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posted by martyb on Thursday July 06 2017, @07:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the different-dynamics dept.

Micron has temporarily suspended operation of a DRAM production facility, leading to predictions of shortages and rising prices:

TrendForce reports that Micron suspended the operation of its Fab-2 DRAM production facility on June 1 due to a malfunctioning nitrogen gas dispensing system. Micron responded that while there was an event, it didn't involve nitrogen leaking. However, Micron's admission of a problem is telling, as TrendForce predicts the event will eliminate 5.5% of the global DRAM production capacity for July. Interestingly, the market analyst firm also claims this could lead to an impact on production for Apple's new iPhone.

The 5.5% output reduction may not sound like a significant event, but in the past, similar issues have served as the catalyst for massive shortages. This could exacerbate the ongoing DRAM shortage, which has already seen DRAM prices rise appreciably.

DRAM prices are on the rise due to slow transitions to new nodes and increased demand in PC, mobile, and server segments. TrendForce predicts that the first quarter of 2017 suffered a 30% increase in the average contract pricing for DIMM modules. Making matters worse, the soothsayer predicts that we will see another 10% increase this quarter, and that is before accounting for the recent production interruption.

Also at Reuters, which reports that Micron denies the event will affect its business:

"Regarding recent rumours about Micron's fabrication facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan, Micron hereby clarifies that there was no nitrogen leaking incident nor evacuating of personnel," Micron said in a statement. "There was indeed a minor facility event but operations are recovering speedily without material impact to the business."

[...] TrendForce analysts base their reports on channel checks in the supply chain, a media officer with TrendForce told Reuters.

It's the floods all over again!


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 06 2017, @01:45PM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 06 2017, @01:45PM (#535710) Journal

    "it didn't involve nitrogen leaking"

    Who knows what might have happened, if they were leaking NITROGEN into the air!! The last I heard, our atmosphere was already 78% nitrogen!

    Oh, wait. They took that nitrogen out of the atmosphere to start with, didn't they? Ehhh - nothing to see here after all.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by DECbot on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:45PM (2 children)

    by DECbot (832) on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:45PM (#535736) Journal

    It is actually astonishing how much Nitrogen these fabs produce for normal operations. I used to work as an onsite vendor rep (aka the warranty plan) at a Micron plant in the US. That site had 3 Nitrogen generation plants, two operating at 100% of capacity and a third plant somewhere around 20% of capacity. The equipment I worked on would dump 400 L/min to 1200 L/min of Nitrogen into the wafer loading area to keep the oxygen level less than 20 ppm. Any more than that and you'd risk adding an oxide layer forming on the surface of the wafer and inadvertently adding capacitors to the chip. That is just one piece of equipment, we had ~90 such furnaces in Diffusion and only supplied roughly half of the Diffusion furnaces for Micron. Diffusion was only about a sixth of the production floor. Pretty much every piece of equipment in the plant had Nitrogen ran to it as atmosphere was a yield killer at nearly every step of production. Additionally, Nitrogen is also used as a balance gas in production throughout the plant to ensure process chambers maintain the correct pressure for the chemical reaction occurring. If the output of the generation plant was large enough and in an enclosed space like a large building, it would be a serious suffocation hazard.

    More likely, shareholders should be very worried about the viability of Fab-2. Any sort of leak would introduce vast amounts of foreign particles into their Nitrogen delivery system and cause massive defects and significantly drop yields at every step of production. My guess the fab had to be shut down to give enough time to repair, clean, and purge the Nitrogen delivery system. This will cost Micron tens of millions of dollars per day. Not just in operation and repair costs, but also from incomplete product sitting around in their FOUPs expiring. Once production starts again, it will be 3 month ramp until it is back to full production, and even then there will be lots of additional preventative maintenance required due to foreign materials in the production equipment and the extended down time. Honestly, the equipment runs better when it is left in production and never let to rest for more then then minimum time to perform routine PMs.

