Computer

Japan earthquake: has it caused damage to the hardware industry?

Surely many of our readers remember the so-called “hard drive crisis”, caused largely by floods that took place in Thailand a few years ago. The same thing usually happens every time there is a fire, earthquake or blackout, which ends up having serious consequences in the hardware industry as it forces manufacturers to stop production, which almost always goes hand in hand with a rise in prices for lack of stock.

This is how the earthquake in Japan has affected the hardware industry

According to multiple Japanese media reports, yesterday a 7.3 magnitude earthquake shook Japan and caused power outages in many areas of the country. Market researchers TrendForce scrambled for news on immediate impacts to semiconductor production, including plants operated by KIOXIA, Micron and SONYas a result of the earthquake.

earthquake japan

After a thorough investigation, it fortunately appears that the aftermath of yesterday’s earthquake has not greatly affected hardware manufacturers, and those that were affected were able to fix the problems in a short time. The earthquake had its epicenter off the coast of Fukushima around midnight local time, and although unfortunately we must count at least 4 deaths and more than 100 injuries, it seems that production in terms of semiconductors has been able to continue its course normally.

KIOXIA suffers damage to its wafer production

We start with KIOXIA, formerly Toshiba Memory, which is one of the leading manufacturers of NAND memory. A few weeks ago we reported on the closure of one of its manufacturing lines due to contamination problems, something that had a very negative impact on production and that at the time it was stipulated that it would make its products more expensive by at least 10%. For this reason, KIOXIA’s K1 Fab plant which is located in Kitakami was not yet in full production when the earthquake occurred, which only affected the area with magnitude 5, so except for some tremors they did not experience any problems.

Kioxia K1 Fab

However, it seems that this fact will cause the manufacturer to take longer than they thought to get the factory back to full capacity, since the manufacturer has reported that the earthquake in Japan has caused some runs of wafers to remain « partially damaged. Of course, the damage seems to be minimal and the production line is still in operation.

SONY, Micron and the rest

Starting with Sony, the Japanese manufacturer has 3 factories in areas relatively close to the epicenter of the earthquake, but no problems have been reported in any of them. However, as a precaution until a damage assessment is done, SONY has stopped production of all three (they make storage media, semiconductors, and image sensors).

Other lesser known but equally important semiconductor manufacturers are Sumco and Shin Etsu, also with semiconductor factories in the area affected by the earthquake in Japan. TrendForce points out that wafer factories require extreme stability, so it is likely that their production has been affected, although they have not made any official announcement in this regard. The same thing happens with Micronwho have not said a single word about whether or not the earthquake has affected their manufacturing.

Shin-Etsu Factory

Other manufacturers such as Renesas have decided to temporarily close their factories in order to carry out a damage assessment, and this includes no less than 4 semiconductor wafer factories.

In short, it seems that although the damage has not been severe, it has affected the Japanese semiconductor manufacturers, which means that there is a possibility that their production will be affected and that, therefore, we consumers will have to pay for these problems in the form of price increase of the products.

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