Samsung's foundries in Austin, Texas, have been ordered to shut down by the local governing body. The state of Texas has been hit with a winter storm that has caused massive black-outs of power and the power providers are now ordering fabs to shut down their operations. Along with Samsung, the new order has been applied to NXP Semiconductors and Infineon Semiconductors, which also complied with the unexpected power cut. All chip production has been stopped and the Austin fabs are now in standby mode. What does that mean for everyone? With the already tight supply of semiconductors around the world, this could just further complicate things.

Samsung fabs in Austin are supposedly accounting for the production of DRAM, NAND, and some SoCs. If you remember, a 30-minute long power outage at Samsung fab in 2018 has destroyed 3% of the global NAND supply. From start to finish, silicon usually takes 3 months to get made. However, if the process is disrupted, there are major consequences. If the Austin plant is accountable for any major portion of DRAM and NAND production then the power outages are going to impact global supply again. Potential price hikes for DRAM and NAND are to be expected, and we are waiting to see if Samsung has anything to say about this.