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Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

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Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#231

Post by nearbuy »

Jensson wrote: post #185
xxpor wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the rough residential rate in AZ? Here in Seattle (obviously a MUCH different situation wrt water availability) I pay $6.96 per CCF (748.052 US gal, 3400 L). Even if every tree used an entire CCF over a season, that'd still be trivial compared to the amount of nuts you'd get (I assume)

California farmers use 40 trillion litres of water per year. At your rate that would be roughly 80 billion dollars a year or so. California's entire agriculture sector is worth around 50 billion a year dollars. So just the cost of water would be way more than all their earnings. And then you have to pay for equipment, pay for workers etc.

Almonds in California are reported to use about 2.6 billion liters of water and the industry is worth about $5 billion. So still not viable at $6.96/CCF, but maybe more viable than the average for Californian crops.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#232

Post by [deleted] »

bernawil wrote: post #200
brianbreslin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In chip making they remove all the impurities making it PURE h20, which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped.

> which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped how so? isn't rainwater also "pure H2O"?

[deleted]

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#233

Post by smolder »

bernawil wrote: post #200
brianbreslin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In chip making they remove all the impurities making it PURE h20, which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped.

> which is in fact too pure to be just dumped back in the ground, needs to be re-mineralized before it can be dumped how so? isn't rainwater also "pure H2O"?

Good question. I assume rainwater picks up minerals naturally as it filters through dirt and whatnot, but then why couldn't that be the case for fab wastewater? It also makes me think about the sheer amount of polluted filth that must wash out of a city after it gets rained on.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#234

Post by UncleOxidant »

hosh wrote: post #112
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I live in Phoenix and have heard some of the local discourse about this. Fabs need a lot of water, like a swimming pool. Once you fill it up, then you need comparatively less to stay operational. Intel has invested in both recycling water as well as partnering with organizations on water conservation and ecology projects. Arizona does draw water from the Colorado River, but among the four states, Arizona is at the bo…

> Both TSMC and Intel are attracted to Arizona because it is seismically stable

There are a lot of places in the US that are at least as seismically stable and also have more abundant water. I suspect the choice of Arizona has more to do with tax incentives and the fact that fabs already exist there (and thus there is an experienced workforce).

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#235

Post by hosh »

j_walter wrote: post #214
softfalcon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, fabs need more water than a swimming pool, maybe a big swimming pool. The fabs in Arizona are likely not going to be the main cause of water shortages there. How do I know this? Cause when Motorola had its massive (and inefficient) fabs running there in the 90’s-00’s and there were water shortages, they kept running just fine off their on premise reserves. Modern fabs are even more efficient with water…

The latest 300mm fabs use 10-50X the power of what the old 8" fabs used (I know this for a fact...). That power gets turned into heat and that heat has to be removed. I work at an "inefficient" 200mm factory that has pretty good internal recycling (~65%)...we still use 600K gallons per day. A single state of the art EUV tool uses ~2MW of power...<0.1% of that gets to the wafer. Most of the rest of that is lost to hea…

Seeing those numbers, I wonder how much that affects the local microclimate, as that adds a lot of moisture and heat into the air. And if there are ways to add plant life in the surrounding areas that could benefit from it, and from which people can obtain a yield.

I'm not so sure about the hotter months, but during the colder months, it can potentially be used for greenhouses, or for when temperature dips during nighttimes. Lots of tropical plants want hotter, moist air and will die from frost.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#236

Post by xxpor »

brewdad wrote: post #210
xxpor wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually spending that much on water though? Or water and sewer? Sewer is a lot (~$18 per CCF, iirc) more expensive. Farmers wouldn't have to pay that. Don't disagree about water in the SW being stupidly subsidized of course.

Yes sewer is a lot but I was paying for sewer in both places. Maybe Phoenix wasn't bothering to put any money away for future repairs.

Wouldn't surprise me. I also think Seattle's sewer fees are probably relatively high because of the upgrades they've had to do to the whole system to avoid dumping so much untreated waste straight into the sound.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#237

Post by bluGill »

caeril wrote: post #230
bluGill wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The midwest gets more than enough water via rain, so nobody worries about water. Farmers don't irrigate crops, they just accept lower profits in drought years. You might be thinking of the west where water is a problem.

I'm pressing 'X' to doubt, right now: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/nation... edit: Maybe I should have said Great Plains, which overlaps, but is not precisely the same as, the Midwest.

The great plains does have issues. The rest of the midwest doesn't.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#238

Post by rland »

softfalcon wrote: post #203
j_walter wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fabs need a lot of water, like a swimming pool. Once you fill it up, then you need comparatively less to stay operational. This is just not true. The amount of cooling required for fabs is extremely significant and without major evaporative cooling you can't get it. With evaporative cooling comes water loss...and not a small amount of it, especially in the desert. You can do a lot to recycle water that is used in th…

You’re right, fabs need more water than a swimming pool, maybe a big swimming pool. The fabs in Arizona are likely not going to be the main cause of water shortages there. How do I know this? Cause when Motorola had its massive (and inefficient) fabs running there in the 90’s-00’s and there were water shortages, they kept running just fine off their on premise reserves. Modern fabs are even more efficient with water…

Right, I think the gp comment is referring to fabs being impacted by water shortages, not fabs causing water shortages.

Although if push comes to shove I guess all of this can be solved trivially by not growing ridiculous water intensive crops and not having golf courses and stuff in the middle of the desert.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#239

Post by nealabq »

j_walter wrote: post #214
softfalcon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, fabs need more water than a swimming pool, maybe a big swimming pool. The fabs in Arizona are likely not going to be the main cause of water shortages there. How do I know this? Cause when Motorola had its massive (and inefficient) fabs running there in the 90’s-00’s and there were water shortages, they kept running just fine off their on premise reserves. Modern fabs are even more efficient with water…

The latest 300mm fabs use 10-50X the power of what the old 8" fabs used (I know this for a fact...). That power gets turned into heat and that heat has to be removed. I work at an "inefficient" 200mm factory that has pretty good internal recycling (~65%)...we still use 600K gallons per day. A single state of the art EUV tool uses ~2MW of power...<0.1% of that gets to the wafer. Most of the rest of that is lost to hea…

An acre-foot is about 325K gallons, and an irrigated farm uses 1 or 2 acre-feet per acre per year. So the "inefficient" fab you work at uses less than 2 acre-feet/day, or maybe 700 per year. About what a 500-acre farm uses.

Arizona has about 1.3 million acres under irrigation. So 2,500 similar fabs would use all the irrigation water.

It's a lot of water, but maybe not a deal breaker?

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#240

Post by lvl100 »

Nbox9 wrote: post #101
lvl100 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need a large constant source of water. It’s a bit like filling a very large swimming pool. They also already have plants down there and it works for them because AZ is surprisingly shielded from natural disasters. Also they can utilize solar power down there.

> AZ Natural Disasters AZ suffers from heat waves, which are steadily getting worse over time. Last year in a heat wave Phoenix saw several days above 115F. A 115F heatwave is a natural disaster mitigated by air conditioning. Hopefully a heat wave doesn’t coincide with a 2020 Texas sized electrical blackout. This isn’t a massive problem now, but imagine how bad AZ heat waves will be by the end of his factories life.

I don’t think heat is an issue. I remember a bunch of Middle Eastern countries considered building fabs in order to diversify away from oil about 20 years ago. Of course, they also realized they’d need to import labor as well due to low-skill and unwilling local labor.
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