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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

#111

Post by throwaway894345 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #100
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that industry itself only accounts for 6% of Arizona's water usage [0] so we're talking about one single structure increasing the industrial usage by ~10%. [0]

Industry is a surprisingly small portion of water consumption in many places. In many states, household water use (including lawns) can handily exceed the water used by industry. Using this water for domestic chip making is arguably a very reasonable use of water. If we’re going to start cutting water usage, let’s start with things like golf courses in the desert instead of critical chip-making infrastructure.

I feel a bit of tension. I'm not a big fan of people using water to grow grass in the desert, but I'm also not a big fan of making tens or hundreds of thousands of people sacrifice so that one large corporation can profit.

Yeah, I know that chip manufacturing helps everyone by improving our economic independence, and that's not a small thing, but we're already writing Intel a big check and they obviously benefit from the profits of the chips they will manufacture (assuming they manage it correctly and it doesn't just get left behind for cheaper foreign manufacturing the moment the market economics change).

Maybe chip manufacture really benefits from being somewhere arid, and that's probably just pretty incompatible with water conservation?

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

#112

Post by hosh »

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 live in Phoenix and have heard some of the local discourse about this.

Fabs need a lot of water, like a swimming pool. Once you fill it up, then you need comparatively less to stay operational.

Intel has invested in both recycling water as well as partnering with organizations on water conservation and ecology projects.

Arizona does draw water from the Colorado River, but among the four states, Arizona is at the bottom of the water rights. We get what is left over after Colorado, California, and Utah get their legal share.

The biggest user of water here in Arizona are the commercial farmers. (The Hopi people practice dryland agriculture and so don’t irrigate at all; most everyone else irrigates using inefficient and destructive land management practices). Aquifers here have been draining, and it has been a big issue. Farmers are already getting restricted on water use this year (despite an unusually wet monsoon season), and water restrictions has not hit residential users yet. It is on the radar for policymakers though.

Both TSMC and Intel are attracted to Arizona because it is seismically stable. They each had to invest an enormous amount in the more seismically active Taiwan and California, and it gets more sensitive the smaller the chips get.

If we want to conserve more water, the most effective way is to change commercial farming practices. Fabs have already invested a lot to reducing ongoing water use.

For an example of what I mean by better land management practices in regards to water: https://youtu.be/-8nqnOcoLqE

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

#113

Post by TimTheTinker »

brianbreslin wrote: post #92
kiklion wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Sounds like an excellent candidate for re-use.

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

#114

Post by KingMachiavelli »

Nbox9 wrote: post #101
lvl100 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but a chip fab is a giant flat building with lots of AC and plenty of solar panels.

At this point you really can't rule out 115F heatwave anywhere since the PNW just had one.

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

#115

Post by NikolaeVarius »

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.

You do understand that literal sewage is treated and returned to the water supply just fine

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

#116

Post by rrss »

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.…

Why does this metric matter, when 95% of the water Intel uses is already returned to the water supply?

From the same verge article as the 4 million gallons a day figure:

> 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

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

#117

Post by wongarsu »

_Understated_ wrote: post #32

What kind of ramp-up time are we looking at here? This can't be a quick process to get chips out the door I imagine!

They are supposed to start production in 2024 (which sounds very quick, considering they just started construction). No idea how quickly they can ramp up production from there, but delays wouldn't be anything unusual for a new semiconductor plant.

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

#118

Post by selectodude »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #111
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry is a surprisingly small portion of water consumption in many places. In many states, household water use (including lawns) can handily exceed the water used by industry. Using this water for domestic chip making is arguably a very reasonable use of water. If we’re going to start cutting water usage, let’s start with things like golf courses in the desert instead of critical chip-making infrastructure.

I feel a bit of tension. I'm not a big fan of people using water to grow grass in the desert, but I'm also not a big fan of making tens or hundreds of thousands of people sacrifice so that one large corporation can profit. Yeah, I know that chip manufacturing helps everyone by improving our economic independence, and that's not a small thing, but we're already writing Intel a big check and they obviously benefit from…

Chip manufacturing benefits from somewhere that has very predictable weather and low/no seismic activity.

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

#119

Post by jjoonathan »

rrss wrote: post #110
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?

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

Yeah.

It's unfortunate that alongside this incredibly important detail the article carries a bunch of highly judgemental wording that encourages people to incorrectly interpret "use" not as "cycle through" but as "remove from water supply and banish to a superfund site."

The rest of the comment section is guilty of this too.

I fully appreciate the need for independent verification, but assuming the worst is not that, and it actually leads to bad incentives in the same way as assuming the best (or refusing to think about it at all) leads to bad incentives.

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

#120

Post by icemelt8 »

hosh wrote: post #112
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 live in Phoenix and have heard some of the local discourse about this. Fabs need a lot of water, like a swimming pool. Once you fill it up, then you need comparatively less to stay operational. Intel has invested in both recycling water as well as partnering with organizations on water conservation and ecology projects. Arizona does draw water from the Colorado River, but among the four states, Arizona is at the bo…

Excellent informative reply.
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