[HN Gopher] Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's large...
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Intel's $20B Ohio factory could become world's largest chip plant
Author : HieronymusBosch
Score : 466 points
Date : 2022-01-21 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/66jAS
| nabla9 wrote:
| One fab will use 12 high-NA EUV machines from ASML and their
| price will be "well over $340 million". They will be spending
| more than $4B per fab just for for ASML machines.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/intel-says-ohio-...
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm for global competition as a force as much as the next
| thinking person, but as an American who grew up on Intel chips it
| sure would be nice to not get our asses kicked all over the field
| for a change. The ASML stuff seems to indicate they might mean it
| this time.
| sanp wrote:
| so, will Ohio be turning back to Blue in the next presidential
| election?
| 535188B17C93743 wrote:
| Hopefully this keeps/brings in educated young folks and at
| least dampens the shift to red.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Is it true that once such a plant is built, the number of skilled
| workers to keep it running is actually relatively low?
|
| I.e. some operational "dev-ops" style engineers who can fix and
| troubleshoot highly automated lines, keep the thing running.
| People to supervise the systems, some workers to handle raw
| materials, etc. and then the packaging on the output side. But in
| general, quite sparse for a million square foot property,
| compared to other industries occupying a building of that size?
|
| I wonder partly because the favorable tax / labor jurisdictions
| aren't exactly where you tend to find extremely skilled silicon
| engineers. But an operational plant is maybe not where those
| folks are needed.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| They're touting this project as 3k permanent employees.
| xyst wrote:
| its a shame we didn't see this type of investment after the rust
| belt area crashed in 2008. if we had more domestic chip plants,
| we probably wouldn't be in the current chip shortage rn
|
| chip fab/manufacturing process probably doesn't generate as many
| jobs as the auto industry (the process is automated heavily from
| what I have seen) at its peak but at least they will be very high
| paying.
| gruez wrote:
| >if we had more domestic chip plants, we probably wouldn't be
| in the current chip shortage rn
|
| Why? At the end of the day it's a capacity shortage. The only
| way to prevent that is to have surplus capacity prior to the
| pandemic. Considering how companies don't like to spend money
| on expensive fabs that end up getting underutilized, I'm
| skeptical that having more domestic chip plants would lead to
| that.
| cxr wrote:
| > The only way to prevent that is to have surplus capacity
| prior to the pandemic. The only way to prevent that is to
| have surplus capacity prior to the pandemic.
|
| "Capacity" in a fab means throughput. Contrary to the
| breathlessness that I hear when people describe modern
| semiconductor manufacturing, fabs are nowhere near optimal.
| There's plenty of dumb shit that happens in an ordinary day
| at a semiconductor fab--and consequently, lots of room for
| (easy) improvements. Fabs have lower than optimal capacity
| because they go heavy on hiring for things like a background
| in physics and chemistry, or tangential degrees like
| aerospace[1], but they don't treat IT concerns or the day-to-
| day processes that workers are engaged in like engineering
| problems. This gets you things like routine showstoppers that
| take 20+ minutes to resolve because that's how long it takes
| to go turn off the Caps Lock on a given workstation before
| being able to resume work. _So much_ room for improvement.
|
| 1. and proficiency in Microsoft Office
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30021528
| markl42 wrote:
| Why does intel want to buy $100B worth of potatoes?
| keeganjw wrote:
| Wow, it really takes an insane amount of money these days to make
| a leading edge fab. I really hope they can pull this off and it
| doesn't end up like Foxconn in Wisconsin...
| tyleo wrote:
| I was thinking that. Im a former Ohioan and most of my family
| is still here. I have much more faith in Intel than in Foxconn.
| My understanding is that Foxconn had a shoddy track record of
| building out locations outside of their home country.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Foxconn is hard, repetitive manual labor.
|
| chip fab isn't nearly as bad of work. Americans don't want
| crappy jobs which is why foxcon had issues.
| beambot wrote:
| "TSMC's Arizona Culture Clash" -
| https://www.eetimes.com/tsmcs-arizona-culture-clash/
|
| > Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) faces
| challenges managing employees at its new fab in Arizona who
| are unaccustomed to the long work hours and management
| culture that in Taiwan have helped make the company the
| world's largest chip foundry.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Similarly, there's a Netflix movie by Obama's production
| company called American Factory that dealt with the
| culture clash of a Chinese glass factory in America:
| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/american_factory
| nurspouse wrote:
| Having worked at Intel, I can tell you that the process
| side of Intel has similar work hours. This, in
| particular, rings true for Intel:
|
| > Different positions may have different requirements, so
| work hours vary, according to the principal engineer. "An
| equipment engineer might start work at 8 o'clock in the
| morning and leave around 9 o'clock at night, but is it
| normal? This may happen two or three days a week. On a
| production line, the equipment must be maintained.
|
| > "If you are a process engineer, it will be more stable.
| Maybe you can start work at 8:30 a.m.and leave before
| 7:30 p.m. If there are some urgent matters, you may have
| to stay later."
|
| At Intel, process engineers had to attend a daily meeting
| at 7:40am (mandatory), and would rarely leave before 6pm
| (meetings scheduled at 5 or 6pm were common). I sometimes
| would wander around in that part of the building at 7pm
| and a significant fraction of cubicles would be filled.
|
| Almost all Intel process engineers have PhDs.
| Aperocky wrote:
| How much are Intel process engineers paid to withstand
| that?
| nurspouse wrote:
| Good in terms of process engineers, poor compared to
| FAANG SW Engineers.
| nwiswell wrote:
| Very well for Oregon.
|
| But it's a little more nuanced than pay for two reasons.
|
| 1) Intel is a little like proto-Amazon. There is a
| preference for hiring people directly out of grad school
| and inducting them into the cult while they are still
| naive, so that's just what they come to expect for work-
| life balance.
|
| 2) The whole semiconductor industry is like this, and
| particularly so for production fabs. If you have domain
| expertise, you have no alternative work-life balance
| choice short of a career change.
| nurspouse wrote:
| > There is a preference for hiring people directly out of
| grad school and inducting them into the cult while they
| are still naive, so that's just what they come to expect
| for work-life balance.
|
| Heh. I once interviewed for an internal SW position that
| dealt with fab automation. I openly told them in the
| interview that I knew about their work culture and that
| was of great concern to me.
|
| Interviewer: I know what you mean, and I promise the org
| has been working to improve the conditions. It's not as
| bad as it was.
|
| Me: Great! However, for me the comparison isn't the "old
| you" but the rest of Intel.
|
| <Back and forth>
|
| Interviewer: Look, you're not going to get a 40 hour/week
| job anywhere in the SW industry!
|
| Me: Umm... All my SW engineer roles at Intel were 40
| hour/week jobs. I haven't worked on weekends in years.
| <Proceed to list friends at big name SW companies who
| also don't work more than 40 hours/week>
|
| Interviewer: OK. We normally interview people straight
| out of college who don't know any better.
