1 Hour Power Outage at Micron Manufacturing Plant Could Mean Increased DRAM Prices Throughout 2021 | TechPowerUp
 
Semiconductor manufacturing is a risky business. Not only is it heavily capital-intensive, which means that even some state-backed would-be players can fail in pooling together the required resources for an industry break-in; but the entire nature of the manufacturing process is a delicate balance of materials, nearly-endless fabrication, cleanup, and QA testing. Wafer manufacturing can take months between the initial fabrication stages through to the final packaging process; and this means that power outages or material contamination can jeopardize an outrageous number of in-fabrication semiconductors.

Recent news as covered by DigiTimes place one of Micron's fabrication plants in Taiwan as being hit with a 1-hour long power outage, which can potentially affect 10% of the entire predictable DRAM supply for the coming months (a power outage affects every step of the manufacturing process). Considering the increased demand for DRAM components due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated demand for DRAM-inside products such as PCs, DIY DRAM, laptops, and tablets, industry players are now expecting a price hike for DRAM throughout 2021 until this sudden supply constraint is dealt with. As we know, DRAM manufacturers and resellers are a fickle bunch when it comes to increasing prices in even the slightest, dream-like hint of reduced supply. It remains to be seen how much of this 10% DRAM supply is actually salvageable, but projecting from past experience, a price hike seems to be all but guaranteed.
 
I find it rather odd that a 1 hour power outage can have a massive affect on DRAM pricing in 2021. 

Personally I'm waiting for DDR5 and next gen AMD CPUs/motherboards next year. 

Any excuse, right?

Lol, and Micron is the only one producing DDR6X for the RTX 3000's, so supply might be even more constrained!

Sometimes I think these companies do it strategically to price fix. Their prices get below a certain level they throw the power for a few seconds and conflate the issue of lost materials and production.

aka_STEVE_b
Yeah, totally a 1 hour outage affects worldwide ram pricing.... 
 
Similar stories the gas companies tell people too & the cable tv overlords.... uh huh

That one fab outputs 10% of the global supply.
 
I'm not sure what the "cycle time" is for DRAM... but CPUs & GPUs have a cycle time exceeding 90 days. That means from the moment the giant 300mm wafer enters the fab it takes over 3 months before NVIDIA or Intel or AMD get a bag full of chips out of it. That's not even counting the extra time it then takes to install those chips onto actual boards or diffuse them into packages.
 
Imagine just how much silicon that means is currently "in process" at the facility when it loses power... that's a lot of supply to toss out. There is a reason Micron's share price went up instead of down on the news 

kougarThere is a reason Micron's share price went up instead of down on the news 

That right there tells you everything you need to know about this situation.

Any company that can lose 30-90 days of production and see their stock price go up...well that's a company that needs more competition.

Much less any company that has such a monopoly they don't feel investing in uninterruptible power for these exact scenarios is worth while.

Imagine having a company, so secure in its sales that you can literally throw away months of material and work and have your overall value go up.

Bruno747
That right there tells you everything you need to know about this situation.

Any company that can lose 30-90 days of production and see their stock price go up...well that's a company that needs more competition.

Much less any company that has such a monopoly they don't feel investing in uninterruptible power for these exact scenarios is worth while.

Imagine having a company, so secure in its sales that you can literally throw away months of material and work and have your overall value go up.

Well yes and no.... DRAM & NAND are spot markets, it's not a direct sales thing. If anything it shows the inherent flaws in spot/commodity markets in general, because any major supply disruption  immediately makes the market prices go up outside of proportion to the event. The oil market works the same way. 

It could be really hard to make the whole plant have a power redundancy system. Those machines can eat up a lot of energy. The only thing I really think this will likely mean is we will probably not see any new NVIDIA announcements for a couple months unless NVIDIA has the order already in place for the memory.

Tell them to put in one hour OT like the rest of us...