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

reuters.com

341–350 of 647 posts

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

#341

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.

I agree about the game theory/race to the bottom as an incentive. I think there are more great reasons compounding these decisions that others point out too. Large corporations love to hold cities and states hostage and make them bid against each other. AMZN is a great example with their campus 2 bidding war. I am glad NY had the cajones to stand up to them. Most cities and states even have dedicated EcoDevo staff to…

Musk may be an outlier. He is part of a collective of libertarian techbros who have taken what they can out of California and are now looking for a new set of suckers. Texas has a history of playing second fiddle to California so they were an obvious choice.

Yes other tech companies are also moving to Austin and I think that is more a sign of some millennials and other young professionals opting to leave California for a lower cost reasonably sane area. Its still does not seem like massive California sized numbers though. We just have to wait and see. I'm still long California though.

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

#342
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, Ohio was supposedly high on the Soviet nuke target list, because of Wright Patterson AFB, which houses the Air Force Research Lab (and aliens). I have an old Soviet invasion map of central Ohio, marking all potential airfields etc.

Yep - one of my classrooms in Ohio was in the old fallout shelter. I saw the signs with radioactive label every morning going into the building. The location is now demolished.

Same. My high school was very near a GE plant in northern Cincinnati and I frequently heard how we were a target because of that. Seems plausible but based on other comments in this post, it may have just been cold war propaganda.

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

#343
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to say so, but...so? At Intel scale, they're able to buy carbon offsets or - gasp! - install their own solar/wind in their properties. The municipal and state governments are I'm sure bending over backwards to get the plants and infrastructure investment, a permit to run whatever solar/wind/renewable they want is probably chump change for them.

I'll eat a sock if they bother with solar in Ohio. I guess it's better than nothing but large parts of Ohio just don't get that much sun. Wind is much more likely.

Cincinnati (where I live) is about half a year away from completing the largest city financed solar array in the US [0,1]. Ohio gets plenty of sun, in fact it averages more sun than _anywhere_ in Germany which is known for it's solar [2,3].

In Ohio for residential, which is a good bit more expensive than commercial/utility scale solar, the payback period is about 12 years[4], well within the margin of getting your money back and then some.

0: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/mayor/news/cincinnati-to-const... 1: https://newmarketsolar.com/ 2: https://www.nrel.gov/gis/assets/images/solar-annual-ghi-2018... 3: https://solargis.com/file?url=download/Germany/Germany_PVOUT... 4: https://www.energysage.com/local-data/solar-panel-cost/oh/

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention low probability of natural disasters: Earthquakes, tornados, wild fire, hurricanes, etc.

Half of Ohio is flat, and gets lots of storms that blow through the plains and prairies from the west, so not exactly low probability of tornadoes. Source: I grew up in central Ohio. Public schools made it a point to practice tornado drills. In addition, there was an old Cold War-era air raid siren a block from the house I grew up in that had been repurposed and tested for tornado warnings. One of these: https://www.…

Even large, damaging tornadoes have quite localized impacts (max of maybe a mile in path width) -- and you don't generally do much more than stay up to building code in order to prepare for one. In contrast, earthquakes devastate entire areas and require substantial changes to building construction in order to protect against them.

The probability of a large, damaging tornado at a particular spot in Ohio is quite small compared with the risk of damaging earthquakes in other locations. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-will-o...

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

#345
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that CWRU is still in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ugh, how embarrassing. Of course it is. And it's still a great school. Unlike U of Indiana, I haven't been to CWRU. Thank you for the correction.

No need for embarrassment but I do wonder where you momentarily thought it was. :)

One night while struggling with a problem for work I took a walk and wandered by where I calculated the IBM 650 must have been located back in the day, hoping for some kind of inspiration, or something. It was a good distraction but it did not work at all.

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

#346
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…

Port of Cleveland is not a big container port like you'd imagine using for consumer goods. It's for supporting industry, mostly steel, through moving commodities. Think a big open barge full of coal, and holding facilities for limestone or iron ore. There's probably a limit to the size of the sort of ship can navigate to the port of Cleveland as well, you definitely can't fit a huge cargo ship in that port.

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

#347
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, Ohio was supposedly high on the Soviet nuke target list, because of Wright Patterson AFB, which houses the Air Force Research Lab (and aliens). I have an old Soviet invasion map of central Ohio, marking all potential airfields etc.

"old Soviet invasion map" Soviets had a concrete plan to invade Ohio? Wow. How were the troops supposed to cross the ocean?

>How were the troops supposed to cross the ocean?

The invaders would cross the ocean from an orbital path streaking in as multiple units launched from submersed platforms or silos in the Motherland raining down from heaven. Those invaders would not need to put a single boot on the ground.

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

#348
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

given that over the last 2 years we've all been trained to live like hermits I wonder who is going to be bothered about lack of city amenities? You can still jog around the block and walk your dog but large public gatherings (big city specialty) isn't much of a draw any more.

This may be true for you but come to any major city and there are large events every single night. It's back to pre-covid. Every bar in NYC is packed, concerts are back. I went to see 4 shows last weekend.

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

#349
post #187

This same street has a Facebook data center, an AWS data center, and a Google data center (within a couple of miles). There is a biotech research campus, Bath & Bodyworks main research lab, and the main operations center for AEP (a midwest electric company). If you travel about 2-3 miles orthogonal to that street we have a big data center for Nationwide Insurance, a campus for Discover (credit cards), and a State Far…

Silicon fabs do not make server boards. They just produce the silicon wafer i.e. "die" of a semiconductor device. Most die must be assembled into a package before they can be used. The die packaging aka "backend" is almost never done at the same place as the fab. Most backend is in Taiwan or Malaysia or China. Even after the die is packaged, it needs to be mounted on a complete PCB with all the other components. Inte…

i think it was a joke...

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd imagine most people would want a pretty significant pay raise to move to somewhere like Ohio Cost of living is low relative to the west coast and high relative to a lot of places in Asia, so it really depends on who you're talking about.

Rent in Columbus appears to be roughly comparable to Tokyo: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Those numbers are incredible. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that a lot of what we're talking about when we say "Columbus" is suburbs. And the plant Intel is building is even in a different county.
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