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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

#451

Post by immibis »

Melatonic wrote: post #410
55873445216111 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All those datacenters are gonna want a lot of customized CPU SKU's though The used market for CPU's is already amazing every time AWS dumps a ton due to a hardware refresh cycle - in a few years it is gonna be amazing!

Where do you get in on that?

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

#452

Post by [deleted] »

nimbius wrote: post #447
ericmay wrote: post #403

Really disappointed in many of the negative and insecure comments coming from members of this community saying “Ohio sucks” or “Ohio State University sucks because it’s not Stanford” or “how many startups does Ohio have”. It really reflects poorly on those making these comments and I can’t help but think seeing a state not on the east or west coast being selected is causing fear and uncertainty in the lives of those…

"Don’t like Ohio? Good we don’t care. You don’t have to live here and we have never needed to care about your opinion" This tells me all i ever needed to know about Nohio. A worthy state for a tech hub doesn't say this. Instead try: Don’t like Ohio? What can we do to help? Are you a startup? Can you help us better understand the concern? You don’t have to live here but were sorry we couldnt have done better. We value…

[deleted]

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

#453

Post by kragen »

hardolaf wrote: post #330
kragen wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purdue has a great reputation but I don't know anything about it personally except via Eugene Spafford. I may be biased because I like Scheme — SICP was a life-changing epiphany for me, and Essentials of Programming Languages was also quite revelatory — and Indiana has done a lot of inspiring Scheme work. I don't know of anything of similar importance from OSU but maybe they're really great in CPU design or subthresh…

You're not going to learn electrical and computer engineering by reading stuff on Sci-Hub. You might get some knowledge, but so much is just simply never published that it's essentially tribal knowledge. Heck, even with professors walking you through every step of learning the topics, it's hard. As for computer architecture, OSU is not heavily into computer architecture. It's much more focused on custom accelerators…

I appreciate the correction about OSU's EE department. I'm probably unfairly prejudiced against them because mostly I read in CS.

I'd make a stronger statement than "You're not going to learn electrical and computer engineering by reading stuff on Sci-Hub." You aren't going to learn by reading. You have to actually do stuff in order to construct the knowledge inside your own mind, and as you say, that's hard. But the information is available, even if it isn't academically published; in electrical engineering, in addition to sci-hub stuff, you have Bob Pease columns, appnotes (especially the ones from Analog and Linear), The Art of Electronics, EEVblog, allaboutcircuits, Hackaday, Marco Reps, Camenzind's book, Jeri Ellsworth's Short Circuits, Don Lancaster's website, Forrest Mims's books, patents, Adafruit, etc. LTSpice is proprietary but gratis, while QUCS, ngSpice, and WR-SPICE are free software, and now you can get stuff mostly automatically fabbed by JLCPCB for ridiculously low prices. And with the rise of iceSTORM it's becoming practical to design gateware without signing a support contract with Xilinx. Just like the undergraduate EECE curriculum, a lot of this stuff is aimed at beginners (you can learn a lot by fiddling with Falstad's circuit.js even if it doesn't do Monte Carlo simulation), so it doesn't go very deep, but some of it is very much not.

(Still, there is a lot of information that isn't publicly available at all, because it's a trade secret of TSMC or Lam Research or Intel. But the professors aren't walking undergraduates through that stuff either.)

The huge thing about custom accelerators and ASICs and semiconductor research, though, is that you can't really do it in your basement. MPW/shuttle programs like MOSIS and CMP go a long way to making chip design accessible, but it's going to be tough to even run DRCs on your designs without proprietary software, and then it still costs you US$10k to get back 10 chips that don't work. Going to a university for EECE, even for undergrad, might give you the chance to go through that painful cycle enough times to actually get something working, and the mentorship you need to find out what you don't know.

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

#454

Post by 908B64B197 »

nimbius wrote: post #447
ericmay wrote: post #403

Really disappointed in many of the negative and insecure comments coming from members of this community saying “Ohio sucks” or “Ohio State University sucks because it’s not Stanford” or “how many startups does Ohio have”. It really reflects poorly on those making these comments and I can’t help but think seeing a state not on the east or west coast being selected is causing fear and uncertainty in the lives of those…

"Don’t like Ohio? Good we don’t care. You don’t have to live here and we have never needed to care about your opinion" This tells me all i ever needed to know about Nohio. A worthy state for a tech hub doesn't say this. Instead try: Don’t like Ohio? What can we do to help? Are you a startup? Can you help us better understand the concern? You don’t have to live here but were sorry we couldnt have done better. We value…

There's a reason the region has a net brain drain... and the Bay Area has a net gain!

