Massive Fire at SK Hynix Facility in Wuxi, China

[btarunr]

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.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Jstn7477]

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.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

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

 

[Lu(ky]

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

 

[Fourstaff]

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?

 

[Prima.Vera]

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

 

[LDNL]

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.

 

[punani]

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

 

[Hood]

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

 

[Fourstaff]

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

 

[Lu(ky]

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.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

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

 

[adulaamin]

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.

 

[de.das.dude]

what if they purpose fully created the fire to increase prices

 

[hhumas]

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

 

[Crap Daddy]

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

 

[remixedcat]

Oh god not the HDD shitmageddon all over again

 

[fynxer]

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

 

[Ferrum Master]

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

I am off shopping

 

[Jorge]

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.

 

[Ikaruga]

I hope nobody got hurt there.

 

[Fx]

I wonder if Milton moved to Wuxi, China.

On a serious note, this sucks.

 

[fynxer]

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.

 

[T4C Fantasy]

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

 

[suraswami]

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