|
| Needless to say, I didn't take that job.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| When I was a green badge SWE at Intel all my (blue badge)
| coworkers were 15-20 years older than me. No one my age
| stuck around.
| [deleted]
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| There are plenty of Americans who are okay with 60-80 hours
| of even repetitive manual labor. I know a few who work for
| shipping companies.
|
| What Americans don't want are jobs that pay less and don't
| offer 1.5x overtime. Unlike shipping, foxconn jobs can be
| done in a place with a cheaper cost of living. America
| isn't competitive in low margin businesses because poor
| people need to pay rent which is just higher in the US.
| rotten wrote:
| This same street has a Facebook data center, an AWS data center,
| and a Google data center (within a couple of miles). There is a
| biotech research campus, Bath & Bodyworks main research lab, and
| the main operations center for AEP (a midwest electric company).
| If you travel about 2-3 miles orthogonal to that street we have a
| big data center for Nationwide Insurance, a campus for Discover
| (credit cards), and a State Farm insurance facility.
|
| It is literally across street from one of the Ohio East-2
| availability zones. If they were making rack-mounted server
| boards, they could just walk them across the street and plug them
| into the cloud.
| timr wrote:
| Curious -- grew up near New Albany, but haven't been back in
| years. What street is it?
| MisterPea wrote:
| Exactly what I was going to say. "Friends don't let friends use
| us-east-1" - us-east-2 will be a huge spot for computing in the
| coming decade.
| 55873445216111 wrote:
| Silicon fabs do not make server boards. They just produce the
| silicon wafer i.e. "die" of a semiconductor device. Most die
| must be assembled into a package before they can be used. The
| die packaging aka "backend" is almost never done at the same
| place as the fab. Most backend is in Taiwan or Malaysia or
| China. Even after the die is packaged, it needs to be mounted
| on a complete PCB with all the other components. Intel
| typically does not do PCB assembly, they mostly just sell
| assembled CPUs (or other devices) to other companies that do
| the PCB assembly.
| 42365767567 wrote:
| i think it was a joke...
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I know there are PCB manufacturers somewhere in the US. I
| don't know about packaging. Do you know which firms do
| packaging of the dies and why can't the US do it(It can't
| just be cost)? How hard can it be really? Its essentially
| plastic , maybe some metal, and gold isn't it? Maybe an
| argument could be made to locate at least one source of
| manufacturing for all these steps in a local area. But thats
| just the programmer in me wanting to optimize without
| understanding the realities of manufacturing costs.
| 55873445216111 wrote:
| It's all about cost. The assembly and test is the "low
| tech" part of semiconductor manufacturing and can be done
| well in Asia by workforces that are not as highly educated
| as those you need to run a fab. US and western economies
| have always focused on doing the highest value add portions
| of manufacturing domestically (where the highly educated
| workforce is key) while outsourcing the lower value add
| (lower margin) portions of the supply chain.
|
| Consumers demand low cost. Many times they just buy the
| cheaper widget, because most people are not even capable of
| distinguishing the differences in performance or quality
| between two different widgets. But the difference in price
| is obvious to everyone and so most people just use that.
| The pressure of reducing every single penny out of the cost
| or semiconductors is enormous.
|
| Top 10 OSAT (outsourced assembly and test) companies:
| https://evertiq.com/news/51003
| chasd00 wrote:
| > This same street has a Facebook data center, an AWS data
| center, and a Google data center (within a couple of miles).
| There is a biotech research campus, * _Bath & Bodyworks main
| research lab*_, and the main operations center for AEP (a
| midwest electric company).
|
| i bet it would be fun to chat and talk shop with engineers at
| the bath and body works lab during a lunch.
| sanchay wrote:
| That's why I come to HN, would have been oblivious to the fact
| otherwise
| afandian wrote:
| Me too, but I'm reasonably sure this is information I will
| never use.
| ensan wrote:
| When it comes to proximity research institutions, the choice of
| location is strange to me. Somewhere in the northern
| Indiana/Illinois/Michigan (i.e. "Greater Michiana") would have
| made a lot more sense. That way, you would be close to,
|
| UIUC, Northwestern, UChicago, UMichigan, Purdue, Notre Dame,
| UIndiana, Argonne National Lab, etc.
| rotten wrote:
| The Ohio State University is in Columbus and if not the largest
| university in the world it is in the top 3.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Largest university in the world? Top 3 in the US maybe but
| the largest universities in the world (I'm not talking about
| networks) are an order of magnitude bigger.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_universities
| lenocinor wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_publi
| c... Top 3 US, as you said, but nowhere near top 3 in the
| world, as you also said. Also, enrollment sure isn't
| everything. Speaking as someone who used to live near
| Orlando, UCF is #2 on that list and I had consistent bad
| luck hiring computer science grads from there. And 3 of the
| top 5 are in Florida (it's been like that since 2015) and I
| don't see tech employers scrambling to move to Florida en
| masse. The focus and quality of the institution definitely
| matters.
| ensan wrote:
| The number of enrolled students is not a good argument here.
| randcraw wrote:
| Yes, but OSU is not especially well known for computer
| architecture. In comparison, Wisconsin, Michigan, and
| Illinois are all top-5 schools in EE/hardware. And the
| Champaign area is even more affordable than Columbus. So
| choosing Columbus must have satisfied multiple constraints,
| some of which aren't obvious.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Champaign doesn't have sufficient infrastructure (think
| construction workers even) so they'd be looking at Chicago
| suburbs. This would make Labor costs way too high.
| Wisconsin would be a fantastic choice but Foxconn
| boondoggle probably ruined that possibility.
| eeeeeeehio wrote:
| They needed to be close to a large city center. Chicago is too
| expensive -- so the option you are proposing is something like
| Indianapolis?
| justin66 wrote:
| > When it comes to proximity research institutions
|
| ...which has nothing to do with running a fab, if we're being
| honest about it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Do the people that need to work at the fabs come from those
| schools?
| datavirtue wrote:
| No. It is unskilled labor save for the jobs that are not on
| the shop floor.
| ensan wrote:
| For such a high-tech industry, the choice of location is also
| about taking advantage of the talent and research ecosystem
| that is already established there.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Good luck to them! Always nice to get as much semiconducter
| talent in-country as possible, fabs are a pretty crucial supply
| line after all.
|
| I'd imagine most people would want a pretty significant pay raise
| to move to somewhere like Ohio, but they are nearby Ohio State
| University, so maybe they'll get local talent.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Columbus is pretty nice tbh.
| justin66 wrote:
| > I'd imagine most people would want a pretty significant pay
| raise to move to somewhere like Ohio
|
| Cost of living is low relative to the west coast and high
| relative to a lot of places in Asia, so it really depends on
| who you're talking about.
| vmception wrote:
| For now.
|
| I've travelled to enough cities that it is basically an
| amusing part of my checklist to hear why Area Man is mad
| about housing prices going up.
|
| I could procedurally generate possible scapegoats at this
| point.
