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

reuters.com

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

#101

Post by Nbox9 »

lvl100 wrote: post #16
bloopernova wrote: post #2

Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't you want to build a semiconductor fabrication factory somewhere cold? Or is it because Arizona is dry? (honest questions, I don't know what impacts the location of a fab)

You don’t need a large constant source of water. It’s a bit like filling a very large swimming pool. They also already have plants down there and it works for them because AZ is surprisingly shielded from natural disasters. Also they can utilize solar power down there.

> AZ Natural Disasters

AZ suffers from heat waves, which are steadily getting worse over time. Last year in a heat wave Phoenix saw several days above 115F. A 115F heatwave is a natural disaster mitigated by air conditioning. Hopefully a heat wave doesn’t coincide with a 2020 Texas sized electrical blackout.

This isn’t a massive problem now, but imagine how bad AZ heat waves will be by the end of his factories life.

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

#102

Post by jhpankow »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #99
brianbreslin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In chip making they remove all the impurities making it PURE h20, which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped.

If that's all that it needs, why would they not recycle it back into the water supply?

Clean, pure, delicious semiconductor wastewater.

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

#103

Post by dcchambers »

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…

Wishful thinking, but would be nice if Intel could take over that Foxconn plant in Wisconsin that has been a complete failure. There's 1180 cubic miles (1299318214239334 gallons) of fresh water right there in Lake Michigan.

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

#104

Post by NineStarPoint »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74
ovi256 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Intel has built fabs in Arizona for a long time, this isn’t a new thing. They do this because of seismic stability and a lack of severe weather. Water isn’t a huge concern because they can internally recycle most of it.

I’d argue there are plenty of other places in the US that fit that bill, but Intel having built fabs in Arizona for a long time is an important point on its own. Because of local history that’s where expertise for running a fab exists, so they’ll have a better supply of workers if they keep building fabs in Arizona than trying it out somewhere new.

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

#105

Post by mentos »

jhpankow wrote: post #102
LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's all that it needs, why would they not recycle it back into the water supply?

Clean, pure, delicious semiconductor wastewater.

"It's got what plants crave"

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

#106

Post by dntrkv »

IgorPartola wrote: post #54
ovi256 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Israel, UAE, and the Saudis have figured it out, you really think the US can't?

Arizona is close to the ocean and has plenty of sunlight. Solar power + desalination will make this a non-issue in the next 40 years.

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

#107

Post by sgc »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #99
brianbreslin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In chip making they remove all the impurities making it PURE h20, which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped.

If that's all that it needs, why would they not recycle it back into the water supply?

Probably better to just re-filter it back to pure H2O and reuse on site.

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

#108

Post by NineStarPoint »

coldacid wrote: post #67
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a good time to remind people that only 3% of that is fresh water. Fresh water shortage is definitely a thing.

Desalinization is a thing, and one that's often overlooked because the people holding the purse strings are generally cheap-asses.

Desalinization is an extremely energy intensive process for the amount of water we use. Eventually we probably will produce so much energy that that’s less of a concern, but at the moment we’re having plenty of issues getting our fossil fuel usages lowered without adding Desalinization to our civilization’s requirements.

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

#109

Post by Nbox9 »

wiz21c wrote: post #18

Next time the communication department says "less is more", I'll explode. Do we really need to produce more IC's ? Can't we just limit the demand a bit ? Can't we make washing machines, cars, bikes, fridges, dish washers, coffee machines,... without IC's ? My Core2 Duo is 12 years old and I still use it 8 hours a day, do I really need a new generation CPU ? I understand that global economy (and thus employment and ot…

How is raising the information processing capabilities of humanity anything but a net good thing?

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

#110

Post by rrss »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #99
brianbreslin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In chip making they remove all the impurities making it PURE h20, which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped.

If that's all that it needs, why would they not recycle it back into the water supply?

From the same verge article:

> Last year, the company pledged that by 2030 it will restore and return more freshwater than it uses. It’s nearing that benchmark in Arizona, where Intel says it cleaned up and returned 95 percent of the freshwater it used in 2020

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