Samsung Power Outage Kills 3.5% Of Global Flash For March

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Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
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Chris Ramseyer was a senior contributing editor for Tom's Hardware. He tested and reviewed consumer storage.

25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • chicofehr
    No power generators?
    Reply
  • AlistairAB
    not for something of that size, you don't just use backup power
    Reply
  • Giroro
    I don't really trust Samsung. The company still needs to be investigated for current DRAM price fixing, also for flash price fixing during the 'shortage'.

    So maybe they had a commercial power outage for the first time ever, and they have no policies or backups to mitigate that damage. Or, maybe they pulled some of their flash out of inventory to artificially jack up the price, then they'll sell off that inventory in 2 weeks (next fiscal year) as "increased production". It sounds like an easy/illegal scheme to show investors year-over-year growth without actually improving anything.
    Reply
  • therealduckofdeath
    Giroro, a factory that size use the power generated from a rather large power plant itself. A UPS isn't even an imaginary option. Having a spare power plant running on full standby, just in case, is a nice fantasy option.
    The RAM prices we see now is because neural data centres and bitcoin miners buys it all. There is definitely an investigation needed on whether that part needs regulation before we get a new avoidable bubble. But, that's really not up to Samsung.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    @therealduckofdeath
    UPS, seriously? No a few diesel or natural gas generators would completely negate this issue. And if a 30 minute power outage ends up being a dollars per SECOND loss the a backup power plan pays for itself the first time it's used.
    Reply
  • thrakazog
    Well, Samsung had their annual accident. Now we'll wait for Micron and Hynix to have their factory accidents, and read about how prices will go up because of the nand shortage. Then at the end of this year, we can read about their record profits.......
    Reply
  • Kridian
    20793835 said:
    Well, Samsung had their annual accident.
    :D
    It's so painfully obvious they're on the "gouge train".

    Reply
  • Vosgy
    What they need is something like this:
    http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/thats-a-record-south-australias-tesla-battery-responds-to-coalfired-plant-failure/news-story/d9e02c0dbf6774ffea948a1b919f3b7f
    Reply
  • someone-crazy
    Just need enough ups to handle the plant till the "generators" to kick in and providing 50-100 Mw of electricity without even a slight fluctuation of power in any of the steps in the manufacturing.

    The cost of such a system would run in the 100s of millions, to prevent a loss of a few million. So you would need a power failure about 50 times to justify the cost of installing a backup power plant.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    20793810 said:
    @therealduckofdeath
    UPS, seriously? No a few diesel or natural gas generators would completely negate this issue.
    Generators take a few seconds to start up. Many power-intensive steps of the chip fabrication process such as vapor deposition and lithography can't wait that long. All wafers in those critical steps are write-offs at the slightest power interruption.
    Reply