    About the time I was leaving, Micron was starting a Nitrogen reduction program. They wanted to reduce the number of operating Nitrogen generation plants to 2 as it took about 1.2 Megawatts just to run a plant at minimum capacity. Bringing one plant offline would save them a bundle on there electric bill.

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 06 2017, @05:52PM (1 child)

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday July 06 2017, @05:52PM (#535798)

      The best way to deal with the N2 supply is to remove the pesky humans who need O2.
      Flood the floor with N2, make the whole place as airtight as possible, with positive pressure inside, and you need a whole lot less N2.

      Why does anyone need humans in a factory anyway? They're always messy and expensive, and half of the gases used during Si production can maim or kill them on the spot (not counting another third which can blow up the whole place. Servicing the Gas Room under a clean room was interesting in a "don't improvise, don't fuck up, especially if it the screw is backwards" way).

      • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday July 06 2017, @07:52PM

        by DECbot (832) on Thursday July 06 2017, @07:52PM (#535844) Journal

        It would not surprise me if fabs start going that way. There's a few caveats that will make a N2 fab difficult:

        1. Maintenance and troubleshooting is still performed by teams humans and they must have physical access to the equipment. Putting them in scuba equipment will not make the job easier and quicker.
        2. Robots screw up... a lot. I always found it amazing how much a 1.5mm misalignment of a fork on a wafer handling robot can manage to hit a wafer on edge, knock out the back rail of the quartz boat, and dump 150 wafers on the floor. The frequency of this happening might be monthly, but you'll still have to suit up the human to clean up the mess.
        3. Material science--in an ultra dry environment where there is no water vapor most greases will dry out in days causing issues it lubrication. These type of environments are very hard on materials and will add a lot of new complexity to the equipment. While in a different industry, I have seen electronic equipment short out simply because it was moved from normal atmosphere to an Argon chamber. In the dry environment, the insulation failed and an arc bridged a 1 cm gap between the molex connector and the chassis. When the equipment was brought back to atmosphere, it operated normally. It is a lot easier to ionize the air and cause arcing across components in an ultra dry environment than in normal atmosphere.
        4. The human sense of smell--yeah, I'm going to list it. There's actually two safety concerns here. First the human sense of smell is very sensitive to gasses like chlorine and sulfur. Smelling these is an early warning sign for chlorine and natural gas delivery systems where humans can detect leaks before the sensing equipment can. Putting the humans in scuba equipment will remove our ability to sense these things. Secondly, some of the dangerous gasses used will give obvious warning signals of a problem when they leak into atmosphere--like DCS (Dichlorosilane). DCS will become a bright orange flame giving you a visual/heat alert that something is leaking. When the leak occurs in a N2 environment, there is no obvious indicators that there is a problem. In diffusion, the only indicator of a leak you'll have is the thickness of the substrate is not adequate for the processing time and additional FM on the product. If the DCS did not end up on the wafers, where did it go? I don't know--could you go grab the atmosphere bottle, spray some into the nooks and crannies of the equipment and look for flames? Oh--and don't breath outside of your mask, it will react to the moisture in your breath. In the meantime, these dangerous gasses will collect and cause unintended problems.

        So those are my quick thoughts. I'm sure these are solvable. Lights out manufacturing of semiconductors does sound pretty cool in the Skynet/Matrix sense.

        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Taibhsear on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:46PM (1 child)

    by Taibhsear (1464) on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:46PM (#535738)

    I assume you're being facetious but for those that might not be aware, nitrogen leaks indoors are of serious concern. Nitrogen is odorless and displaces the oxygen in the room and because you're still getting rid of carbon dioxide in your lungs you don't notice you are suffocating and basically just get light headed and pass out. http://industrialplantsafety.com/dangers-of-nitrogen.html [industrialplantsafety.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @06:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @06:13PM (#535813)

      What a bunch of leftist climate change nonsense! Nitrogen is completely safe to breathe.