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

reuters.com

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

#71

Post by PerkinWarwick »

mcphage wrote: post #24
wiz21c wrote: post #18

Next time the communication department says "less is more", I'll explode. Do we really need to produce more IC's ? Can't we just limit the demand a bit ? Can't we make washing machines, cars, bikes, fridges, dish washers, coffee machines,... without IC's ? My Core2 Duo is 12 years old and I still use it 8 hours a day, do I really need a new generation CPU ? I understand that global economy (and thus employment and ot…

> Do we really need to produce more IC's ? In this case, it's not so much about more ICs (although we do need more right now), but it's who's making the ICs . The US is trying to ramp up their internal production capability, rather than depending on Taiwan as heavily.

A lack of Taiwan dependency may well avoid a world war.

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

#72

Post by bottled_poe »

Buttons840 wrote: post #51
buryat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

So one business / structure will use 1/200th of all water? That does sound like a lot.

That’s one metric for impact. Perhaps you can think of some other metrics to compare it to before influencing the reader’s opinion?

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

#73

Post by 1123581321 »

ethanbond wrote: post #38
thehappypm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona is famously good at water management. They require a 100 year plan and are basically completely non-dependent on the ever-shrinking Colorado River. If any state would have a plan for recycling and make sure this plan is done appropriately it’s AZ.

… what? The US southwest is entering its first ever Tier 1 water shortage next year, meaning Arizona will have reduced supply equivalent to 1.2MM people’s annual consumption. No reason to believe we don’t go straight from here to Tier 2, onto Tier 3, and so on. Nature doesn’t provide enough water in a desert to be running sprawling metropolises and even more massive farms and graze land - especially water-intensive c…

I believe the user is saying that AZ planned ahead to end the necessity of using too much CAP water, which would mean that the Colorado River declaration won’t devastate their industry/ag. Reading some of the articles on its water authority website seems to bear this out, but certainly a lot depends on good management of their renewable sources and how strictly new construction like Intel’s is held to water reclamation standards (Intel is claiming to be a net positive contributor to the water supply.) https://new.azwater.gov/

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

#74

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ovi256 wrote: post #52
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…

> Seems to more closely follow tax breaks and tax income It follows feasibility, AFAIK. All new manufacturing is in Southern US states because they're the ones that allow new plants to be built. The others tie projects down in long, expensive, non-successful environmental studies. At this point, it's easier to bring water to the desert (Arizona) than get approval for a manufacturing facility in a non-desert.

Intel has built fabs in Arizona for a long time, this isn’t a new thing. They do this because of seismic stability and a lack of severe weather. Water isn’t a huge concern because they can internally recycle most of it.

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

#75

Post by baron_harkonnen »

Buttons840 wrote: post #51
buryat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

So one business / structure will use 1/200th of all water? That does sound like a lot.

Not to mention that industry itself only accounts for 6% of Arizona's water usage [0] so we're talking about one single structure increasing the industrial usage by ~10%.

[0]

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

#76

Post by seanmcdirmid »

uptown wrote: post #39
gitfan86 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also future weather patterns are hard to predict. What if 20 years from now a place who needs water today is getting a ton of rain?

Reverse the flow?

Assuming your pipeline or canal is gravity driven, that could be hard.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

kiklion wrote: post #55
buryat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

What is ‘using water’ in this context? Is it boiled off? Contaminated and needs to be cleaned?

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by lotsofpulp »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #50
FredPret wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way, if water gets really scarce, the price will go up, and two things will happen: 1. many frivolous uses will go away - swimming pools, spray-and-pray agricultural irrigation 2. new sources will become viable - like desalination Ultimately we live on a planet replete with water, it's just uneconomical to purify most of it for use at current rates. The same is not true of microchips.

Given that there's numerous cities and countries that are suffering from water shortages, you'd think that the price of water would go up already. But it hasn't, because there's interests at play to keep the price of water relatively low. Anyway you'd need different prices for different types of consumers, because it's a basic need for humans; you can't make water unaffordable for poorer people. I'm all for increasin…

> Given that there's numerous cities and countries that are suffering from water shortages, you'd think that the price of water would go up already. But it hasn't, because there's interests at play to keep the price of water relatively low.

That just means the shortage is not sufficiently severe to cause prices to move.

> Anyway you'd need different prices for different types of consumers, because it's a basic need for humans; you can't make water unaffordable for poorer people.

The simpler way is to give poorer people money.

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

#79

Post by pope_meat »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #65
new_guy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a good time to remind people that this entire planet is 70% water. Water shortage shouldn't be a thing, but greed and short sightedness is.

> Water shortage shouldn't be a thing, but greed and short sightedness is. Yup. We'll never ever run out of water. Whatever problems arise, there are solutions for them. People just don't want to pay. They want it cheap and convenient.

I don't want to be priced out of the water market the same way I got priced out of the housing market.

But then again, sacrifices must be made to the profit gods, it is the way.

Sigh.

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

#80

Post by seanmcdirmid »

coldacid wrote: post #67
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a good time to remind people that only 3% of that is fresh water. Fresh water shortage is definitely a thing.

Desalinization is a thing, and one that's often overlooked because the people holding the purse strings are generally cheap-asses.

Desalination requires high energy inputs. It also creates highly salted water as waste (some gets cleaned, other water gets i cleaned) that is difficult to deal with. Given cheap energy and somewhere to store the waste water, it could be viable.
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