Hynix Fab Fire Manufacturing Implications

Yesterday Hynix had a fire at their  at its Wuxi,China, plant

It looks that the fire would have only short term impact on NAND production since it "mainly in the air purification facilities on the rooftop of the fab and created a disproportionate amount of smoke".

If its true that it only impacted the air filtration system, production is dependent on how quickly Hynix can fix/ replace the air purification components, and the magnitude of the damage to the air filtration inside the fab.

"TrendForce said the fire could impact SK Hynix's production procedures "considerably" in the near future, particularly since the Wuxi plant manufactures almost 50 percent of the company's monthly output of 260,000 wafers and contributes over 10 percent of the world's DRAM wafer production. It added that the facility is responsible for producing 100,000 of its PC DRAM and 30,000 mobile DRAM. 

"The potential damages imparted on the supply end should not be underestimated," the research firm said. Should SK Hynix's main production line be stalled, the shipment of almost 11 million laptops and 10 million smartphone units will be affected within the span of a month, Trendforce said. "....
http://www.zdnet.com/sk-hynix-china-plant-fire-wont-affect-chip-production-7000020281/

Short term, Hynix production will depend on how quickly Hynix can get a new system installed and running.

Longer term impact depends on;

1. Market demand for year end for consumer NAND, SSD (tablet /iPad growth vs . PC stagnation, and mobile phones)

2. The real short term pace of demand for server farms, cloud SSD products.

Ron


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