Intel Reveals Plans for Massive New Ohio Factory, Fighting the Chip Shortage Stateside (time.com) 49
As part of an effort to regain its position as a leading maker of semiconductors amidst a global chip shortage, Intel is committing $20 billion to build a manufacturing mega-site in New Albany, on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, the company told TIME. From the report: The chip maker says it will build at least two semiconductor fabrication plants, or fabs, on the 1,000-acre site, where Intel will research, develop, and manufacture its most cutting-edge computer chips, employing at least 3,000 people. Construction will begin this year and the plant should be operational by 2025, the company said. Intel's announcement is the largest private-sector investment in Ohio history and a bright spot in what has been a dismal few decades for manufacturing in Ohio and the Midwest. Big employers like General Motors laid off thousands as factory jobs relocated to the U.S. South and overseas. But as automation drives efficiency in factories, creating technical, rather than assembly-line jobs, Ohio is trying to mount a manufacturing comeback. "Our expectation is that this becomes the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told TIME; the company has the option to eventually expand to 2,000 acres and up to eight fabs. "We helped to establish the Silicon Valley," he said. "Now we're going to do the Silicon Heartland."
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Every nation which can afford to do so should build its own fabs. More diversity and more competition can only be good for everyone except the vulture capitalists, who can attempt aviary copulation with a ventrally rotating toroidal pastry anyway
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price tag.
20 billion dollars.
maybe success would be better if a smaller factories are considered.
and more than one factory was built
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Intel is building several fabs in several states.
They are each multi-billion dollar investments.
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Obviously equipment can be split across multiple sites, but the environmentals are the key. A single air filter capable of supporting modern semi fabs makes up a big part of the fab cost and water treatment and toxic waste management is another major chunk.
It would not be financially feasible to build several of these.
Before you suggest that they should reuse old fabs... they can't each new die process requires new water and air treatment. So they're
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o yea, taiwan, right
thats just never happening ehj ?
although maybe Poland
hmmm
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Absolutely, more supply and more competition is great for consumers.
At a macro level, we don't want to overbuild fabs and not use that money to build, say, dishwasher factories or Amazon data centers. Problem is, you can't predict what the optimal balance is. It's a discovery process.
It's still jaw dropping what Intel plans to spend. That's a lotta cash.
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$20B isn't that much, about one quarter's worth of Intel's revenue.
You must work in Washington if you think $20 billion isn't a lot. Can you give me just a million?
I don't think percent of revenue is the right number. Percent of profit is. Intel's net profit has been about $10-$20 billion per year for the last few years (which is 15-20%, a pretty robust profit margin). So yes, they can pay cash for this if they don't mind not paying a dividend for a year or two. A lot of investors won't like that. Some will though. It'd be an interesting shareholder's meeting.
The useful li
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Agreed on the first sentence. We've seen in the past couple years how easily international trade can break down.
Regarding the second, I'm afraid that might require acrobatic skills beyond what most "vulture capitalists" are known to possess.
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Every nation which can afford to do so should build its own fabs.
One quibble: the USA isn't doing this, Intel is. As far as customers are concerned, that the fabs exist at all is way more important than where they're located. Obvs, that assumes no trade barriers and shipping is reliable, neither of which is guaranteed.
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One quibble: the USA isn't doing this, Intel is.
Hardly. Intel has already gone hat in hand [slashdot.org] to the federal government, begging for money. If this plays out as it has in the past (and it almost certainly will), if Congress doesn't give Intel free money, Ohio doesn't get any fabs at all.
This announcement is leverage in Intel's demands for free money from US taxpayers. "You wouldn't want to disappoint the good citizens of Ohio would you Senator? You would like to campaign on 'bringing thousands of good jobs to Ohio' wouldn't you Senator? Say yes, Senato
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It's not the government's responsibility to "afford" this. It's the company's. If Intel, or anyone, wants to build a fab plant, they should pay for it.
If a company can't exist without the taxpayers footing the bill, it should be let to die.
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Corporations are in a way governmental entities, not in the way most people mean but they are meaningless without a government. They exist only because a government says they do. The government is also run by corporations, they literally write bills, hand them to congresscritters, and lobby (pay) for their passage. The whole idea that corporations and governments are separate is wishful thinking at best.
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Fabs are expensive to build, expensive to run, and expensive to maintain. We're talking billion dollar levels here. Oh yeah, and they go obsolete way too fast. It's one thing that your smartphone goes obsolete within 6 months, quite another when your tends of billio
US should subsidize Asia backup fabs in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Commandeering TSMC assets will be a top priority for the CCP when China invades Taiwan. The US ought to give TSMC a disaster recovery facility to ensure chip production can be maintained.
