Phoenix AZ, USA.

So long as the new machines work, and Intel doesn't screw it up.

What is the company in Phoenix producing them?

Intel is/plans to build a plant there capable of producing .02 micron chips.

Be handy to have if China gets stupid with Taiwan.

Taiwan semiconductor is building a huge plant right now in N phoenix. All land around it is going up for bid.


Phoenix is the new Silicon Valley.

Their little history lesson skillfully avoided any references to AMD.

Chip manufacturing is a nasty process.
I wouldn't work in a fab.

Does the Space Force operate the factory? Asking for Jag. Trump's Space Force ( he's Commander in Chief, per Jag) operated one on Maui, near Lahaina, until the Joo Space Lasers burnt it down.

That's Jag's story and he's stickin' to it.

Seriously.

His proof?

There are some massive chip plants going up north of the valley and Intel is building a massive campus out near Queen Creek. I grew up here and have seen BIG changes happen. Crazy,

Yeah the big buildings going up along the 303 is nuts.

Lots of taxpayer dollars going to the poor multi billion dollar chip manufacturers.

It looks like one of the buildings is its own power generating unit. I’m wondering if it will affect the Ben Avery range across the street. I remember when I-17 was a regular 2 lane highway around there. I’m out by the AF base and most of the farmland is gone and there are giant warehouses everywhere now.

When battleships were king we did the same for steel.

Now that computers and drones are king we're doing the same for chips.

I'm happy to see us building them here. I'd rather see subsidies go to Americans than to the Chinese.

Now if we could get more of our medicines and medical supplies made here.

Bb

Oh hell yes

It costs money to be self-reliant. It is never cheapest.

Perfect.

More population increases for what used to be a nice State. Probably some of the folks moving there will be hunters, thereby decreasing the odds of drawing tags.

Oh well, It's gotten pretty expensive for me to hunt down there. But, I still have friends and relatives.

No doubt gonna drive up the real estate prices too. Maybe some of the older folks will retire and move to MT and TX and those emigrants will take some of the heat off the Californians who have fled to escape this place

NVidia
GPUs
Accelerated processing

A neighbor kid that my son graduated high school and university with was hired by a Taiwanese "chip" company and moved to Taiwan for two years of training to then transfer to Phoenix when the facility was up and running. He followed through transferred back to the US, worked for a while then quit. He was not at all happy with the treatment of the employees. Culture shock I suppose.

Ed….The treatment of employees was worse in America? The company he transferred back to in the US treated their employees worse than the company he trained with in Taiwan?

Reading comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. It relies on two, interconnected abilities: word reading (being able to decode the symbols on the page) and language comprehension (being able to understand the meaning of the words and sentences).

That place named Arizona - not a paradise, but a great place to live, learn and grow - especially in the 1960s and into the 70s. The best of it seems to have been overwhelmed.

(1) a Taiwanese pastor (Christian) told me that a large (?) number of Taiwanese are expected to move to Phoenix to work at this plant; he is helping to launch a new church in the area

(2) quite a bit of chip plants being planned in the USA - particularly Texas.

From 2023 story at https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/20/tex...lion-investment-from-samsung-and-ti.html

(Not my preferred news source, but …)

Some excerpts:

On a 1,200-acre plot of land in a small town 30 miles north of Austin, Texas, South Korean giant Samsung is spending $17 billion to build a semiconductor fabrication plant.

Four hours north by car, in the city of Sherman, Texas (north of Dallas) Instruments is at the early stages of a $30 billion project, the largest new chip investment in Texas.

Since the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act was first introduced in 2020, more than 50 new U.S. semiconductor projects have been announced totaling over $210 billion. More than $61 billion of that’s in Texas, with six projects expected to create more than 8,000 jobs.

Samsung, Texas Instruments, Infineon, GlobalWafers, NXP, X-FAB and Applied Materials have all ramped up Texas operations in recent months. Apple and Amazon are also designing some of their custom chips in Texas.

When it comes to new chip investments, Arizona leads with a $20 billion fab coming from Intel and a $40 billion site from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s top advanced chipmaker. However, Texas has the highest number of total fabs and is a close second for new investments.

