Monday, November 11th 2019
Samsung Faces Factory Contamination
Today, Samsung's foundry division, dedicated to the manufacturing of DRAM chips, is facing challenges from mistakes that happened a few weeks ago. Those mistakes are in the form of contamination of the clean rooms, where all the tools necessary for the manufacturing of DRAM chips on 200 mm wafers got infected, and now Samsung is taking a multi-million dollar loss because the new wafers have to be scrapped.
Clean rooms are essential for the semiconductor manufacturing process, because they keep all the pollutants away from silicon, keeping silicon clean and ready for use. However, Samsung has not managed to keep a clean room for its DRAM manufacturing facility working with 200 mm wafers for 1x nm-class DRAM chips. The tools used for wafer processing have been contaminated and, therefore, the wafers themselves because of their interactions. Samsung has admitted that they have lost around "several billion South Korean won," resulting in millions of US dollars. The re-assuring thing that this will not significantly impact the DRAM market is that production is now going as planned, and the issue is sorted out, so we can hope this doesn't have any big impact on the DRAM prices.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
Clean rooms are essential for the semiconductor manufacturing process, because they keep all the pollutants away from silicon, keeping silicon clean and ready for use. However, Samsung has not managed to keep a clean room for its DRAM manufacturing facility working with 200 mm wafers for 1x nm-class DRAM chips. The tools used for wafer processing have been contaminated and, therefore, the wafers themselves because of their interactions. Samsung has admitted that they have lost around "several billion South Korean won," resulting in millions of US dollars. The re-assuring thing that this will not significantly impact the DRAM market is that production is now going as planned, and the issue is sorted out, so we can hope this doesn't have any big impact on the DRAM prices.
23 Comments on Samsung Faces Factory Contamination
Why not test the wafers ya know...
Always fun to watch the DRAMExchange spot price jump after the biannual "contamination" problem :D
Let me shoot you a PM.
www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR3.TRC2.A0.H0.Xcpu+wafer.TRS0&_nkw=cpu+wafer&_sacat=0
Other wise Surprise ( not ).
Another thought was just in time for Christmas.
Manufacturer A: Fall holiday season is coming up let's all agree to not go too crazy with price reductions.
Manufacturer B: Yes, I agree. We should limit cuts to 10... no 5%, no just $5.
Samsung: Yeah nah, fam. I'd love to but I have a "contamination" problem and actually have to hike prices a bit.
Here's the link for anyone else wanting one.
Lawrence's Attic - Est. 2009 | eBay Stores
Yes they do! It's their 1x nm class of DRAM. That's how Samsung calles their 18nm process which is used to fabricate the Samsung C-Die DDR4 RAM (succesor to B-Die and a good overclocker).