TSMC ought to also have facility destruct plan for this contingency.
https://www.asiafinancial.com/... [asiafinancial.com]
Re:US should subsidize Asia backup fabs in the US (Score:4, Informative)
> TSMC ought to also have facility destruct plan for this contingency.
I will almost guarantee that they do. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, at least well known Western oil companies developed plans and installed equipment to destroy refineries and well heads in KSA and other unstable countries. The refineries would be wrecked by slagging key catalysts. Well heads had explosive bolts and would drop the head down the shaft.
It's not openly talked about but they were hours away from being used if Iraq had rolled into KSA after the invasion of Kuwait.
Source: me, I worked for one of them in KSA for a few years. Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.
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This is also an argument against locating fabs in heavily populated areas.
They will be among the first targets once a shooting war starts.
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1. One motivated guy.
2. One 5 pound sledge hammer
3. One container of any flammable liquid and a lighter
4. 10 minutes of time.
All you gotta do is burn a few things that shouldn't be oxidized and bend a few things by a few millionths of an inch, and your 20 billion dollar fab will require a few billion dollars worth of fixing. Without access to parts the Chinese can't make, exotic consumables that China can't produce, and the expertise needed
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Commandeering TSMC assets will be a top priority for the CCP when China invades Taiwan. The US ought to give TSMC a disaster recovery facility to ensure chip production can be maintained.
TSMC's major assets will be useless to China without the support contracts from ASML and others.
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Since when does Intel have anything to do with it? (Score:3)
Was there a shortage of Intel produced high end chips? They certainly don't manufacture chips for cars, water heaters, LCD drivers, and don't produce a GPU worth a damn to miners so how would outputting more Intel stuff save a shortage that has nothing to do with Intel?
Re:Since when does Intel have anything to do with (Score:5, Informative)
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"AMD bought Xilinx (arguably the better business choice)"
Except Altera was already committed to Intel 14nm.
I expect that the antitrust police would have killed it if Intel had tried to purchase Xilinx as it would have given Intel 100% control of mass market FPGAs
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This is a question, not a rhetorical question, but are brand new fabs ever built to produce chips for water heaters? Seems like maybe new fabs would be for high margin chips and the older fabs relegated to that stuff.
As General MacArthur would say: "Old fabs never die, they just end up producing chips for water heaters". There are still older lines producing chips on older processes because it is still economically sensible. Some (especially) older fabs cannot be economically retooled (it is cheaper to bulldoze and rebuild the plant), and as long as there is demand it may make sense to keep the older fab operating as is. If your target chip wants/needs a 130nm process, there is an older fab for that.
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The way Moore's law works is that more advanced process/factories will produce a cheaper chip (assuming same performance/spec) than an old process/factory. So even for a water heater, there is an advantage of being on a more advanced process node. More realistically we see that price per chip is constant and performance increases per process generation. Companies like Intel will also focus on chips that have higher margins (like server chips), which water heater chips won't have.
Now this also has to be bala
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Margins != Profits. Lower margins at higher volumes can trump the higher margin stuff.
But to answer your question, yes.
Bosch only just started up a $1bn (very cheap) fab in Dresden using 65nm wafer process late last year.
In 2016 UMC did a 55nm fab
In 2015 Fujitsu did a 40nm fab
In 2014 SIMC did a 350nm fab and Inex did a 150nm fab.
There is still an ever rising demand for the ability to produce normal chips. Even Intel and TSMC's fancy chips are useless without power regulators and supervisory circuits which a
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My understanding is that they are looking to produce fpga chips at this purposed factory.
In short, yes they can be used in water heaters as they are programmable and customizable in the field. Think of them as a box of Lego bricks that you can build lots of things with as long as it fits within the same box.
The long answer is that it might require some changes to designs and each chip to be programed to suit the application so it will probably cost more all the way around. The beauty of an FPGA is that it's
Good (Score:3)
While I'm all for domestic production, if we're still suffering from covid related shortages of chips in 2025 we've got bigger problems.
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Is there some flattening of the market for high end ICs that's completely escaped every analyst that you'd like to share with us?
Even if there wasn't a shortage and COVID, the market was growing and forecasted to continue to grow.
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consider.
covid is solved.
america helping china is solved.
it is time to move on
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It's better to have a big problem than a big problem and a small problem both.
