News Intel: Upcoming U.S. Fab Will Be a Small City, to Cost $60 - $120 Billion

[Admin]

Intel to build a multi-module fab campus near a major city with universities.

Intel: Upcoming U.S. Fab Will Be a Small City, to Cost $60 - $120 Billion : Read more

 

[Howardohyea]

I hope the investment pays off

 

[jkflipflop98]

How could it not? Everyone on Earth is hungry for more silicon powered devices.

 

[Co BIY]

How could it not? Everyone on Earth is hungry for more silicon powered devices.

I agree with this. Worldwide demand may easily outstrip all the production all the players worldwide can put into place over many years.

Worldwide wealth is growing very fast. Electronics and particularly complex integrated circuits are replacing a lot of other established goods (think books, movie theaters, educational facilities) and they are a "preferred good" in economic terms (meaning that the richer you are the more you spend on the good as percentage of your income)

 

[jkflipflop98]

We usually call this a "greenfield site" as traditionally Intel has purchased large swaths of empty space to build a brand-new campus. The site where Ronler Acres (the name of the farm that used to exist before it was an Intel site) sits was just a huge empty farm field until the company turned it into what you see today. It's really nice to have all your suppliers already near your site and ready to serve the business, but a facility of the magnitude they're talking about here will cause those supporting facilities to also move into the area.

It's not just Intel that's moving into the new neighborhood. ASML, TEL, Hitachi, KLA, handfuls of gas and chemical vendors, and a whole raft of others are coming with them. A project like this has the ability to single-handedly revive an entire section of the country. Somewhere that jobs are desperately needed. Not just high-end technical jobs either. Something like this can employ hundreds of construction crews for decades. The local infrastructures all need upgraded - water supplies and sewer returns and roadways need widened and stoplights installed and new sidewalks poured. . . it goes on and on.

 

[thisisaname]

I agree with this. Worldwide demand may easily outstrip all the production all the players worldwide can put into place over many years.

Worldwide wealth is growing very fast. Electronics and particularly complex integrated circuits are replacing a lot of other established goods (think books, movie theaters, educational facilities) and they are a "preferred good" in economic terms (meaning that the richer you are the more you spend on the good as percentage of your income)

A little off topic but still relatively relevant. Worldwide wealth is indeed growing but growing at a larger rate is the wealth gap and if that is not reduced then most people are going to be less able to afford all this shinny new technology.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Just run your own race and stop worrying about how much the CEO makes. Yeah, he makes a lot more than you. Is that really a problem that needs to be solved? No, it isn't.

 

[waltc3]

It will be nice when Intel can at last field some competitive products on the CPU front and sell them as opposed to talking about them. It seems it always takes AMD to light a fire under Intel's rump, for some reason. That's actually been historically true since ~1999. The things Intel has offered--Itanium/RDRAM, for instance, the markets have soundly rejected. This is a very strange announcement from Intel--I guess it's a lame bid to prop up Intel's sinking stock prices. Vaporware announcements carry little weight these days. The markets want products, not intentions.

 

[USAFRet]

It will be nice when Intel can at last field some competitive products on the CPU front and sell them as opposed to talking about them. It seems it always takes AMD to light a fire under Intel's rump, for some reason. That's actually been historically true since ~1999. The things Intel has offered--Itanium/RDRAM, for instance, the markets have soundly rejected. This is a very strange announcement from Intel--I guess it's a lame bid to prop up Intel's sinking stock prices. Vaporware announcements carry little weight these days. The markets want products, not intentions.

"at last"?
Lets not forget the long string of AMD fails.

 

[10tacle]

It will be nice when Intel can at last field some competitive products on the CPU front and sell them as opposed to talking about them. It seems it always takes AMD to light a fire under Intel's rump, for some reason.

It depends on your application. If you want a well balanced productivity and gaming system and run say two 1440p monitors or a single 4k monitor, then yes, AMD has been the champion of that since the first generation of Ryzen (which was the first time AMD got that throne back since the Bulldozer disaster).

On the other hand, if you want mostly a high FPS (100+) 1080p or 1440p single monitor G-sync or FreeSync gaming system, then Intel chips continue to defeat AMD on that as pretty much they have since 2011 and Intel's Second generation Core-I series Sandy Bridge. There are years worth of CPU benchmarks here on Tom's and elsewhere showing that.

 

[Chung Leong]

What the chance of this project not landing in Texas?

 

[USAFRet]

What the chance of this project not landing in Texas?

Name somewhere else on the planet that does not have weird weather problems sometimes.

 

[Chung Leong]

Name somewhere else on the planet that does not have weird weather problems sometimes.

Oops, I completely forgot about that freak cold spell. What I meant was, Texas seems to have a solid lock on this project. If Intel plans to generate its own power, then fuel availability is going to be key. It's also got seaports, an important factor when most of what the fab produces will end up in Asia (or perhaps Mexico) for assembly into actual devices.

 

[USAFRet]

Oops, I completely forgot about that freak cold spell. What I meant was, Texas seems to have a solid lock on this project. If Intel plans to generate its own power, then fuel availability is going to be key. It's also got seaports, an important factor when most of what the fab produces will end up in Asia (or perhaps Mexico) for assembly into actual devices.

OK...thats where I thought you were going with that...the problems from last winter.

Nothing wrong with it being in Texas.

 

[Chung Leong]

OK...thats where I thought you were going with that...the problems from last winter.

Nothing wrong with it being in Texas.

That incident probably influenced Intel's decision to generate their own power. As long as they send engineers to inspect their gas supplier's equipment, unexpected cold spells shouldn't be an issue.

A foundry service would need to be relatively close to an international airport. My money is on College Station.

 

[USAFRet]

That incident probably influenced Intel's decision to generate their own power. As long as they send engineers to inspect their gas supplier's equipment, unexpected cold spells shouldn't be an issue.

A foundry service would need to be relatively close to an international airport. My money is on College Station.

Environmental shutdowns have happened all over the planet, for decades. And caused hardware shortages and price spikes.
Flood, hurricane, tornado, blizzard, etc, etc.

The thing in Texas was relatively controlled..."Please shut down your ops, before it gets really bad"

 

[Co BIY]

A little off topic but still relatively relevant. Worldwide wealth is indeed growing but growing at a larger rate is the wealth gap and if that is not reduced then most people are going to be less able to afford all this shinny new technology.

Even if this is relevant (and jkflipflop98 makes a fair case that it's not,) Global poverty is way down over the last 70 years.

Also at least in the US measures that focus on the "gap" have tended to ignore the very large transfer payments built into the system that create a lot of leveling. It is really not clear that fixating on the "gap" will raise bottom rung living standards. It's easy to pull down and destroy but harder to build and create.