TSMC is the world’s largest chip maker, that make something like 90% of the world’s semiconductors. They only manufacture their most advanced chips in Taiwan right now but imagine what will happen if the Chinese invade and suddenly control that. The Phoenix plant is being built so most of the world’s supply isn’t within easy reach of China.

I don't know if Micron makes semiconductors or just memory, but they're working on a $15 billion expansion in Boise.

I read an article recently where these us chip plants are waaay behind schedule for various reasons. ie Chinas deadline to invade Taiwan will arrive before these plants are ready.

The new fabs Intel is building are on the same site in Chandler, AZ where Fab12, Fab22, Fab32, Fab42 are located. The Intel campus is near Queen Creek Road in Chandler, not the town of Queen Creek. The oldest of these, Fab12, began construction in 1994.

TSMC is building a campus in north Phoenix. This is a Greenfield site..... no other TSMC plants currently exist there.

How do I Know these things? I retired from Intel a couple of years ago as a senior Equipment/Process Engineer after 25 years, spending nearly 2 decades at the Fab12/Fab22/Fab32 site (Fab42 was not yet operational). This campus is referred to as the Ocotillo campus.

Not sure what the credentials of the person who made the video is/are ...... and just leave it at that.

I read that also just a few days ago...it was Arizona new construction that was the years behind schedule, blamed on everything from labor shortage, cost overruns and material shortages. That's just talking about the plant structures themselves....let alone making any chips.
I do know firsthand that making big pours in the heat months down there is very very difficult, most big jobs just end up putting the batch plant on the jobsite and budgeting for nitrogen cooling in the pours. Hugely expensive by any metric.

Don't know what role/job your acquaintance had. If it was engineering it was likely that he was expected to work 70-80 hours per week and typically be on-call 24 hours a day. The salaries are Exempt, meaning no OT pay for most engineers. My prior post explains how I know that.

Companies like TSMC and Intel are importing thousands of engineers because home grown talent is unwilling to put in the hours, regardless of the salary.

When an RCG (Recent College Graduate) is sent on one of these training deployments, they are typically someone's sidekick without any real responsibility/accountability. When they are done with the training deployment the rubber hits the road..... meaning they are now accountable for which they are responsible. Hard lesson for some youngsters.

Memory chips are semiconductors too. Micron is in the memory and digital storage space.... necessary parts of the silicon ecosystem.

A guy on another board I frequent who is in the chip industry says that it is real schit show. It will be years before we even get the factories completed. Apparently there are standards which just can’t be compromised and our builders don’t want to or can’t understand that and keep phuqging everything up.

I thought there was concern about how much water they will be using. Years ago when micron built that was a concern?

These production facilities are no walk in the park to erect, whether it is the basebuild (building/facilities) or the equipment install/qualification. I retired from Intel prior to Fab42 coming on line. I was, however an equipment install/qual Lead in the Fab32 startup.

If you don't have employees, trades, or contractors 110% committed to success there will be delays. Given the skill set and the attitude of many these days, it will be a formidable task for the U.S. to become the undisputed leader in the semiconductor industry.

I fear the U.S has a talent pool these days more adept at building/running a slaughterhouse than a state of the art semiconductor fab.

The link below gives a pretty good $.05 tour of the Chandler, AZ site.

Yes. He was a rarity there and dealt with learning as one with 23 year old engineering aspirations. As they hired here, with minority Taiwanese having knowledge of functioning in the US barely short of management, yes. Again, the latter at best. Having worked in seven countries as a senior manager it was not easy, a 23 year old Texan?

The semiconductor fabs nowadays use a lot of water but they don't consume a lot of water.... most of the water used is treated, recycled, and pumped back into water recharge basins.

Video below gives some water re-use info.

Maybe 25 years ago, they added a production building to the Micron plant in Boise. I remember reading that they poured the floor 4' thick to eliminate all vibrations from the freeway 1/4 mile away.

There's an empty Fab about 50 miles north of Indianapolis.
Old GM plant.