| justin66 wrote:
| The nice thing about where they've located that Intel site,
| purely in terms of housing cost, is that you can get there
| quickly from plenty of cheap small towns. I'd live in
| Columbus if I worked there, but you could certainly go in
| the other direction without too much of a commute.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Rent in Columbus appears to be roughly comparable to Tokyo:
| https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
| justin66 wrote:
| Those numbers are incredible. One thing to keep in mind,
| though, is that a lot of what we're talking about when we
| say "Columbus" is suburbs. And the plant Intel is building
| is even in a different county.
| duxup wrote:
| I also assumed tOSU and the Columbus area would be a draw.
|
| Having a big university in a more urban setting is very nice
| (posting from the Twin Cities with the University of Minnesota
| centrally located).
| bee_rider wrote:
| I bet some OSU grad students will get some nice stipends out
| of this, too. Win/win.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Any salary in semi space in US is better than $34k-$40k per
| year for a physics/engineering PhD level worker of moderate
| experience in Taiwan.
|
| The bigger question is why none of these $34k a year PhDs did
| move to USA before. I bet, even a floor sweeper at an Intel fab
| gets more.
| amelius wrote:
| > I bet, even a floor sweeper at an Intel fab gets more.
|
| A floor sweeper delivering max 1 particle per m^2.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| US visa policy is slow, apparently pew found there are
| 700,000,000 people interested in immigrating to the US, open
| the gates!
| pradn wrote:
| The US could issue special visas for workers in chip
| fabrication fields, but that'll probably anger our ally
| Taiwan. There's also top workers in South Korea and Japan,
| other US allies.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Sure USA workers are probably better off but in USA there
| would be 6k in deduction for Kaiser Healthcare family plan
| plus up to 3k out of pocket; then there are the additional
| dental costs; employee likely must own a car (no Taipei
| transport); deal with potentially higher income, sales, and
| property tax; much higher child-care cost; schools for
| children in many areas may be of lower quality or more
| expensive; the rate of gun crime, gun suicide, and drug use
| is higher; etc etc
| mNovak wrote:
| Depending on where they're moving from, they might take a pay
| cut.. Ohio is very cheap to live in. New Albany is not
| particularly exciting, but nearby Columbus is a nice vibrant
| city, not the end of the earth. OSU is a definitely good asset
| for Intel, they put out 2k engineering degrees a year.
|
| I hope this spurs a nice tech ecosystem for Ohio--it's been
| dominated by insurance and medicine for a long time.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I'd imagine most people would want a pretty significant pay
| raise to move to somewhere like Ohio
|
| Yeah. The region isn't known to attract or retain tech
| talent.
|
| > Depending on where they're moving from, they might take a
| pay cut.. Ohio is very cheap to live in
|
| The thing with Cost of Living is that the biggest expense is
| typically housing. And if you bought the house, it means the
| biggest expense is... building equity into an asset you can
| sell afterward.
|
| Keep in mind the engineer who purchased a 2 million house in
| Palo Alto can sell it for two million, and then move to Ohio
| to a much cheaper house purchased in cash. The reverse isn't
| true.
| chasd00 wrote:
| given that over the last 2 years we've all been trained to
| live like hermits I wonder who is going to be bothered about
| lack of city amenities? You can still jog around the block
| and walk your dog but large public gatherings (big city
| specialty) isn't much of a draw any more.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Nitpick: Small and medium, not just large public
| gatherings, and a larger variety of them, are also a big
| city draw. But one of the biggest big city draws is the
| large variety of employment -- not just for you, but your
| kids. You don't know what career they'll go into and
| they're more likely to be able to do it while staying near
| the metro area they grew up in if it's a large one with a
| good large varied job market, as opposed to having to
| choose between career and staying near family. Obviously
| remote/hybrid work makes that a little easier, but a lot of
| stuff still has to be done on site, it's still a
| competitive advantage to be able to choose between local
| AND remote jobs as opposed to ONLY remote jobs because your
| hometown is so small, and hybrid doesn't really make metro
| areas irrelevant, it merely expands their size, much as
| highways and commuter trains once did 50 and 100 or so
| years ago.
| abletonlive wrote:
| sounds like you're living in a bubble. people in NYC are
| out and about socializing. not living like a hermit.
| there's like 50 dance events every weekend.
| asdff wrote:
| Local businesses and restaurants, especially having a lot
| of variety and choice for each, are big draws for big
| cities. I'd thought about moving to suburbia for a larger
| property but I'd really have nothing to do all day beyond
| peter around my larger house. I wouldn't be able to walk to
| all the things I walk to from my place now, from businesses
| and stores but also hiking and parks, and especially
| informal city stuff like the people selling tacos or fruit
| on the sidewalk. I would miss out on a lot of hobbies I
| engage in that wouldn't be well supported in an area with a
| smaller population. Tons of little services I rely on only
| really work at scale with a big city population, both from
| private companies and services offered by the city itself
| (like the free compost program I exploit heavily).
|
| This is all stuff I've been doing or using constantly even
| with the pandemic. Some stuff like taking advantage of
| public amenities like hiking trails have become an even
| stronger habit of mine, thanks to the pandemic. I'm one to
| opt to walk to the local store, feel a product in my hands
| and decide to buy it, vs ordering from Amazon, something
| you can only do if you live somewhere dense enough to
| sustain these local stores. Even getting an uber to come
| out to a Columbus suburb is going to be a process; they are
| probably going to just deny your ride if you aren't doing
| an easy couple mile bar hop around OSU or the Short
| North/downtown area or going to the airport.
| taylortrusty wrote:
| This may be true for you but come to any major city and
| there are large events every single night. It's back to
| pre-covid. Every bar in NYC is packed, concerts are back. I
| went to see 4 shows last weekend.
| [deleted]
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| I have been told, but can't verify, that Intel was looking at
| placing this in Texas but that the power grid issues ruled that
| out. Can anyone confirm?
| smashem wrote:
| Excellent. Hope it works out long-term.
| devwastaken wrote:
| I don't know of anyone whom would want to move to Ohio for such a
| job. No point in making big dollars for complicated work when
| where you live is... _Ohio_. The state anyone in tech desperately
| tries to leave.
|
| By trying to go for maximum welfare they're shooting themselves
| in the foot. There's a balance, saving 10bn means nothing if your
| company can't get the right people. Intel's problem is they had
| the wrong people.
| thoughtpalette wrote:
| Growing up in Michigan and moving to Chicago (12 years), I sort
| of felt the same. Recently visited Cincinnati though and it was
| kind of amazing. Little town in a "valley", Nice river front,
| people and shops were nice. Good downtown feeling. Would def
| consider it a low cost of living place on my radar now.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'm guessing you've never been to Columbus and have little idea
| on what it's like there.
|
| Plenty of people go to top schools in that part of the country
| for their PhD. If they're willing to spend 5-7 years doing
| that, I can see them willing to work there.
|
| Also, if people moved to the middle of nowhere in New York to
| work for GF, or Burlington, VT - I think they'll be OK with
| Columbus.
