A shocking piece of news coming from Hynix Labs, one of the world’s leading suppliers of DRAM to both AMD and NVidia.  One of their two fab facilities caught fire after a chemical explosion, halting 15% of the world’s DRAM production.

Initial reports are that no one was hurt in the incident, but prices are already beginning to climb as several manufacturers have shut down shipments around the world, probably waiting to see if a day or two delay on sale will net some profits.

Update 3:28pm Central: News from Reuters says the fire looked much worse than the reality.  Hynix claims that their clean-room and fab equipment is all undamaged, and they expect no material damage to shipments.

Currently, there is no material damage to the fab equipment in the clean room, thus we expect to resume operations in a short time period so that overall production and supply volume would not be materially affected,” company representative Seongae Park said in a statement.

“In addition, we expect that the majority of damage will be covered through insurance.”

The fire started at around 0750 GMT during chip equipment installation and was extinguished in less than two hours, the company said. The incident caused one minor injury, it said, adding that it is still assessing exact damages.

That didn’t stop their competitors enjoying a nice 6-9% bump in the markets based on the theory alone.

Hynix FABs on fire after chemical explosion | KitGuru.