Factory contamination affects “at least” 7 billion gigabytes of flash memory

stapp · Feb 10, 2022

Solid-state storage devices have so far been spared from the scarcity and high prices that the chip shortage has wrought upon graphics cards, cars, Raspberry Pi boards, and innumerable other products. But that may change soon, due in part to a "contamination" at two Japanese factories used by Western Digital and Kioxia to make flash memory.
According to a short Western Digital press release, the contamination issue has affected "at least" 6.5 exabytes of flash memory, which works out to a bit under 7 million terabytes or 7 billion gigabytes—that's a lot of NAND that will suddenly be unavailable for SSDs, phones, memory cards, and USB drives. An analyst speaking to Bloomberg suggested that the final total of the lost capacity could be as much as 16 exabytes.
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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...at-least-7-billion-gigabytes-of-flash-memory/

Bill_Bright · Feb 10, 2022

Seems odd the contamination happened at "two" factories. That suggests something other than a big rat fell into a vat of liquified silicone.

We clearly don't have the full picture.

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Factory contamination affects “at least” 7 billion gigabytes of flash memory

stapp Global Moderator

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Factory contamination affects “at least” 7 billion gigabytes of flash memory

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