6 ms·

Can somebody explain a NAND shortage to me? Because without understanding it, it sounds like "we are out of bits".

• lightbyte 10y ago
  It sounds like the demand sharply increased recently due to smartphones and other advancements while production stayed steady.
  • comboy 10y ago
    But back when we had shortage in HDD production a few years ago, it was because many companies used factory based near some catastrophe. Here it's "just" silicon, are there only so few fabs all over the world that are able to manufacture these?
    • ChrisArchitect 10y ago
      Right, it was the flooding in Thailand that knocked Western Digital offline etc....
    • commandar 10y ago
      Basically, yes. Fabs are hugely expensive and they can only pump out so many wafers. The article is saying that it looks like demand is outstripping the capacity of the fabs to increase supply.
      • comboy 10y ago
        Last one - so if a fab can produce wafers at say 14nm - is there something else that can be stopping it from producing 14nm NAND flash? I mean apart from the quality. I imagined fabs like 3d printers. I thought the toughest part is the design, and once you have it, there's now plenty of places where you can print it.
        • kuschku 10y ago
          > is there something else that can be stopping it from producing 14nm NAND flash? I mean apart from the quality. Well, you'd need the machines for that – there’s only a handful of companies able to build the EUV lithographic machines for that, most of them small German companies with a few dozen to hundred employees. And they can’t just increase production.
          • Filligree 10y ago
            Or rather, it takes years. Of course they can increase production eventually... But the silicon factories cost billions each, so no-one is going to scale up because of a temporary shortage. The same, even more so, for the factory-factories.
          • linker3000 10y ago
            The fabs don't want to increase production of current 'old' technologies and are transitioning to smaller die processes and ramping up 3D production so there's a perfect storm of increasing demand and fab refurbishments reducing availability.
          • mattthebaker 10y ago
            In logic, smaller is faster: less capacitance, shorter channels, and thinner oxides means faster switching. In memory, smaller means less space to store your bits. I remember a quote from somewhere that with TLC at 20nm, you could lose only 1 ELECTRON PER YEAR from the floating gate to meet the memory retention spec. Also, NAND had smaller feature sizes than logic for some time, before they really hit the wall. They innovated a lot of advanced techniques like quad patterning for memory cells. It helps in memory that you are optimizing for one and only one cell.
            • comboy 10y ago
              Thanks!
        • wmf 10y ago
          Flash fabs are different than logic fabs (that's about the extent of my understanding so I won't try to explain why). Also, logic fabs may not have much idle capacity either.
• noselasd 10y ago
  Factories are not able to produce enough physical goods to keep up with demand.
• bsder 10y ago
  Feast/famine cycle--it goes all the way back to DRAM in semiconductors (it's why Intel got out of DRAM). Demand for memory spikes (new application, got cheap enough, etc.) All the companies begin constructing new fab lines simultaneously (because, if you are more than a few months late when a new technology comes online, your competitors get all the nice, fat initial profit margins while you get the nasty bulk profit margins). Fab lines take a while to build, but demand is still increasing. Prices spike. Fab lines come online. Supply skyrockets. Prices crash. Now that capacity has increased dramatically and prices are low, people start finding new uses for the cheap memory. Demand slowly builds. Prices recover slowly. Suddenly, somebody finds a new application for memory. Demand spikes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
  • hiram112 10y ago
    Out of serious curiosity, what are these new apps that are using more and more RAM, at least for the last few cycles? It seems like 8 GB has been the default amount for most consumer PCs for years now. This is in contrast to 15-20 years ago where PC manufacturers would really double ram every 2 years.
    • bsder 10y ago
      Moore's law broke for DRAM a while ago. RAM now gets more expensive when you shrink. For the time being, Moore's Law still seems to be operating for flash. But I doubt it's got many more iterations left.
• sliken 10y ago
  Step #1, observe generation migration from disk to flash, especially in the under $100 where minimum disk prices give a huge advantage to flash Step #2 invest in production facilities that take 2 years to build Step #3 watch the price/bit curve carefully to optimize your return on investment Step #4 Have note7 ship by a million (with 32-128GB each) Step #5 recall them all and throw them away Step #6 recall the replacements Step #7 have apple (finally) double the size (16-32GB) of the minimum size iphone 7 Step #8 have 1TB SSDs finally hit price points that enthusiasts and professionals would consider So basically those investing 2 years ago... invested wisely. After all it's not like demand driving prices higher is bad for those who produce flash.