 Samsung Electronics has had six fabs at its K2 cluster in Giheung, Korea shut down due to a power outage caused by a faulty switchboard, according to some news reports.
The company did not know when production would be resumed and what the total cost in damaged wafers and lost production would be, although the initial bill was put at US$54 million. Updated 4th August According to iSuppli, Samsung's NAND-flash production lines 6, 7, 8, 9, 14 and system LSI line S were impacted by the electrical blackout. The affected fabs account for 35 percent of global NAND wafer output, according to the research firm. Any impact on NAND supply is expected to be minimal as Samsung's major competitors including Hynix are already expanding bit production by a planned 100 percent this year. The Korean Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) recently reported that Samsung had converted six 200mm fabs from memory production to LCD driver chips, CMOS image sensors and other LSI devices over a year ago. In Korea, Samsung Electronics operates ten 200mm lines (lines 2-11) and five 300mm lines (lines 12-15 and one S line). Among the 200mm lines, 2-5 lines are for system LSI and 7-11 lines are for memories, DRAM & NAND Flash production.
Should the return to production be delayed then iSuppli believes customers such as Apple may be affected.
Updated: 5th August Samsung has said that all six production lines were back online around mid-day Saturday after the power outage Friday, much sooner than expected by many analysts.
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