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Intel On A Building Spree
Anonymous Cowherd writes "Intel will build two new facilities - a new chip plant and a new wafer plant. The new chip plant will be built in Kiryat Gat, Israel, continuing Intel's 30 years operation in the country. Intel already owns several facilities in Israel, both for R&D and for manufacturing. Previous developments of Intel Israel are the 8088 processor, MMX and the Centrino mobile platform. The new wafer plant will be built in an existing facility at Chandler, Arizona, and will feature 45nm technology - 1/1,333th the width of a human hair. The technology is two generations ahead of the current 90nm. Intel's Arizona operation includes production of the Pentium processor family and related chipsets."
Thirth? I believe this should be 1/1,333rd.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
2. It isn't very easy to "upgrade" a semiconductor fab to latest tech, building a new one might actually be easier as you can make the buildings fit the purpose perfectly...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Don't you just love it when a number as incomprehensible as 45nm is finally put in a graspable framework such as 1/1,333 the width of a human hair? It's like the insight given by the statement that a mole of marshmellows would cover the US 512 miles deep.
"The technology is two generations ahead of the current 90nm."
And it will take 2 generations to build.
There is truth in humor.
The new wafer plant will be built in an existing facility at Chandler, Arizona, and will feature 45nm technology - 1/1,333th the width of a human hair.
/sarcasm
Yay for science writers using numbers in dumb ways. So glad that all humans have all the same hair thicknesses, and they're all about 59.99 microns. According to various sources (and I've measured hair diameters myself), they range from 200microns down to about 50 microns. So the article should have stated that the 45 nm technology is somewhere between 9/10000th and 9/40000th the width of a human hair. Wouldn't that be much more impressive?
They built a huge plan in Colorado right before the Tech Crash. The the crash came they abandoned the plant (the most expensive building ever in the state). Is this building unusable? It was supposed to be a "nest generation" chip plant after all!
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
Maybe they'll actually finish these buildings, unlike the big development center they started in Austin and then left unfinished. A big, half-constructed building sitting in the middle of downtown for the last 5 years.
And the city council gave them millions in tax breaks to leave an eyesore downtown...
Where's the waffle factory? We need to know!
What is the estimate of how much water these plants will consume? Do the communities in which these plants are being put understand what the impact will be? Chip fabs usually consume lots of water.
Links from google:
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I live down the street from a giant Intel plant in Hillsboro, Oregon. When the weather is cool and I feel like I need the extra exercise, I walk the dog around the perimeter. It is a touch under four miles round trip and has its own wetlands area where beaver, ospreys, and coyotes live.
Immediately across the street is some more Intel land. It has Intel no trespassing signs, but is . . . well, not vacant. It is a clover field. Sometimes you can see tractors plowing it up or harvesting the stuff. I guess Intel leases the land to a farmer.
Around two of the sides are great big walls of blackberry bushes. These are considered weeds out there, but produce great whopping crops of blackberries. I picked about three gallons last year, enough to make three pies and twelve jars of jam. Technically, one of the white SUV security vans could bust me for picking the berries, but it seems a shame just to leave them for the birds.
1) Build billion dollar fabs in places most likely to be bombed (e.g. Israel, Dublin, London)
2) Wait for attack
3) Collect billion dollar insurance settlements
4) Profit!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you look at the Intel code names on their road maps, you'll see that they usually name their chips after rivers. Most of these rivers are in the western United States, but occasionally you'll see Israeli river names (Banias, for example). Grouping these names together, you can tell that Intel Israel usually works on low-power chips and integrated chipset features (SSE, Centrino, ...). That is, the heart of Intel cores is done in the U.S. They send their first generation designs to Israel for improvement and integration.
Intel, as well as numerous other chip makers, have had a long tradition of development in Israel. IBM, DEC (back when they existed), Freescale all have research centers in Israel. This is due to the large amount of English-speaking skilled engineers and their relatively low cost compared to US engineers. This is the first I've heard of actually making the chips there. Germany is usually the preferred site for fabbing in the European region.
Actually it's not clear if they are building anything new in Israel, as the Updated article mentions.
"I don't believe that. I think this has to do more with that half a billion dollar grant Intel will be getting from the government of Israel and possible tax breaks."
Tax breaks which would not be possible if the U.S. stopped financially (and militarily)supporting the State of Israel. So technically, the U.S. government through its foreign policy is supporting this outsourcing. However, considering the power of the pro-Israel political action committee(s), I doubt this will be mentioned the next time Democrats raise the issue of outsourcing against the President and his economic policies. Instead, they'll bash India and China (and score approval points while doing so in the polls) while approving the continuation of such aid that leads to virtual job losses amongst the tech community here in the States. And consequently, more American college students will elect for a major in physical education over computer sciences.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Qiyrat Gat seems to be about 10 miles from the West Bank, and 15 miles from the Gaza border.
Dude, there's no spot in Israel that isn't at most 25 miles from some pissed off Arab. It's a pretty small country, about 80% the size of Maryland, give or take a settlement.
I agree it's off-topic.
However, you imply that any critizism of Israeli politics or policy, or politics or policy connected to Israel, would be anti-semitic. That is BS. Israel is another sovereign state, and one that is democratic no less, and should be subject the same amount of scrutiny as, say, French, American, Russian or Japanese politics and policies. There is no perfect country and no perfect state anywhere in the world, and none that comes even close. But screaming "anti-semitism!" whenever shortcomings are pointed out certainly doesn't encourage discussion and doesn't help anyone redress them.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.