For days the rumor mill has been boiling about massive amounts of faulty DRAM chips from SK Hynix, now the manufacturer has given an answer. According to this, some defective chips were found, but the alleged billion-dollar damage is defamation and business damage, which is why the manufacturer has reported to the police.
Since the beginning of the week, information has flared up again and again that SK Hynix could have delivered defective DRAM chips of up to 240,000 wafers. This incredibly high figure would not only mean weeks of serial production in multiple factories, but also exceed a value of 2 trillion Korean won, the equivalent of around 1.7 billion US dollars. For this reason alone, the rumor can be classified as difficult to believe without any facts being presented – these have so far been completely absent.
To their surprise, SK Hynix admitted small problems today: “We can confirm that errors have been found in some DRAM products”. According to the manufacturer, it affects a small number of customers, the error threshold is also rather low and was determined as part of normal quality control. The error rate in chip production is at a completely normal level, explains the manufacturer.
The image damage caused by the rumors is much greater for SK Hynix, according to the Korean media. Therefore, the company filed a complaint with the police in Icheon in order to track down the original sources on the Internet, which later spread like wildfire. According to media reports, the triggers lie in the KakaoTalk popular in South Korea, the blind app and other social media applications and should thus become a search for a needle in a haystack.
SK Hynix, along with Samsung and Micron, is one of the most important DRAM manufacturers in the world. According to IC Insights, the group has a production capacity of around 1.9 million wafers per month in several factories, over 80 percent of which are designed for DRAM and NAND production.