Other influencers on CPU production: copper

[xen]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1310AP_Chile_Escondida.html

I was just reading this article on a strike in Chili at a large copper mine. I know there have already been issues with copper supply. With more Intel trying to ramp up their new set of processors and AMD trying to increate their max production volume do you think that the limited amounts of resources used for these CPUs will come into equation? I know this isn't the only world event relating to copper, but I just thought I would throw it out there for discussion.

 

[jamesgoddard]

CPU's don't use that much copper, I am sure a company the size of Intel will have no trouble sourcing the couple of hundred KG a week it needs.....

 

[maury73]

No problem for that: the copper used in heatsink manufacturing doesn't need to be pure or high quality. Pure copper is needed only in wires and PCB tracks (99.98% purity).

 

[jamesgoddard]

It's the heatsink manufactures you should be worrying about.

True - bet the heatsink manufactures are feeling the pain... Re the purity of the stuff, I know it does not matter but ANY copper costs a small fortune now... In fact, funny story this, but recently in the UK we had a problem where some companies where collecting vast quantities of 2p coins and melting them down because each 2p coin had 4p worth of copper in it (the coin mint has since had to change the ratio of metals to vastly reduce the amount of copper in 2p coins, lol)