| MathYouF wrote:
| I was born and partially raised in Columbus and Ohio in
| general. I defintiely left for the coast as soon as I could
| get a job that allowed it. So there's at least certain people
| they're describing the motivations of correctly.
|
| That said, there are many who are happy to live there. I do
| wonder how many young and truly brilliant engineers are on
| that list, but maybe their presence won't be required on
| site? It's not an exciting place to be young and dynamic when
| compared to the big cities on the coasts.
|
| The quality of life though, especially for someone raising a
| family and looking to build their nest egg, is great. Fresh
| air, relatively low crime, nice large yards and people with
| good Midwestern family values (might not be the "values"
| someone from San Fransisco would prioritize though).
| ianceicys wrote:
| I don't know where you get the idea "anyone in tech desperately
| tries to leave." I'm on the East Coast currently, but I'd love
| to move to Ohio. Cost of Living / Work-Life Integration is
| pretty compelling from several friends I've had who have moved
| to the Columbus area from Cali in the past 3-4 years for senior
| tech positions.
|
| When 150k achieves a 400k lifestyle from Cali...and you start
| having a family..it's hard to not to at least pronder the idea.
|
| This will be good for the midwest, for intel, and for the
| United States.
| nmitchko wrote:
| You might be underestimating the number of people who would
| return to the workforce for jobs like this.
| et15 wrote:
| There are definitely downsides to Ohio - namely, political- and
| weather-related. However, Columbus is a pretty big tech city
| with a lot of startups, VC money flowing, and a student
| pipeline from OSU.
| steve76 wrote:
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Dayton Hamfest.
| bufbupa wrote:
| Careful, I think your biases are showing. To assert that nobody
| wants to live in Ohio is an incredibly myopic worldview. I can
| think of loads of people that would love to work in tech
| without the big city living, or the high prices that come with
| it.
| brewdad wrote:
| Ohio is the 7th largest state by population and 10th in
| population density. It's also continuing to grow in population,
| especially around Columbus, unlike some other Rust Belt states.
| Whether they "want to" or not, LOTS of people live in Ohio and
| Columbus is arguably it's most vibrant city thanks to being the
| capital and home of its flagship university.
|
| I'm a UMich grad, so am not allowed to live in Ohio, but I can
| see its appeal for some.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > I'm a UMich grad, so am not allowed to live in Ohio, but I
| can see its appeal for some.
|
| You'll get looks if people know you're an alum from that
| school up north, but you should be OK.
|
| Beat Michigan!
|
| For those not in the know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich
| igan%E2%80%93Ohio_State_fo...
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=OSU+cross+out+M&iax=images&.
| ..
| rayusher wrote:
| For a single person yes but if you have family Ohio is a nice
| place to live. That's why Dave Chappelle's decided to live out
| there.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Dave Chappelle lives on a 60 acre farm... that's a nice place
| to live in any state
| belval wrote:
| This is a bit of a weird take to me. I don't know anything
| about Ohio (maybe it's a shit hole) but large investment will
| raise the living standards. California is beautiful, diverse
| and whatnot, but it's not like there is something in the air
| that makes it that way. The influx of people and capital is
| what makes it special. Same for NY and most higher density
| areas.
| vavooom wrote:
| "largest investment in Ohio's history" "the largest semiconductor
| manufacturing location on the planet"
|
| What is it that makes Ohio such a key and ideal place for such a
| massive investment? I assume there must be an abundance of energy
| + work force + land available that makes this possible, as well
| as a foundation built up by the Rust Belt.
|
| Could the Rust Belt go Silicon?
| blihp wrote:
| Tax breaks + cheap land + low cost local labor + business
| friendly local government + good PR. Geographically it's
| reasonably centrally located from a transportation standpoint
| to the rest of the U.S. and has access to lots of water.
| jaystraw wrote:
| New Albany seems situated nicely for domestic distribution, and
| also European distribution as it's about 150 miles from
| Cleaveland. Maybe there's another port it's closer to, I don't
| know much about Ohio. But if Intel can get chips to Europe more
| quickly than its Asian rivals, I can see that being a boon for
| them.
| justin66 wrote:
| The site where they are building is half an hour away from an
| international airport, Columbus is a shipping hub, and it's
| tied in well with the interstate highway system. With all due
| respect to the Port of Cleveland, which is mostly focused on
| raw materials and heavy machinery as far as I can tell, that
| stuff is probably more of a factor.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Ohio has a good mix. It's in a low cost of living area with a
| business friendly climate, being economically depressed, Intel
| gets lots of perks. Workforce is cheaper than elsewhere due to
| lower COL. There's lots of water nearby. And, there's the
| potential for talent with the many universities in the area.
| titzer wrote:
| That and incredible tax breaks.
|
| I'm originally from neighboring Indiana. The midwest should
| have figured this out long ago, but political corruption, the
| coal lobby, and a lack of imagination has really blinkered the
| long-term planning there.
| vgeek wrote:
| New Albany has _a lot_ of corporate headquarters relative to
| the size of the city, even when you exclude the Les Wexner
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner) companies. Big
| Lots, Red Roof Inn and Bob Evans are the most prominent, but
| there are lots of other major companies with measurable
| presence (one of the two AWS US-EAST-2 DCs & a FB DC), too.
| From looking at the town's operating plan, The New Albany
| Company (a planned community, where Wexner & friends have/can
| buy up all of the swampy farmland they want and grow the city
| limits as necessary) already have lots of land (both for C&I
| and residential) and can offer tax breaks/rebates that can't
| be matched for corporations, instead relying more on the
| taxes from the residential developments of $500k+ homes
| (probably 1.5-2x MSA median) in the area (if you want to see
| a gerrymandered map, look up New Albany-- it is very
| deliberate in excluding multi-family developments from the
| city limits).
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| While I think that chipset factories require some valuable tech
| skills, much of the work is factory-based skilled labor work
| that is usually low to middle-class income. Ohio is probably
| ideal for this work because they have had a lot of factory
| closures where cost-of-living is a lot cheaper than West coast,
| and $35-40k per annum is considered good income to a lot of
| people there.
| alsaaro wrote:
| It's land.
|
| This plant is being built in a rural community right outside of
| Columbus.
| dqpb wrote:
| Finally.
| jet777 wrote:
| I so wish they would've picked Cleveland over Columbus
| justin66 wrote:
| I assume the deal with Intel was negotiated by the state
| government and so Cleveland was never in the running, but it
| must be said, the City of Cleveland has traditionally had a
| knack for repelling businesses that are interested in making
| big moves into the city. Progressive and Eaton both wanted to
| be headquartered downtown, instead of out in the burbs.
|
| An Intel fab in the City of Cleveland proper is something to
| contemplate, but I doubt very much that it was ever a
| possibility. You'd probably want to locate such a thing further
| out in the county.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Bigger than these 5 monstrosities?
|
| http://shorturl.at/yHLW2
| mungoman2 wrote:
| How do the economics work here? Intel's market cap is $215B.
