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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

#31

Post by HPsquared »

ksec wrote: post #26
geenew wrote: post #18

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/newsro…

18A is consider as 1.8nm in TSMC terms.

1 Å = 0.1 nm, which is roughly the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

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

#32

Post by jaystraw »

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?

New Albany seems situated nicely for domestic distribution, and also European distribution as it's about 150 miles from Cleaveland. Maybe there's another port it's closer to, I don't know much about Ohio. But if Intel can get chips to Europe more quickly than its Asian rivals, I can see that being a boon for them.

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

#35

Post by jdhn »

missedthecue wrote: post #28
flybrand wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not all AZ? Game theory between US states playing to get the most gov’t assistance? Finite pool of talent? Our plants are in rural areas and everyone is struggling to hire, from auto to bakeries.

Ohio is situated on the great lakes and therefore has a lot of cheaply available water, while Arizona does not. Chip production is water intensive. Not to mention the vast expanses of cheap land, and their electricity costs are pretty low as well. These could be reasons.

They're building the plant near Columbus, which isn't near the Great Lakes. If they wanted Great Lakes water they would've chosen Cleveland, which is very close to Lake Erie.

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

#36

Post by bufbupa »

devwastaken wrote: post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

Careful, I think your biases are showing. To assert that nobody wants to live in Ohio is an incredibly myopic worldview. I can think of loads of people that would love to work in tech without the big city living, or the high prices that come with it.

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

#37

Post by pkulak »

missedthecue wrote: post #28
flybrand wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not all AZ? Game theory between US states playing to get the most gov’t assistance? Finite pool of talent? Our plants are in rural areas and everyone is struggling to hire, from auto to bakeries.

Ohio is situated on the great lakes and therefore has a lot of cheaply available water, while Arizona does not. Chip production is water intensive. Not to mention the vast expanses of cheap land, and their electricity costs are pretty low as well. These could be reasons.

Yeah, but they are building in Columbus.

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

#38

Post by mNovak »

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.

Depending on where they're moving from, they might take a pay cut.. Ohio is very cheap to live in. New Albany is not particularly exciting, but nearby Columbus is a nice vibrant city, not the end of the earth. OSU is a definitely good asset for Intel, they put out 2k engineering degrees a year.

I hope this spurs a nice tech ecosystem for Ohio--it's been dominated by insurance and medicine for a long time.

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

#39

Post by bushbaba »

tyleo wrote: post #5
keeganjw wrote: post #2

Wow, it really takes an insane amount of money these days to make a leading edge fab. I really hope they can pull this off and it doesn't end up like Foxconn in Wisconsin...

I was thinking that. Im a former Ohioan and most of my family is still here. I have much more faith in Intel than in Foxconn. My understanding is that Foxconn had a shoddy track record of building out locations outside of their home country.

Foxconn is hard, repetitive manual labor.

chip fab isn’t nearly as bad of work. Americans don’t want crappy jobs which is why foxcon had issues.

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #22
baybal2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I bet, even a floor sweeper at an Intel fab gets more. A floor sweeper delivering max 1 particle per m^2.

[deleted]
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