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Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

reuters.com

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Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#11

Post by baybal2 »

bee_rider wrote: post #3

Good luck to them! Always nice to get as much semiconducter talent in-country as possible, fabs are a pretty crucial supply line after all. I'd imagine most people would want a pretty significant pay raise to move to somewhere like Ohio, but they are nearby Ohio State University, so maybe they'll get local talent.

Any salary in semi space in US is better than $34k-$40k per year for a physics/engineering PhD level worker of moderate experience in Taiwan.

The bigger question is why none of these $34k a year PhDs did move to USA before. I bet, even a floor sweeper at an Intel fab gets more.

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#12

Post by encryptluks2 »

vavooom wrote: post #6

"largest investment in Ohio's history" "the largest semiconductor manufacturing location on the planet" What is it that makes Ohio such a key and ideal place for such a massive investment? I assume there must be an abundance of energy + work force + land available that makes this possible, as well as a foundation built up by the Rust Belt. Could the Rust Belt go Silicon?

While I think that chipset factories require some valuable tech skills, much of the work is factory-based skilled labor work that is usually low to middle-class income. Ohio is probably ideal for this work because they have had a lot of factory closures where cost-of-living is a lot cheaper than West coast, and $35-40k per annum is considered good income to a lot of people there.

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#14

Post by jimbob45 »

mungoman2 wrote: post #8

How do the economics work here? Intel's market cap is $215B.

Gratuitous subsidies from the US government.

Also this is a great move in my eyes. Intel's HQ is on the West Coast and I imagine that they lose out on at least some portion of East Coast talent as a result. Hopefully this allows them to have the best of both worlds.

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#15

Post by ksec »

Intel said the same thing for Arizona as well. Initial $20B investment which could expand to $100B. So they are building it in two places. I wonder why they dont keep it all in Arizona? ( May be Tax Break, but I have no idea how Tax Break works in US )

And if you include their (expected) expansion in EUR, Intel is layering the foundation for Foundry Services. Compared to its half assed Custom Foundry in 2012/2013 with little to zero CapEx increase. Foundry Services 2.0 is very real.

Note: Investor Notes from ASML are also interesting, suggesting Intel may be ahead in terms of High-NA EUV orders. Initial shipment expected in 2023.

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#16

Post by dsr_ »

mungoman2 wrote: post #8

How do the economics work here? Intel's market cap is $215B.

If you spend $6 billion a year for 15 years, that's $90 billion which is almost the same as $100 billion. Even better is if you spend less than that but attribute other costs to it over the years, so that you get lots of tax breaks for bringing jobs to the area.

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#17

Post by alsaaro »

vavooom wrote: post #6

"largest investment in Ohio's history" "the largest semiconductor manufacturing location on the planet" What is it that makes Ohio such a key and ideal place for such a massive investment? I assume there must be an abundance of energy + work force + land available that makes this possible, as well as a foundation built up by the Rust Belt. Could the Rust Belt go Silicon?

It's land.

This plant is being built in a rural community right outside of Columbus.

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#18

Post by geenew »

Couldn't find much info on the process size in the Reuters article, but the Intel press release[0] says this:

" “The Ohio factories are designed for the ‘Angstrom era,’ with support for Intel’s most advanced process technologies, including Intel 18A."

This[1] doesn't give a transistor density for 18A, but the 20A transistor density is greater than the TMSC 3nm, fwiw.

[0] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-... [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16823/intel-accelerated-offen...

Re: Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant

#20

Post by asimpletune »

mungoman2 wrote: post #8

How do the economics work here? Intel's market cap is $215B.

The initial investment is only 20B, and spending that money won't hurt their market cap because it's shifting money into new assets, which would be considered part of their valuation.
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