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

#455

Post by nitwit005 »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #407
ericmay wrote: post #403

Really disappointed in many of the negative and insecure comments coming from members of this community saying “Ohio sucks” or “Ohio State University sucks because it’s not Stanford” or “how many startups does Ohio have”. It really reflects poorly on those making these comments and I can’t help but think seeing a state not on the east or west coast being selected is causing fear and uncertainty in the lives of those…

Honestly this is one of the things I couldn't stand about the bay area. Tons of people that think they're hot stuff and the rest of the country is a dump pile. It reflects in HN comments all the time. The reality is Ohio State is actually a good university and there's really solid talent out there too. You also have Chicago not all that far away that's a big talent hub.

As far as I can tell, every part of the country dumps on every other part of the country. Sometimes including other parts of their own state.

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

#456

Post by pedalpete »

ericmay wrote: post #403

Really disappointed in many of the negative and insecure comments coming from members of this community saying “Ohio sucks” or “Ohio State University sucks because it’s not Stanford” or “how many startups does Ohio have”. It really reflects poorly on those making these comments and I can’t help but think seeing a state not on the east or west coast being selected is causing fear and uncertainty in the lives of those…

Yours is actually the first comment I saw. My thinking was more along the lines of "what a great way to bring more future focused jobs to the mid-west".

We're seeing a very promising dispersion of future focused Jobs in the US (btw, I'm not American). While software has been predominantly west coast, and finance in the north east. Don't forget that TI is based in Texas. I believe much of Bio-tech is in San Diego and Boston, the list goes on and on. With giga & Tesla in Texas, will that bring more manufacturing and power technology to the area?

This is very positive in bringing employment and opportunities to these regions. I'm also hopeful that along with the tax credits that were likely given to the companies, there is a portion that is set-aside, or another allocation to improve access to the higher education needed to fill the jobs, and that the education will be provided to the local community, not just dragged in from other areas, displacing the local community and gentrifying it.

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

#457

Post by Melatonic »

immibis wrote: post #451
Melatonic wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those datacenters are gonna want a lot of customized CPU SKU's though The used market for CPU's is already amazing every time AWS dumps a ton due to a hardware refresh cycle - in a few years it is gonna be amazing!

Where do you get in on that?

ebay or wherever really

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

#458

Post by nurspouse »

selimthegrim wrote: post #395
nurspouse wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a preference for hiring people directly out of grad school and inducting them into the cult while they are still naive, so that's just what they come to expect for work-life balance. Heh. I once interviewed for an internal SW position that dealt with fab automation. I openly told them in the interview that I knew about their work culture and that was of great concern to me. Interviewer: I know what you mea…

When I was a green badge SWE at Intel all my (blue badge) coworkers were 15-20 years older than me. No one my age stuck around.

I assume that's because of pay. Working conditions for SW folks is fairly decent at most of the company, except possibly for firmware folks.

I suppose some people didn't like their status in a HW company.

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

#459

Post by ensan »

eeeeeeehio wrote: post #357
ensan wrote: post #58

When it comes to proximity research institutions, the choice of location is strange to me. Somewhere in the northern Indiana/Illinois/Michigan (i.e. "Greater Michiana") would have made a lot more sense. That way, you would be close to, UIUC, Northwestern, UChicago, UMichigan, Purdue, Notre Dame, UIndiana, Argonne National Lab, etc.

They needed to be close to a large city center. Chicago is too expensive -- so the option you are proposing is something like Indianapolis?

"They needed to be close to a large city center"

I wasn't familiar with with this requirement but how close is close? I don't think the new semiconductor plants in Texas & Arizona are that close to a city center.

And how expensive is too expensive? At least compared to cities of similar size & stature, Chicago itself is not that expensive and can get much cheaper as you move slightly away from it (in the right direction).

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

#460

Post by ksec »

ericmay wrote: post #432
defaultname wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scanned this submission several times today, never seeing a single negative comment about Ohio. I did chuckle at one pro-Ohio that basically said it's a great place because it has [list of things that every metropolitan everywhere has], but whatever. After seeing your comment I dug through the comments and found a single negative comment that is clearly written by someone from and in Ohio.

Here's a few just with a quick glance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30029310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30027858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30026358 Maybe you don't interpret these as negative. That's ok. Idk. Seem negative to me without really adding any value and that's not counting just general, unwarranted cynicism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30029732 https://news.ycombinator…

Out of 430 comments, there are bound to be some negative comments. Some of them may be valid ( Not a place they want to live is not against Ohio, but an opinion ) , some of them are not. But that is still less than 10 comments.

>unwarranted cynicism

The vast majority are questioning Ohio not because of negativity or cynicism but curiosity. Why Ohio, why not other state? Are there important strategic reasons? Some of them are calling out Tax Break, that is a fair point, but aren't there Tax Break elsewhere? I did a quick glance in the first 300 comments on this page, barely any negativity.

No offence but your comments seems to be the most negative in this thread. But then I am not American. So may be I am not as sensitive.

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