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

reuters.com

71–80 of 647 posts

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

#71
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All this sounds irrelevant when an ASML machine costs $100 million a pop.

> ASML machine costs

It seems that cost maybe around $300 million each: https://whbl.com/2022/01/19/intel-orders-asml-machine-still-...

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

#73
post #67

Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site" in the city of Columbus Ohio? Why not choose Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with an existing route to Europe? Fabs are international affairs, no matter where they're rooted, because just to keep the place running one needs a constant stream of parts from everywhere. It seems like being in a sea/rail/truck hub would be a logistics advantage. [1] ht…

> Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site" in the city of Columbus Ohio?

My guess would be access to talent and costs. Columbus is more than 2x bigger than Cleveland. Building cars is also an international affair and we see those plants all over the place.

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

#75
post #67

Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site" in the city of Columbus Ohio? Why not choose Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with an existing route to Europe? Fabs are international affairs, no matter where they're rooted, because just to keep the place running one needs a constant stream of parts from everywhere. It seems like being in a sea/rail/truck hub would be a logistics advantage. [1] ht…

Probably trucking it for 1 day isn't a big deal

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

#76
post #70

its a shame we didn't see this type of investment after the rust belt area crashed in 2008. if we had more domestic chip plants, we probably wouldn't be in the current chip shortage rn chip fab/manufacturing process probably doesn't generate as many jobs as the auto industry (the process is automated heavily from what I have seen) at its peak but at least they will be very high paying.

>if we had more domestic chip plants, we probably wouldn't be in the current chip shortage rn

Why? At the end of the day it's a capacity shortage. The only way to prevent that is to have surplus capacity prior to the pandemic. Considering how companies don't like to spend money on expensive fabs that end up getting underutilized, I'm skeptical that having more domestic chip plants would lead to that.

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

#77
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This mandatory comment is your threadly reminder that node names are entirely unrelated to any physical dimensions, as has been the case for many years now. You should not interpret node names as meaning anything more than a point on the semiconductor roadmap. Nodes that share the same names across foundries will not have the same performance characteristics, but are usually roughly comparable (especially since Intel…

> node names are entirely unrelated to any physical dimensions

I agree they're not necessarily related to any particular transistor dimension but are you sure it's entirely unrelated to any physical dimensions? If so, here is a question I have. 28nm, 22nm, 20nm, 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm. What progression is that? Why skip 6nm and 4nm?

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

#78
post #15

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 wit…

> 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.

National security considerations encourage geographic dispersal of strategic assets.

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

#79

"Up to $100B". Okay. I planned on spending up to $100B for my wife's Christmas present. I actually ended up spending $75 + tax.

This isn’t very charitable. When companies publish this sort of thing they’re generally committed (however tentatively) to within some reasonable percentage of the amount. Provided of course it makes financial sense after further diligence and the like.

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

#80
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This mandatory comment is your threadly reminder that node names are entirely unrelated to any physical dimensions, as has been the case for many years now. You should not interpret node names as meaning anything more than a point on the semiconductor roadmap. Nodes that share the same names across foundries will not have the same performance characteristics, but are usually roughly comparable (especially since Intel…

Well, there's always a distance between SOMETHING that each company can point to, it's just those things are constantly changing.
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