| mNovak wrote:
| Lots of long term debt, like any other capital project. The
| $100B number is purely speculative, if the project grows over
| 50 years; they can build the first functional fab for $10B.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Intel is fabulously profitable and throws off $12B a year of
| free cash flow, most of these projects take 5-10Y. That's
| $60-120B investment without borrowing, which - well, capital is
| cheap at the moment.
| selectodude wrote:
| The market cap of Intel is so low because their cost of growth
| is so expensive.
| gok wrote:
| Debt
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Gratuitous subsidies from the US government.
|
| Also this is a great move in my eyes. Intel's HQ is on the West
| Coast and I imagine that they lose out on at least some portion
| of East Coast talent as a result. Hopefully this allows them to
| have the best of both worlds.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Design work doesn't need to be done close to the fab. Intel
| seems to be effectively splitting into two companies -- a fab
| company and a design company.
|
| I don't think there are two worlds, either, unless you think
| that LA, SF and Seattle also constitute worlds unto
| themselves.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| The US gov is seriously _under investing_ compared to it 's
| peers. South Korea is spending nearly 9 times more with their
| $450Bn pledged gov investment into Semiconductors[0] compared
| to America's investment of $52Bn with the CHIPS Act[1]
|
| [0]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Sou
| th-K... [1]:
| https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/14/heres-what-
| yo...
| [deleted]
| vgeek wrote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1032019.Bad_Samaritans
|
| This is a good book that goes through how economies develop
| and the role of State Owned/sponsored Enterprises are
| helpful in developing a nation's technology competencies.
| The author uses South Korea as a few of his examples, too.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If you spend $6 billion a year for 15 years, that's $90 billion
| which is almost the same as $100 billion. Even better is if you
| spend less than that but attribute other costs to it over the
| years, so that you get lots of tax breaks for bringing jobs to
| the area.
| burkaman wrote:
| Well, it's a $20 billion investment that "could grow to $100
| billion". And either way it's going to be spread out over
| several years.
| asimpletune wrote:
| The initial investment is only 20B, and spending that money
| won't hurt their market cap because it's shifting money into
| new assets, which would be considered part of their valuation.
| ineedasername wrote:
| With all of this recent chip investment, would anyone with more
| familiarity with the industry care to comment about how much this
| is driven by:
|
| 1) pre-existing long term plans
|
| 2) more recent supply chain bottlenecks
|
| 3) Some combination of 1 & 2
|
| Bonus: How China may figure into the equation
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Thanks to communism! fully funded by the state!
|
| As for the location, guess we'll have chip shortage during the
| winter
| tommydoesntknow wrote:
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| "Up to $100B". Okay. I planned on spending up to $100B for my
| wife's Christmas present. I actually ended up spending $75 + tax.
| tyrfing wrote:
| It's 20B with expansion options on 2,000 acres. Leading edge
| fabs just cost an incredible amount of money, it's basically in
| chunks of 10B at a time.
|
| Here's the Time article: https://time.com/6140476/intel-
| building-factory-ohio/
| [deleted]
| jeremyjh wrote:
| The initial investment is $20B according to the article.
| sidlls wrote:
| This isn't very charitable. When companies publish this sort of
| thing they're generally committed (however tentatively) to
| within some reasonable percentage of the amount. Provided of
| course it makes financial sense after further diligence and the
| like.
| shoyer wrote:
| Foxconn once said it would spend $10B building a factory in
| Wisconsin. Now the claim is $672M -- over next six years:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_in_Wisconsin
|
| We'll believe it when it happens.
| sidlls wrote:
| Anyone who believes anything said by a company from that
| region with respect to investments in the western world was
| always in for a surprise. It's best to assume they think
| we're all fat, dumb, lazy, and easily duped, and assume
| they'll act accordingly.
| Aperocky wrote:
| It's a race to the bottom, once an unspoken rule has been
| broken it will stay that way forever.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't think you can generalize between these deals when:
|
| 1. The semiconductor companies on one side of the table are
| very different: Taiwanese company mostly employing in China
| versus a US company. National cultures around commitments
| and deals vary.
|
| 2. The politicians on the other side of the table are very
| different. Scott Walker and Donald Trump with the Wisconsin
| deal and Mike DeWine in Ohio.
| katbyte wrote:
| Not sure Foxconn va intel is a great comparison.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I wonder if big workforce investments like this in states like
| Ohio and Texas will eventually impact political leanings in the
| immediate area... will be interesting to see if anything's
| changed 10 years in
| hardolaf wrote:
| These are mostly blue-collar/striped-blue-and-white-collar
| jobs. So no, not really. Fabs are also giant ecological
| disasters. I wouldn't be surprised if Columbus was chosen over
| Cleveland because the different rules the Ohio EPA has based on
| localized pollution.
| ericmay wrote:
| Really disappointed in many of the negative and insecure comments
| coming from members of this community saying "Ohio sucks" or
| "Ohio State University sucks because it's not Stanford" or "how
| many startups does Ohio have". It really reflects poorly on those
| making these comments and I can't help but think seeing a state
| not on the east or west coast being selected is causing fear and
| uncertainty in the lives of those who wrap up their personality
| in being in California or something.
|
| People in Ohio are excited about this and all of the negativity,
| frankly, is just unwelcome.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Oddly, my mental autocomplete filled in 'white elephant' before
| the parser got to 'chip plant'.
| ksec wrote:
| Intel said the same thing for Arizona as well. Initial $20B
| investment which could expand to $100B. So they are building it
| in two places. I wonder why they dont keep it all in Arizona? (
| May be Tax Break, but I have no idea how Tax Break works in US )
|
| And if you include their (expected) expansion in EUR, Intel is
| layering the foundation for Foundry Services. Compared to its
| half assed Custom Foundry in 2012/2013 with little to zero CapEx
| increase. Foundry Services 2.0 is very _real_.
|
| Note: Investor Notes from ASML are also interesting, suggesting
| Intel may be ahead in terms of High-NA EUV orders. Initial
| shipment expected in 2023.
| flybrand wrote:
| > why not all AZ?
|
| Game theory between US states playing to get the most gov't
| assistance?
|
| Finite pool of talent? Our plants are in rural areas and
| everyone is struggling to hire, from auto to bakeries.
| SemAntics0 wrote:
| The Great Lakes region has a surprising concentration of
| advanced manufacturing skillsets. With large manufacturing
| facilities with extremely stringent quality standards like a
| bleeding edge chip fab there's going to be a enormous need
| for people with traditional manufacturing-specific support
| skillsets that are simply not available in large quantities
| anywhere else in the US.
|
| If the current administration's support of the transition to
| electric vehicles doesn't falter, that's going to drive an
| increasing need for microprocessors in vehicles. Intel
| locating themselves in central Ohio puts their production
| facilities on an interstate highway hub that puts them within
| a 6-12 hour drive of nearly every major auto manufacturing
| facility in the US, which is an enormous incentive for the
| auto manufacturers to source from them. Additionally,
| Columbus has the Rickenbacker International Airport which is
| a dedicated air freight airport that lets them get their
| product global faster.
|
| This announcement of two facilities makes me think that
| Phoenix is going to be a smaller facility handling the more
| advanced, smaller run chip designs, but host the R&D and
| design offices (To take advantage of the city's concentration
| of tech talent) while Columbus is going to be the primary
| production facility.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| the only thing an ev actually needs chips for is charge
| controllers which can be old fab tech, and motor
| controllers which aren't normal silicon or tiny feature
| size. Tesla is using silicon carbide, and gallium arsenide
| will probably be next.
|
| The Bollinger takes this route of minimalism. Ironically,
| an EV has less reliance on processing than a modern ICE
| vehicle.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| I think it's gallium nitride (GaN), not gallium arsenide
| (GaAs).