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While I'm all for domestic production, if we're still suffering from covid related shortages of chips in 2025 we've got bigger problems.
That's my issue with the headline. This fab won't affect the chip shortages we have today. It might make them worse: how many chips go into a fab?
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. As opposed to the guy who told everyone covid wasn't a big deal, that they stopped it in its tracks, that it would eventually go away [cnn.com]. The same guy who bragged about getting vacciines made in near record time, then went out of his way to not tell people he got the vaccine and refused to tell the public they should get vaccinated because it would help Biden. The same guy who repeatedly downplayed the seriousness [cbsnews.com] of the pandemic. Who mocked anyone [go.com] who even suggested wearing a mask to help prevent spread.
God damn your gaslighting is shit. The only reason things are as bad now as they are is because of the clown-faced goon and his cabal of incompents. They literally muffled and undermined the CDC [businessinsider.com] when it wanted to warn people of the rise of cases and deaths. You know why? Because it might make the failure look bad.
We are where we are because of him. This mess started on his watch. This mess ballooned on his watch. This mess continues because of his lies and incompetence.
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He certainly worsened things with his stupid and unconstitutional vaccine mandates,
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. As opposed to the guy who told everyone covid wasn't a big deal, that they stopped it in its tracks...
Pay no attention to Mr Vegtable, he was just tellling everyone in an earlier thread how wonderful things are here in Ohio. Like small minded conservatives whose knuckles bleed when they walk, won't think, can't think, and proud of it. Its hell being in Ohio, don't come here, more money grubbing assclowns looking for tax breaks won't improve it either. I'd move but the surrounding states suck and Canada is picky about who they take in.
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I see that Donald John Trump is still living rent free in some people's heads. Trump hasn't been president in a year. It is as opposed to other measures that could have taken place.
And to specifically answer your criticisms, Trump was correct in his statement that covid will eventually disapear or come to an end. Right now the building consensus around the world seems to be that omicron is leading us to that. A statistical analysis that doesn't seem to be getting much attention showed that in data from Engl
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This mess continues because of his lies and incompetence.
I agree with everything you said except this. A year later and Biden's government is just getting ready to distribute not enough test kits to American households. 4 per address? So only enough for the average family to get tested once? What is this incompetent fuckery? And why is it okay to demonstrate this obvious prejudice against the poor and against immigrants who are most likely to have multiple families in a single dwelling, and who should be tested just as much as any other American? And oh yeah, we
Foxconn of Ohio (Score:3, Interesting)
I predict this is just another scam like the Foxconn con-job in Wisconsin. It is 'cool' to announce US sourcing right now, but I suspect they won't actually follow through with the long term effort and job training it would actually take to pull this off. In the meantime they'll happily harvest as much government funds as they can, and come up with the excuses as to why it 'didn't work out' later.
Water (Score:3)
Well, at least there is plenty of water there.
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It's actually not as abundant as one might think.
The cities on Lake Erie, such as Cleveland and Toledo, have access to almost unlimited freshwater, but Columbus is about 150mi./240km. away, and as far as I know there are no pipelines connecting the two.
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You don't need pipelines when you have 3 rives running through town which are in the same water basin as the lake. The water isn't flowing north.
Well, you are correct that those rivers do not flow north, they do flow south and eventually find their way to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River. The Great Lakes flow out to the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence Seaway. They are two separate water basins. The rivers that flow through Columbus do not connect to any of the Great Lakes, either as a source nor as a terminus.
Ohio's manufacturing output (Score:5, Informative)
Ohio's manufacturing employment has been on the decline for decades, causing massive problems for many of its formerly manufacturing-centric areas, including mine (Cleveland).
However, its manufacturing *output* is still phenomenal. It is comparable to the entire national product of Slovakia, Kuwait, or Luxembourg.
And it is full of infrastructure (though of varying quality), a hard-working and potentially retrainable workforce, great rail and truck transportation, access by lake/river to the entire Great Lakes region as well as the Atlantic, the only container port in the Great Lakes region, and a great location within a day's drive of much of the population of the US and Canada.
The greater Columbus area, where New Albany is located, has not suffered from the urban decay and resulting problems that have faced other regions such as Cleveland/Akron, Toledo, Youngstown/Warren, or Cincinnati. Its economy is relatively robust and diversified.
Ohio comes with more than its share of problems also. No place is perfect.
But writing it off as a center of manufacturing and industry would be grossly inaccurate, or at the very least, premature.
Tell Silicon Valley people about the Ohio winter (Score:2)
But then tell them about real estate prices.