The two Fabs represent a large part of GDDR5 production for nVidia. DDR5 is needed to produce nVidia’s top end GPUs. Hynix also is a large manufacturer of memory for OEM builders and is often found in retail systems. If the two Fabs are truly offline for the near future then you can expect a corresponding price jump across the board for almost all PCs, Smartphones, Tablets… pretty much anything that uses DRAM. We have already heard rumors that memory manufactures are holding off on shipping any new product until an assessment of damage can be made.

As soon as we heard about the fire we reached out to several memory manufacturers to see what if any impact they expected. So far we have not received any replies, but Hynix has made a statement to the effect that they will continue production in the damaged plants. The statement said that although the fire did damage it did not affect fabrication equipment and they expect to return to production soon. The fact that the gear was in a clean room environment is probably what saved it from smoke and water damage. This means that production efforts will have to wait until after the building is inspected for safety and the clean rooms are purged of any particles that might have gotten in.

Rival companies Micron and SanDisk stocks were up after the announcement and you can expect to see others get more attention until Hynix can get things back on track. Consumers will be hit the hardest with memory prices spiking up and possibly not returning to normal for a number of years. We will follow up with any answers we receive from the memory manufacturers we reached out to.

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