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Automotive EE here...
|
| > the only thing an ev actually needs chips for is charge
| controllers which can be old fab tech, and motor
| controllers
|
| I wish I had the time to explain how this could not be
| more wrong.
|
| Quickly, I'll mention that the vehicle I'm working on has
| 8 separate modules for the driver's seat. Inside these
| modules are a combined total of 10 processors with as
| many bootloaders and flash procedures and validation
| records and crypto and peripheral drivers, 17 CAN-FD
| modules, 6 system basis chips, 9 switching power supplies
| with a number of accessory LDO supplies, at least 40 more
| "chips" of various functions and capacities... for _just_
| the driver's seat alone
|
| The steering wheel buttons for radio left and right side
| and the cruise control comprise 3 modules and power
| supplies and etc etc.
|
| >The Bollinger takes this route of minimalism.
| Ironically, an EV has less reliance on processing than a
| modern ICE vehicle.
|
| I know what you are trying to say, but it is largely
| incorrect. The EVs still have "engine" control modules
| and powertrain systems. Instead of figuring out injector
| pulse widths, they're calculating deliverable torque. The
| ABS/brake controllers are more complex, the battery
| heating and cooling systems require modules and
| processing, the HVAC, the transmission, steering systems,
| everything is more complex compared to ICE with an old
| ample supply of hydraulics and coolants and a simple fuel
| that is stable and usable at all storage temps fed into a
| mechanical device.
|
| I'm not trying to be confrontational, but you couldn't be
| more wrong about automotive electronics.
| vel0city wrote:
| The previous poster is definitely massively
| oversimplifying things, and I do value your input as
| someone who actually works in the field. Obviously,
| there's still a lot of the same kind of controllers when
| it comes to all the switches and displays and motorized
| chairs and turn signal logic and all of those things
| which are practically the exact same as an ICE. And
| obviously there's some places where you don't need
| controllers and sensors on an EV where you would have
| them on an ICE, like mass airflow sensors and fuel
| injection controls and stuff like that. Meanwhile you do
| have additional circuitry like the inverters to actually
| drive the motors, BMS systems, there's still sensors on
| the motors and wheels and what not, brake regen, etc.
|
| You mentioned the transmission is more complex compared
| to an ICE, but that does not make much sense to me at
| all. To my knowledge most EVs are essentially fixed gear
| ratio gearboxes, so you're either in drive, reverse, or
| neutral. Meanwhile ICE transmissions are becoming more
| and more like computer-controlled manual transmissions
| what with the rise in popularity of dual-clutch automatic
| transmissions. To me it seems a _ton_ more complicated
| keeping track of operating that DCT than just "the dial
| is in D, change transmission to the forward mode."
| bbreier wrote:
| Also the infotainment. And real questions because I'm
| genuinely curious: do driver assists (ABS, ASR, TCS) and
| their adjustments rely on processors? What about in-car
| adjustments to suspension height, ride firmness, throttle
| response (e.g. eco vs sport vs comfort modes)? Lane keep
| assist, blind spot checking, adaptive cruise control all
| seem like things that would require processing power as
| well.
| nradov wrote:
| Most current vehicles use separate embedded
| microcontrollers for those features. In principle it's
| possible to build a car with a single powerful processor
| controlling everything, but the engineering becomes far
| more challenging and you need a higher level of vertical
| integration on the parts supply chain. There are also
| safety risks: you don't want an LKA code defect to cause
| a TCS failure. And wiring harness would have to grow to
| carry all the separate data signals.
|
| Tesla is partially going the integration route but they
| still have many separate processors in the car.
| totalZero wrote:
| > do driver assists (ABS, ASR, TCS) and their adjustments
| rely on processors?
|
| If I'm not mistaken, microprocessors aren't the only
| semiconductor components that have been in short supply
| recently. Things like shaft position sensors are also
| solid-state devices.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The only infotainment a car needs is interfacing with
| CarPlay/Android Auto.
| hnov wrote:
| Even headlights and brake pedals (brake by wire) have ICs
| in them these days, I doubt getting rid of a PCM will
| make an EV less IC heavy.
| hnov wrote:
| Do EVs not have all of the ancillaries hanging off CANBUS
| or something? Or is the lion's share of chips in an ICE
| vehicle engine and transmission control?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Of course.
|
| There isn't an EV in the world that is less complex than
| it's ICE counterpart. GP is very mistaken. I wrote a
| longer explanation above.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I was surprised to learn Minnesota has a fab that's
| critical to the US govt! They are one of the only secure
| trusted chip makers.
|
| Growing up there I had no idea. My dad loved to talk up
| MMM, Honeywell, Monsanto and a bunch of other legacy
| companies in MN that still play huge roles that I have
| overlooked.
|
| Just one article at top of search I found even talks about
| the public-private partnerships (tax & other incentives)
|
| https://www.aroundosceola.com/news/skywater-seeks-dod-
| approv...
| missedthecue wrote:
| Ohio is situated on the great lakes and therefore has a lot
| of cheaply available water, while Arizona does not. Chip
| production is water intensive. Not to mention the vast
| expanses of cheap land, and their electricity costs are
| pretty low as well.
|
| These could be reasons.
| ksec wrote:
| Modern Fabs can recycle its water usage by up to 90%.
| Electricity cost for Business in both state seems to be
| about the same. Land are cheap as well ( From what I have
| been told ).
|
| You do get operational efficiency from having Fabs all
| located within one place. And that is a quote from TSMC's
| ex-CEO Morris Chang. That is why I wonder if there is
| something missing. Or is it the simplest explanation Not to
| put all eggs in one basket.
| vasili111 wrote:
| > Or is it the simplest explanation Not to put all eggs
| in one basket.
|
| I think this is important part. If something happens to
| one site (problem with electricity, etc) other will work.
|
| Also, it maybe easier to find workforce that way.
|
| Also it will be good for development for that regions.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Arguments can be made that TSMC's choice to consolidate
| locations is part of the reason that we have a semi
| shortage right now (concentrated water shortage risk,
| concentrated worker illness risk, etc. etc.)
| pradn wrote:
| All this sounds irrelevant when an ASML machine costs $100
| million a pop.
