prices inflated



There are not a lot of DRAM manufacturers though, off the top of my head I can list Samsung, Hynix, Micron and between 3 of them they probably have most of the market. For NAND I can only name Intel and Toshiba in addition to the three.


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## swagnuggets123 (Sep 4, 2013)

(The price of ssds) UP UP AND AWAY!


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## erocker (Sep 4, 2013)

Hopefully no one was hurt or killed.


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## Hood (Sep 5, 2013)

T4C Fantasy said:


> to bad these huge places don't have backup facilities for such occasions


yeah, or automatic fire extinguisher systems like every other modern factory, oh wait, they do have them, but the factory manager paid off the inspector with 12-year-old hookers and neglected to recharge the system....


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## Fourstaff (Sep 5, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/04/us-hynix-suspension-idUSBRE9830SP20130904

False alarm guys, and hope the injured person has a speedy recovery.


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## Prima.Vera (Sep 5, 2013)

_JP_ said:


> Hasn't anybody come up with the conspiracy theory that the fire was set by someone working in for the HDD industry, to keep SSDs from getting attractive prices?
> I mean, it was becoming a tendency, amongst enthusiasts at least, to only buy HDDs for large storage purposes. If prices skyrocket on SSDs...then you only have HDDs.



Again, while this could be true for HDD makers, are only 2 big ones, it doesn't make any sense for SSD makers which are dozens.


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## _JP_ (Sep 5, 2013)

erocker said:


> Hopefully no one was hurt or killed.


If the fire started during active work hours, then the factory should have evacuation procedures to make sure everybody is exits the plant safely (even foxconn has those, right?).
Usually people die or get badly injured when they become stuck inside the burning building or while trying to contain the fire until firefighters arrive.
I didn't say that I wish for everybody to be ok because I thought it was implied. 


Fourstaff said:


> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/04/us-hynix-suspension-idUSBRE9830SP20130904
> 
> False alarm guys, and hope the injured person has a speedy recovery.


There are no details regarding the poor fella, but I bet he has suffered from smoke inhalation. So yeah, I wish the guy a good recovery with appropriate treatment.
The 1st comment on that news states that the black smoke clouds were toxic and affected the neighboring population. Which is really bad and, for some reason, wasn't reported in the news.


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## douglatins (Sep 5, 2013)

Yeah im suspicious, hdds got a lot more expensive and now companies are profiting alot more after the floods, so this could be an "incedent"


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## kn00tcn (Sep 6, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Again, while this could be true for HDD makers, are only 2 big ones, it doesn't make any sense for SSD makers which are dozens.



they dont make much... the nand is still samsung, micron, hynix, etc


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