Japanese suppliers of materials for chip production have increased prices for their products

The increase in prices for semiconductor products is caused not only by the increase in prices for services of contract manufacturers of chips.
The entire chain of components needed to make microprocessor products will become more expensive in today's environment.
Japanese vendors are not immune to the trend and intend to raise prices for raw materials by up to 30% in the foreseeable future.Source image: TSМККand Nikkei Asian Review reports that the silicon wafer supplier Sumco plans to raise prices for their products in the period from 2022 to 2024 just by those same 30%.
Prices for silicon wafers in the instant market have been rising for a long time, but Sumco intends to adjust the terms of long-term contracts, because it gets most of its revenue from them.
The $2.6 billion profit from the price hike will be used to build new plants in Japan and Taiwan to boost the company's output.
Showa Denko was forced to raise prices for technical gases used in chipmaking by 20% in January.
The reasons for such a decision were rising prices for raw materials and increased transportation costs.
Recall that the start of a special military operation in Ukraine significantly reduced the supply on the world market of inert gases used in the semiconductor industry.
Even containers for transporting silicon wafers increased in price by 20%, helped by corresponding moves by Shin-Etsu Chemical, the company that makes them.

Japan's Showa Denko begins shipments of record density magnetic wafers to produce 26TB HDDs

Japan's Showa Denko, the largest independent manufacturer of magnetic wafers for hard drives, has begun shipping 3.5-inch hard drives with record capacity.
The new aluminum platters deliver an industry record areal density of more than 1TB/inch2, allowing for capacities as high as 2.6TB.
Western Digital now builds 26TB hard drives from these platters.image source: storageagereview.comTo manufacture the company's 3.5-inch 2.6TB magnetic platters, Showa Denko developed protective and magnetic coating technology using the smallest magnetic crystals.
At the same time, to achieve record-breaking recording densities, the magnetic wafers are supported by two technologies: energy assisted perpendicular recording (ePMR) and tiled overlapping track recording (SMR).
Without SMR technology, the plate capacity reaches 2.2 TB.
SMR technology reduces the speed of access to the media, but the gain in capacity compensates for this drawback.Apparently, on the basis of 2.6Tbytes of platters Showa Denko created hard drives Ultrastar DC HC670 UltraSMR by Western Digital.
Western Digital began distributing such drives a couple of weeks ago to select customers.
The beginning of mass shipments of Showa Denko platters from Western Digital and likely Seagate gives hope for relatively soon mass production of 3.5-inch 26TB hard drives.Showa Denko has also developed 3.5-inch platters with higher capacity - 3TB.
This is achieved by supporting MAS-MAMR technology.
This is also a recording technology with \"energy\" support, but only more complex - with the integration of miniature microwave emitters into the magnetic heads.
Apparently, this is the next step in increasing the capacity of 3.5-inch hard drives, which can be expected closer to the end of 2023 or later.