| vasili111 wrote:
| > ASML machine costs
|
| It seems that cost maybe around $300 million each:
| https://whbl.com/2022/01/19/intel-orders-asml-machine-
| still-...
| dralley wrote:
| Those are the new high-NA EUV machines. The current gen
| ones are more in the range of 150 million.
| adventured wrote:
| It's political distribution, to be called upon as needed.
| Same reason NASA is sprawled the way it is.
|
| You can more easily get numerous Senators to go to bat for
| you and your various causes (Arizona is a growth state,
| Ohio still has a lot of clout (not as much as CA, TX, FL
| obviously)).
| jdhn wrote:
| They're building the plant near Columbus, which isn't near
| the Great Lakes. If they wanted Great Lakes water they
| would've chosen Cleveland, which is very close to Lake
| Erie.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Semantically, damning water in the Great Lakes Watershed
| (how Columbus get's its water) is not THAT different from
| letting that water flow into Lake Erie and then piping it
| back.
|
| Point being, Ohio has very few long-term drought
| concerns.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| There are actually extremely specific and intense rules
| about which parts of the country can take water from the
| great lakes and what burdens they incur when they do.
|
| It's not necessarily aligned with any specific
| jurisdictions either, I believe it's largely based on the
| boundaries of the watersheds. Or at least where the
| boundary was ascertained to be at some point.
|
| So yes it's very different, regardless of the
| semantics(?).
| kesselvon wrote:
| The idea that the Great Lakes are going to be tapped to
| solve water problems outside the watershed is fall flat
| when they realize those Great Lakes states aren't going
| to sell off access like that.
|
| I remember some moonshot proposal to pipe the water to
| the Southwest, which is wild.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| There might be redirecting (or excessive drawing) of
| tributaries though.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| It's surprising, actually, how small the Great Lakes
| watershed is, compared to the surface area of the lakes.
| You really aren't going to get much of anything from
| tributaries; if you want some of the water you draw it
| from the lakes.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Semantically, damning water in the Great Lakes
| Watershed (how Columbus get's its water)
|
| Wrong. Columbus gets most of its water from the Scioto
| River, part of the Ohio/Mississippi River watershed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scioto_River
|
| You might be thinking about Cleveland instead, but I
| don't think anyone dares drink from the Cuyahoga River,
| since its had a history of catching fire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Akron's reservoir is on the Cuyahoga River just North of
| Kent. Though this is far upstream from "catching fire"
| location.
|
| https://www.akronohio.gov/cms/Water/Watershed_Cuyahoga/in
| dex...
| todfox wrote:
| Columbus is not in the Lake Erie watershed. It is in the
| Ohio River watershed. The Great Lakes Compact does not
| allow Columbus to get its water from Lake Erie.
| graycat wrote:
| > Cleveland, which is very close to Lake Erie.
|
| It's on the shore of Lake Erie. If it were any closer to
| Lake Erie it would be underwater!
|
| Lake Erie is not so far from Columbus: When I was a prof
| at Ohio State, my wife and I would go to Lake Erie just
| for a pleasant Saturday afternoon. So we'd go to
| Cleveland, ..., Sandusky, etc.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Are you from California? It rains a ton in that part of
| the country, water is not scarce. It's hard for
| Californians to wrap their heads around but water is not
| universally rare.
| pkulak wrote:
| Yeah, but they are building in Columbus.
| jandrese wrote:
| I thought that while chip production uses a lot of water,
| the water is mostly not consumed in the process and due to
| environmental regulation the water has to be cleaned at the
| plant so they form a closed loop system. It takes a lot of
| water when the plant is built, but after that it requires
| only a small amount of water to continue running.
| brewdad wrote:
| Water in AZ is some of the cheapest in the country. At
| least until Lake Powell runs dry. Not a bad idea to spread
| the risks around however.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| When you look at Lake Mead and Lake Powell lately it
| seems they are well on the path to running dry.
| xxpor wrote:
| No wonder they grow all that lettuce in Yuma.
|
| Seems extremely stupid from a long term perspective, but
| what do I know. I'm just a software guy.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| They grow lettuce in Yuma during the winter because it's
| warm enough to grow it there during the winter. Something
| around 90% of the USA's winter grown leafy greens produce
| comes from Yuma.
| xxpor wrote:
| Why not florida?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _At least until Lake Powell runs dry_
|
| Which is coming a lot quicker than anyone expected. It's
| why all of the cities and water authorities hooked up to
| Powell and the other Colorado River reservoirs are in
| panic mode these days.
|
| Just a few weeks ago, the various states came to an
| agreement about cutting water use. Lake Mead is at
| historic lows. There are mandatory federal restrictions
| either in effect, or about to start.
| [deleted]
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The Intel plant in AZ plant is in Chandler, which is more
| suburban than rural - it can draw on much of the Phoenix
| Metro population (4.5million) for hiring.
| uoaei wrote:
| Sucking the Colorado river dry probably has a lot to do with
| it.
|
| Taiwan was (is still?) in a drought and semiconductor
| manufacturing requires so much fresh water that TSMC was
| bringing in huge tanks on ships from the mainland.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Our plants are in rural areas and everyone is struggling to
| hire, from auto to bakeries.
|
| This is a solved problem isn't it? Just pay people more and
| treat them with dignity and respect. The pandemic has given a
| lot of people the opportunity to realize that they do not
| have to settle for poorly paid jobs that treat people poorly.
| You should have realized and adjusted by now. If you cannot
| accommodate to these requirements, then you have no place in
| this market anymore. Just close up shop and move on.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I agree about the game theory/race to the bottom as an
| incentive. I think there are more great reasons compounding
| these decisions that others point out too.
|
| Large corporations love to hold cities and states hostage and
| make them bid against each other. AMZN is a great example
| with their campus 2 bidding war. I am glad NY had the cajones
| to stand up to them.
|
| Most cities and states even have dedicated EcoDevo staff to
| actively seek out these companies.
|
| Cities and states compete to give the largest tax benefits,
| usually something like you don't have to pay ___ taxes for __
| years (like 10, worth tens of millions). Plus they'll spend
| on infrastructure and give preferential zoning, city regs,
| etc.
|
| Sure having more jobs probably creates more incoming/housing
| taxes for the city.
|
| But states like Texas win this race to the bottom (TSLA and
| Musk personally) and in my opinion the costs of these
| corporate incentives (imho handouts) are just passed along to
| citizens in the cost of less societal services and needs,
| less school funding, less everything. Just a funnel up.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Musk may be an outlier. He is part of a collective of
| libertarian techbros who have taken what they can out of
| California and are now looking for a new set of suckers.
| Texas has a history of playing second fiddle to California
| so they were an obvious choice.
|
| Yes other tech companies are also moving to Austin and I
| think that is more a sign of some millennials and other
| young professionals opting to leave California for a lower
| cost reasonably sane area. Its still does not seem like
| massive California sized numbers though. We just have to
| wait and see. I'm still long California though.
| unchocked wrote:
| National security considerations encourage geographic
| dispersal of strategic assets.
