Western Digital Loses Billions Of NAND Chips; Get Ready To Pay More For Storage Devices

While the Global Chip shortage due to the COVID-19 onset demand might be one reason for the increase in the price of computer parts, there is now another reason which will hike the price of the storage devices. Western Digital, a prominent name in the modern storage solution seems to have lost 6.5 billion gigabytes of NAND chips.

No, this is not a story that's similar to Xiaomi India, where a truckload of phones where stone from the middle of a highway. According to reports, contamination in the manufacturing process of NAND chips, which are the heart and soul of modern storage solutions has led to the production of a whopping 6.5 billion gigabytes of usable NAND chips.

These 6.5 billion NAND chips constitute 30 percent of the overall NAND flash market, which is now said to increase the price of storage devices like SSDs by at least 10 percent. Western Digital has partnered with Kioxia, which was earlier known as Toshiba manufactures these chips.

How Did This Happen?

Contamination in the materials used in the manufacturing process has led to producing faulty BiCS 3D NAND flash chips. This was first detected in two manufacturing facilities located in Japan in late January 2022. As of now, the companies have not revealed the exact reason that has caused the production of faulty chips.

It is also unclear if Western Digital or any of its partners have shipped products with faulty chips and if they have to be recalled. According to a statement by Western Digital, it is working closely with its partner Kioxia to take necessary measures and restore the facilities to their normal operating conditions.

Building A PC To Get A Lot More Expensive

It's already hard to acquire a CPU, GPU and this development will further increase the cost of building a PC. Not just that, even laptops, gaming consoles, and other electronic devices are likely to get expensive due to the increased price of NAND flash memory, which is a crucial part of almost every modern computing solution.

The only way to beat the upcoming price hike is to buy the storage device as soon as possible. Given the current trend, building a PC might never get cheaper, at least in the foreseeable future.

Via