Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 326 posts

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#51

Post by Buttons840 »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

So one business / structure will use 1/200th of all water? That does sound like a lot.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#52

Post by ovi256 »

kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

> Seems to more closely follow tax breaks and tax income

It follows feasibility, AFAIK. All new manufacturing is in Southern US states because they're the ones that allow new plants to be built. The others tie projects down in long, expensive, non-successful environmental studies.

At this point, it's easier to bring water to the desert (Arizona) than get approval for a manufacturing facility in a non-desert.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#53

Post by thrashh »

new_guy wrote: post #41
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

Probably a good time to remind people that this entire planet is 70% water. Water shortage shouldn't be a thing, but greed and short sightedness is.

It’s not greed and shortsightedness.

It’s logistics. Logistics is expensive af

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#54

Post by IgorPartola »

ovi256 wrote: post #52
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

> Seems to more closely follow tax breaks and tax income It follows feasibility, AFAIK. All new manufacturing is in Southern US states because they're the ones that allow new plants to be built. The others tie projects down in long, expensive, non-successful environmental studies. At this point, it's easier to bring water to the desert (Arizona) than get approval for a manufacturing facility in a non-desert.

A thousand years from now your last sentence will be a proverb if unknown origin.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#55

Post by kiklion »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

What is ‘using water’ in this context? Is it boiled off? Contaminated and needs to be cleaned?

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#56

Post by dralley »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

One single factory using 0.55% of the entire state's water consumption is pretty massive.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#57

Post by jhgb »

wibagusto wrote: post #45
ZetaZero wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "average" chip fab uses about as much water as 3 "average" irrigated center pivot farms. If the fab land was previously irrigated farm land, this will be a net savings of water. Math: 130 acres at 0.25 inches of water = 10 million gallons of water. Done once per week for 3 farms = 4.3m gallons per day. Average chip fab uses 2-4 million gallons per day

2-4 million gallons per day is a lot of water to piss away for some chips that go out of fashion in 5 years.

Pretty much any facility capable of manufacturing semiconductor components has been very busy for the past few years -- Intel even had to resurrect 22nm chips at some time. Why do you assume that this will "go out of fashion in 5 years"? Historically this seems extremely unlikely. If anything, tens of millions of people going out of poverty every year are going to be consuming even more chips.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#58

Post by iamgopal »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

On the other hand, there are very standard technologies for water recycling. UHF, RO, ZLD, MEE etc. Water is quite easy to recycle given intention to do it.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#59

Post by [deleted] »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

[deleted]

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#60

Post by [deleted] »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN