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

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

#131

Post by Sevii »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #50
FredPret wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way, if water gets really scarce, the price will go up, and two things will happen: 1. many frivolous uses will go away - swimming pools, spray-and-pray agricultural irrigation 2. new sources will become viable - like desalination Ultimately we live on a planet replete with water, it's just uneconomical to purify most of it for use at current rates. The same is not true of microchips.

Given that there's numerous cities and countries that are suffering from water shortages, you'd think that the price of water would go up already. But it hasn't, because there's interests at play to keep the price of water relatively low. Anyway you'd need different prices for different types of consumers, because it's a basic need for humans; you can't make water unaffordable for poorer people. I'm all for increasin…

The price of water can't go up significantly because the marginal cost of water to farmers is lower than that to residential consumers. Its a lot easier to buy out a few farmers than to take the political hit on high residential water prices.

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

#132

Post by josaka »

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)

I think it's because it's dry. Facilities guy in the semi plant I used to work in told me that their highest energy usage was when it was humid, not when it's hot or cold. Said the energy cost to cool the humid air to pull out water and then heat it back up to the fab's target temp was pretty massive.

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

#133

Post by clarkmoody »

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.

Usually a heat wave isn't accompanied by thick cloud cover that shades your solar panels.

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

#134

Post by imajoredinecon »

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…

Is it potentially a little narrow to frame "one large corporation... profit[ing]" as the main result of consuming the water?

They're also:

- producing useful things

- employing people to do said production (and design the production process, and the thing that's getting produced)

- paying suppliers for the parts that go into the useful things getting produced

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

#135

Post by ethanbond »

thehappypm wrote: post #95
ethanbond wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… what? The US southwest is entering its first ever Tier 1 water shortage next year, meaning Arizona will have reduced supply equivalent to 1.2MM people’s annual consumption. No reason to believe we don’t go straight from here to Tier 2, onto Tier 3, and so on. Nature doesn’t provide enough water in a desert to be running sprawling metropolises and even more massive farms and graze land - especially water-intensive c…

Contrary to common belief, cities do not really need gigantic amounts of water. You take a shower, water goes down the drain, you can reclaim most of it if you want to. Don't allow irrigated lawns, reclaim gray water, urban water needs drop to a trickle. AZ is a leader in this space.

Oh good, cities can be more water-efficient than people commonly believe.

Guess it’s solved!

Pay no attention to the drying rivers, emptying reservoirs, and depleting aquifers. If cities are more efficient per capita than people commonly believe, we can probably just grow our cities arbitrarily and our cotton farms and golf courses even more so.

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

#136

Post by ryan93 »

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…

What sacrifice are people making when the water is recycled?

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

#137

Post by cannabis_sam »

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…

Well, it’s a market, so the corporations with cashflow stand at the front of the queue. There is no other way of organizing this in our late stage capitalist shitscape…

It’s unfortunate that poor people need to starve or freeze to death to keep billionaires “alive”, but that’s what our genocidal, fellow citizens have been voting for..

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

#138

Post by buryat »

tzs wrote: post #128
buryat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

4 million gallons X 3.785 kg/gallon X 1 metric ton / 1000 kg = 15140 metric tons, not 126000 metric tons. The calculation for Arizona is correct. That gives 0.066%, no 0.55%.

yeah, you’re right, I accidentally used “US short ton” smh that one of the online calculators gave me, very embarrassing

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

#139

Post by hosh »

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…

I used to get so mad about people growing lawns here in Phoenix until I discovered that Burmuda grass will tenaciously grow with little irrigation, and that some kind of vegetation is better for water retention in soil than bare dirt.

As I mentioned in my longer comment elsewhere, Arizona is seismically stable, and fabs don’t need specialized structures when using advanced process nodes.

The biggest misuse of water resources and poor land management comes from our conventional, commercial farming practice. Healthy, living soil can do a lot ecologically including water conservation, but we farm in a way to continually deplete soil.

Changing how residential homeowners do landscaping can help as well.

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

#140

Post by NortySpock »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #94
NortySpock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://youtu.be/Dq04GpzRZ0g?t=472 Asianometry did a breakdown on water usage of chip fabs in Taiwan and Arizona, including noting Arizona's state-wide water management plan, and pointing out that land-use wise, a chip plant makes more money per acre (gross revenue, and in property taxes) than other commercial or industrial or farming zones. A gallon of water makes more money in a chip plant than in an almond tree. (…

Wouldn't it make just as much money in a spot with no water usage concerns?

Sure, but where else in the country has no hurricanes, no tornados, and no earthquakes? A dry desert on top of a continental plate is a relatively disaster-free zone.

When insuring your multi-billion-dollar fab... apparently zero disasters is a plus.

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