Wednesday, September 4th 2013

Massive Fire at SK Hynix Facility in Wuxi, China

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.
Source: ChipHell Forums
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38 Comments on Massive Fire at SK Hynix Facility in Wuxi, China

#26
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
T4C Fantasya 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?
Posted on Reply
#27
_JP_
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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#28
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
_JP_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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#29
RCoon
_JP_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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#30
Fourstaff
FreedomEclipseThat 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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#32
erocker
*
Hopefully no one was hurt or killed.
Posted on Reply
#33
Hood
T4C Fantasyto 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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#35
Prima.Vera
_JP_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. ;)
Posted on Reply
#36
_JP_
erockerHopefully 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. :p
Fourstaffwww.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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#37
douglatins
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"
Posted on Reply
#38
kn00tcn
Prima.VeraAgain, 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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