Samsung DRAM and NAND plant shut down for up to three days due to power outage as short as one minute

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Jan 2, 2020.

  1. DmitryKo

    DmitryKo Master Guru

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    Power outages are a routine event in semiconductor industry, they were very lucky to stall the production for only three days, not months.

    The power outage problem has no easy solution. Diesel backup generators have a start-up time, so they're not uninterruptable, and battery-backed uninterruptable power supplies with megawatt ratings simply do not exist. There are a few industrial-grade power storage banks in the entire world but they are installed by electrical grid companies, and these banks would be too expensive to build and maintain by individual industries.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2020
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  2. Mundosold

    Mundosold Master Guru

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    Conspiracy isn't a theory, it's a crime. And a crime Samsung and others have been caught guilty of many many many times.
     
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  3. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    Every major company I've ever seen in person has massive backup generators and backups for those. But multi billion dollar companies that control the entire world's supply of something somehow can't afford that? And I'm talking about in reliable areas in North America, where the power might not even go down once a year.

    Are we going to ignore that they've been caught price fixing and are about as believable as a unicorn? If it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, no matter how much of a "conspiracy" that might be to the stubborn, it's a duck.
     
  4. Denial

    Denial Ancient Guru

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    Fukushima

    Lol

    Idk - there are failures with this stuff. I worked for a $6B chemical company in New Jersey - they had several backup power systems and yet when Sandy hit the entire thing went to crap. Lost $150m in production and additional $100M in delay charges.
     
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  5. Silva

    Silva Ancient Guru

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    For one minute without power, 3 days without production. Load of BS if you ask me.
     
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  6. The Goose

    The Goose Ancient Guru

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    Glad i bought my MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB Ventus Turing XS OC before the price hike, also im good for nvme drives, maybe i cant get £1200 for my Evga 2070xc ultra lol, on a serious not....with that much money involved you`d think they`d spend a few quid on a descent redunduncy system.
     
  7. Error8

    Error8 Member Guru

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    Yeah well, I just ordered 1 TB Samsung SSD today, so I'm skipping the price hike this time around.
     
  8. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    This is sure a bipolar thread. Calm factual comments from those who have worked in the industry and unfounded conspiracy trolling from those who have not. I been through power outages. San Jose's power grid is still more unreliable than SK's...ha ha. Online backup systems of the type required also use significant amounts of energy and generate significant amount of their own waste heat that has to be removed.
     
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  9. Fox2232

    Fox2232 Guest

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    I'll summarize it for you: They have same outages and Huge damages quite often. Clients are to suck that cost. While their investment into proper UPS systems would be cheaper.

    If article is right, then backup kicked-in in about one minute. That means, there is no immediate power delivery option installed.
    Expected damage is in 5~10 times smaller than last year. That was $43 million. Therefore I expect smaller effect on prices. But I am pretty sure that taking few million USD and throwing it on proper power backup would be cheaper and pay off in a year of two.
     
  10. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    Generators also produce significant amounts of electrical noise too, which compromises the ability for the equipment to do their jobs, hence why they halt production in the first place, fine to keep the computers online and the lights on tho.


    People here aren't understanding that once the equipment is halted, chemicals and materials must be flushed, machines checked for contaminant/stuck material and only then can they be resumed - and thats not even including specific procedures determined by company policy on the bureaucracy side of things.
     
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  11. TieSKey

    TieSKey Master Guru

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    Regardless of how easy or hard is to mitigate a power shortage, while increasing prices remains an option, risk management will be like this:

    How probable event A is?
    2% chance per month

    How much can we lose if A happens?
    Around "LOSS" millions

    How much does it cost to completely mitigate against A?
    About "INVESTMENT" millions

    How much can we increase product prices using A as reason?
    10~15% for a monthly revenue increase of "EXTRA_INCOME" millions

    Is LOSS bigger than (INVESTMENT + EXTRA_INCOME)?
    No -> do nothing
    Yes -> mitigate A

    (Apply adjustments to account for probability of event)

    Sounds extremely reasonable for me. And if you notice, the risk of A is now OUR risk (the consumer risk) rather than risk for the company.
     
  12. [​IMG]

    IT WAS ME!!!!!!!
     
  13. rflair

    rflair Don Coleus Staff Member

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    I've worked in construction a long time now, some major projects, hospitals, huge high rises (50+ floors). manufacturing plants and they all have very robust fail safes.

    It is possible that what happened here wasn't planned for but I find it hard to believe.

    Strange how these industries that have had their margins dwindle suffer a catastrophic failure. Reminds me of when farmers have an exceptional year with crops and burn a good part cause they don't want the market flooded driving the price of their goods down.
     
  14. n9nu

    n9nu Member

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    As an RF Engineer, I can tell you that most of what I hear is just non-sense. This facility is only one of a handful (if that) of FABBING facilities that produce what they do. I don't think many understand the complex routines that need to be taken to re-start an entire fabrication facility like this.

    You DON'T just turn things back on and expect it to continue as if it 'remembers' exactly what system was doing what and at what time. It's a significantly more difficult process re-starting a fabbing facility. You have to verify nothing is damaged and that takes system checks and other verification procedures and that itself takes time then you have to re-program certain things for the automation and so on. It's not an old time assembly line type where you can just do that.

    The clean rooms are very susceptible to dust when power is down or not regulated. This environment must be re-filtered x many times over so that it's at the companies guidelines .... say 1-PPM.

    Generators are good for many things, however, cannot maintain an entire plant and every system to the point that the electricity is routed everywhere in the time it needs to in order to avoid a 'noticeable' interruption within the circuit, thus a slight delay that can mess things up. Generators [by themselves] do not contain the much needed power regulation/filtration that is required to make sure the signal is perfectly pure so to speak.

    It's just like re-starting a nuclear power plant. You don't just flip the switch.

    Want a complete breakdown of what goes on and how much time is needed? I can upload a step by step procedure of what is done and how things are re-commissioned (re-started)ff. It's involves a lot of checking, re-checking, verification/testing, etc. of every component/system involved.

    I used to work at the old Bell Labs Fabbing facility outside Chicago in Montgomery/Aurora back in the early 90' as well as the Motorola plant in Schaumburg, IL outside Chicago years back and you would be surprised the precautions that are taken prior to re-starting something like this.

    Here is some info: http://popflock.com/learn?s=Semiconductor_device_fabrication

    Tim Dickerson
    ARS N9NU
     
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  15. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    I, and I'm sure several others, would absolutely love to read the breakdown of all the steps if you can provide them. Would be very much appreciated.
     

  16. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    A construction project has literally nothing to do with an ongoing manufacturing process. Strange how all you did was try to shoe horn a completely unrelated industry into promoting another conspiracy theory. Can you remind me of a time in the last century farmers in the US burned their profits? I'll wait. Sheesh....I mean...your post is composed entirely of myths.
     
  17. n9nu

    n9nu Member

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    Hi

    Yeah I can give you an insiders view of what goes on. It's extremely interesting and simple, yet very complex at the same time. LOL

    Tim
    ARS N9NU
     
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  18. rflair

    rflair Don Coleus Staff Member

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    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_destruction

    It happens all the time.

    And the construction project has everything to do with the manufacturing plant, all resources and fail safes are put in place; literally everything including the production machinery itself. It isn't hey we have an empty building lets retro fit it, these are very special builds.
     

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