Operations at two Japanese factories producing flash memory chips have been disrupted by the contamination of industrial materials, chipmaker Kioxia Corp said yesterday.
It comes as the tech industry grapples with a global semiconductor shortage that has hampered the manufacturing of numerous products from vehicles to gaming consoles.
Kioxia said that it suspected the “contamination of materials used in the manufacturing processes” at its production facilities leading to operations being partially suspended, without giving further details.
The company, a spin-off of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp, said it was working to restore full output at the factories in central and northern Japan as soon as possible.
Kioxia’s US-based partner, Western Digital Corp, also confirmed the disruption and estimated that it would cause “a reduction of flash availability of at least 6.5 exabytes” at the plants, which are run by the two companies as a joint venture.
A unit of digital data, there are 1 billion gigabytes in an exabyte.
The type of memory chips affected is called NAND flash chips. They are different from the semiconductors currently in short supply worldwide, which use older technology.
“If this creates a shortage, then prices will rise,” said Jim Handy, a semiconductor industry expert at Objective Analysis.
Two factories being affected “implies that a supplier shipped bad chemicals” to Kioxia, he said.
“Other NAND flash makers are likely to purchase materials from the same supplier, so this could be a big issue,” he added.
Kioxia, together with Western Digital, holds a 35 percent market share of the global flash memory industry, its Web site said.
Ace Research Institute analyst Hideki Yasuda told Bloomberg News that the disruption could increase flash memory prices, “further adding fuel to the recent component price hike trend stemming from supply shortages.”
Separately, Sumco Corp, a key supplier of silicon wafers for the semiconductor industry, said that it has sold out its production capacity through 2026, a sign that shortages in the industry might not abate for years.
The Japanese company has orders to cover all output of its 300mm wafers for the next five years, it said after reporting earnings on Wednesday.
It is not taking such long-term orders for 150mm and 200mm wafers, but demand is likely to keep surpassing supply for years to come, the company said.
The price of wafers rose by 10 percent last year over the previous year and Sumco expects to see increases continue until at least 2024.
The company said that it could not expand production this year, despite robust demand from customers desperate for long-term supplies.
The company has done what it can in terms of optimizing existing production lines, and its supply-demand imbalance is consistent across its full range of products, Sumco added.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
An earnings report from semiconductor giant and artificial intelligence (AI) bellwether Nvidia Corp takes center stage for Wall Street this week, as stocks hit a speed bump of worries over US federal deficits driving up Treasury yields. US equities pulled back last week after a torrid rally, as investors turned their attention to tax and spending legislation poised to swell the US government’s US$36 trillion in debt. Long-dated US Treasury yields rose amid the fiscal worries, with the 30-year yield topping 5 percent and hitting its highest level since late 2023. Stocks were dealt another blow on Friday when US President Donald
UNCERTAINTY: Investors remain worried that trade negotiations with Washington could go poorly, given Trump’s inconsistency on tariffs in his second term, experts said The consumer confidence index this month fell for a ninth consecutive month to its lowest level in 13 months, as global trade uncertainties and tariff risks cloud Taiwan’s economic outlook, a survey released yesterday by National Central University found. The biggest decline came from the timing for stock investments, which plunged 11.82 points to 26.82, underscoring bleak investor confidence, it said. “Although the TAIEX reclaimed the 21,000-point mark after the US and China agreed to bury the hatchet for 90 days, investors remain worried that the situation would turn sour later,” said Dachrahn Wu (吳大任), director of the university’s Research Center for
RSS