The semiconductor industry is a bit different. No fab is ever build without massive government subsidies. Just google about globalfoundries in new york.

They are still there. As well as several Infineon Fabs in Germany (Dresden, Regensburg, Warstein) and Austria (Villach), a massive fab by Globalfoundries in Dresden and a large fab by Intel in Ireland.

I am pretty sure IBM did not leave due to any reason directly related to the location. Semiconductor fabs can have a relatively short lifetime, depending on the technology. The IBM fab had been in operation for decades, if I am not mistaken.

If you want a leading edge fab, it is quite possible that some technology changes (e.g. wafer size conversion) make it uneconomical to upgrade an existing fab. In that case you need to build a new shell. Locations for new fabs are often significantly influenced by incentive payments from the local government. For example the new globalfoundries fab in new york state got billions of incentive payments. IBM most likely decided to discontinue the site after moving the products to a more modern fab that was build somewhere where they got more money...

Oh man, I always hated April fools day on slashdot, because all frontpage articles would be "jokes". It became even worse when slashdot started lagging all the other aggregators in speed. So, today they found a way to even top that with this stupid rot13 shit.

Is today the day slashdot jumped the shark? Probably not, because i see that this article only got around 160 comments. That used to be different five or ten years ago.

Slashdot is dead. The founders knew when to leave, but it is a pity the current owners let it rot as the zombie it is.

>3 times replying to himself
>obvious nerd rage

geeks will be geeks...

Hey, I know Slashdot is somewhat retro, but this submission really seems like a thing of the past. You know, when we all were still 14 in 1998, when Slashdot was still the most awesome website on the interwebs? In 1998 I could still guzzle down a couple of cans of soda a day without worrying about my weight. But it is not 1998 any more and I am not 14 any more. I bet the average visitor of slashdot is in his thirties by now.

So, who in their right mind is interesting in learning about drinking sugar-water in the morning, even if it is infused by fruit juice? How is it news that some obesity-spreading conglomerate is launching another attack on the nations health?

Come on Slashdot. I have not complained for years, but WTF!

I once decapsulated one of the first versions of these gate array. To my surprise a large fraction of the die area was completely unused - it seemed that the chip was extremely I/O limited. No wonder it was possible to fit further devices into that gate array.

Unfortunately the article is dumbed down a lot, so it is not easy to understand what technology is actually supposed to be used. But this sound a lot like a Rapid Thermal Anneal (RTA/RTP), which has been used for decades in semiconductor manufacturing. It has also been used a lot in lab environment to manufacture solar cells. It is possible that the energy consumption can be reduced, but the tool throughput and maintenance costs are quite a bit higher than that of a conventional furnace. I suppose that is why it did not catch on so far.

Nobium is not a rare earth element. It is however a part of coltan, which is a sought after mineral that is mined in congo and a major cause of civil war in that region.

Australia is extremely dumb when it comes to renewable energies and especially photovoltaics. Yes, it is that harsh. AUS has some of the most prolific research institutes in that area (The UNSW and the ANU) and provides ideal conditions for electricity generation by solar energy. Yet, they completely and utterly failed to capitalize on this aspect. There are no photovolatic companies of relevance in Australia and there are hardly any photovoltaic power plants.

The UNSW is now degenerated to educating recruits for chinese solar cell companies. Well done, Oz government, I hope sheep breeding and mining will be relevant for another century.

Yes, I was aware of these approaches of opening a band gap. I also recall a recent paper about field induced band gap opening. 250meV is not a lot, but it is a beginning. A band gap as small as this will still lead to serious junction leakage. Nowaday the ability to turn transistors off has become crucial; a major advantage of intels recently announced 22nm tri gate technology is that transistors can be turned off much more efficiently.

I don't think graphene transistors would require a significant investment. Apart from the tools to deposit the graphene, all other tools can be reused, provided that silicon is still the base material. Investing has never been a big issue for the larger companies.

But which applications involving carbon nanotubes are available on commercial scale today? I am only aware of it being used as (expensive) filler material.

CNTs are one of the topics which belong into the "pure science" realm. The main issues here are that no reliable method exist to separate metallic from semiconducting CNTs on large scale and that there is no reliable way of mass manufacturing CN transistors structurally.

Regarding graphene, there are at least methods to produce it on a wafer scale basis. The problem is, however, that despite the promising electron mobility in graphene, the electrical properties of graphene transistors are extremely bad. The latter is owed to the absence of a band gap and issues with junction formation.

Your response seems to suggest that you are qualified to answer the question I implied: Which application is going to remain when the next big thing comes up?

A few years ago all the rage was about carbon nanotubes. An entire generation of phd students was raised on this material. Carbon nanotubes were the material of the future, enabling the space elevator, nanoscale transistors, near-superconductor conductivity and so on. What is left today?

Even before that there were C60 buckyballs, another previously unnoticed carbon allotrope. Buckyballs were set to revolutionize chemistry and were (are) part of n-type organic semicunductors. What is left today?

A fad is a fad, even in science. Of all the imagined applications a few will remain, and will be turned into real applications by technologists and engineers. The scientists will move on to the next fad - well at least those who are quick enough.

TI is currently ramping their 300mm analog fab. Some analysists dubbed it "death star fab" - guess why...