| ksec wrote:
| Here is a much better article from Anandtech
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/17221/intel-announces-ohio-fa...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I wonder why they dont keep it all in Arizona?_
|
| Maybe water?
|
| I've read a bunch of newspaper articles from that region
| recently about how people in Arizona and New Mexico are getting
| very pissy about water going to new industries. And from what I
| read on HN, chip manufacturing needs lots of water.
|
| One thing Ohio seems to have plenty of is water. At least
| compared to places like Arizona.
| qsmi wrote:
| Increasing supply chain resiliency by having multiple,
| geographically separated, sites this more of a thing now.
|
| https://hbr.org/2020/09/global-supply-chains-in-a-post-pande...
|
| "The obvious way to address heavy dependence on one medium-risk
| or high-risk source (a single factory, supplier, or region) is
| to add more sources in locations not vulnerable to the same
| risks."
| sanp wrote:
| also, resiliency against adverse action in the Senate. they
| now have 4 senators who are unlikely to vote on anything
| damaging to Intel
| KoftaBob wrote:
| That's similar to the method defense contractors use, they
| spread out their manufacturing locations to have influence
| over as many politicians as possible.
| azemetre wrote:
| This is an interesting point I never thought of before. Now
| I wonder if the tech giants would have faired better
| politically if they weren't all co-located in one of the
| most politically polarizing areas of the country.
| vel0city wrote:
| It is a part of the reason why all the big government
| contractors are spread out all over the place. Even
| around a single metro area they'll have different offices
| in different congressional districts.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| If you are on the winning end of that bloat life is pure
| happiness and joy. But if you are on the losing end (ie.
| not employed/a beneficiary of these firms) then you are
| paying dearly for the joy that others have.
| brewdad wrote:
| 6. Intel is the largest private employer in Oregon as well.
| dfsegoat wrote:
| Right. Interesting take on that below re: Taiwan/TSMC, etc:
|
| https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/32482-the-world-
| is...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back_
|
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/manufacturing-jobs-are-...
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| What is the meaning of this comment? Are you highlighting the
| article title because you think that it's incorrect in the
| context of this fab being built? Fabs like this are automated
| to the greatest extent possible, and the remaining jobs are
| mostly high-skill. The article makes this point directly.
|
| > Here's the problem: Whether or not those manufacturing jobs
| could have been saved, they aren't coming back, at least not
| most of them. How do we know? Because in recent years,
| factories have been coming back, but the jobs haven't. Because
| of rising wages in China, the need for shorter supply chains
| and other factors, a small but growing group of companies are
| shifting production back to the U.S. But the factories they
| build here are heavily automated, employing a small fraction of
| the workers they would have a generation ago.
| dmead wrote:
| they aren't making tube socks.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I've actually been considering a move to Ohio this June. Any
| suggestions for whetr in Ohio I should look? My main
| consideration is low CoL as I work remotely but I'd like there to
| be stuff to do within a reasonable driving distance.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| If you are looking at Northern Ohio, Strongsville, North
| Royalton, Solon, Perrysburg, Parma Heights, Massillion all are
| decent places.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Parma/Parma Heights has the reputation of being the "Staten
| Island" of Cleveland FYI
| gaoshan wrote:
| Columbus. I moved to Ohio from Florida some years back and do
| not regret it at all. I get so much more for my money that it
| feels like a cheat code.
|
| Move to Columbus and look into the various suburban
| communities. A fantastic one that is up and coming (though it's
| really getting quite far along that arc) is called Grandview.
| Leafy, compact, cute, cool shops, bike paths and restaurants
| and only 10 minutes from downtown, even in traffic. There are
| many more so do dig in and look around. I live in the greater
| Cleveland area and it's also good... just not Columbus good. If
| you want space look to the northern suburbs. There are a number
| that are extremely nice.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Cleveland has older and higher quality cultural institutions
| on your doorstep if that sort of thing is your jam.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Looking at a 5 bedroom home and the prices seem just in line
| with Miami prices here in West Kendall (3000 sq feet). Where
| are you looking that feels like a cheat code?
| gaoshan wrote:
| I just checked 5 bedroom homes in Kendall and the cheapest
| on the first page of results was just under $800k. The
| average (first 6 results on Realtor.com) is $1,029,333.
| With Columbus you have to check the various neighborhoods
| (like Kendall is to Miami) so checking one of the nicer
| ones (Dublin) I see 4 in the $600k range with an average of
| the first 6 results of $837,283. That makes Dublin (a
| suburb of Columbus with top schools and higher than average
| incomes) quite a bit cheaper in the huge house arena.
|
| Kendall's average household income is $73,612 while
| Dublin's is $137,867. If I picked a neighborhood with an
| equivalent household income the price difference would be
| even more stark.
| mcdonje wrote:
| Cleveland and Cincinnati have the best architecture and natural
| features.
| jeffbee wrote:
| And spectacular symphony orchestras.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Both Columbus and Cincy are great. Cleveland is iffy and too
| snowy in my opinion
| tonyhb wrote:
| Living in Cincy and it's pretty okay! If you're like me and
| you're coming from the bay then, well, you need a car. Many
| people that aren't in tech. Smaller town vibes, but that's a
| pretty good thing. Mortgage for a 3/4 bedroom with a garden
| etc. is 1/2 of my SF rent.
| sfotm wrote:
| I'm an Ohio native that's recently moved back to the Columbus
| area myself. I know the area pretty intimately. Happy to
| respond to any questions about the area, as I'd love for
| there to be a larger tech scene around here.
| scruple wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, as another Ohio native who left and
| sometimes thinks of returning, where did you move back to
| Ohio from?
| sfotm wrote:
| I was in Seattle before moving back.
| rybosome wrote:
| Columbus to Seattle was my journey as well, but I have no
| intention of going back. What brought you back to Ohio?
| sfotm wrote:
| A few things, some that are pretty general, and some that
| are pretty specific to my situation.
|
| 1. Family in general plays a large role.
|
| 2. I'm able to make stronger financial moves. Property is
| appreciating relatively quickly in the Columbus area, and
| purchase-cost-to-rent ratios are better here, from the
| investor PoV.
|
| 3. Full remote means that I'm still able to visit Seattle
| for the larger mountaineering trips, etc. that I like to
| take part in while being based out of a lower-CoL area.
| After several years, I was going to have to start taking
| flights to new destinations, anyway.
|
| 4. Opportunity to give back to the communities that gave
| me my start.
|
| And some other factors come in, too. Covid definitely
| reduced my perceived benefit of living in Seattle.
| Nothing's forever though. It's a two-way door.
| 3825 wrote:
| Two questions, does the area have symmetric gigabit fiber?
| If so, how reliable is it in your opinion? If not, what is
| the best option for multiple family members working from
| home?
|
| How are water, electricity, sewage, road condition,
| utilities situation? Any reasons why a work from home
| worker might not want to live there?
| sfotm wrote:
| The internet infrastructure in Columbus isn't on par with
| a lot of the larger cities, and I think you'd have a hard
| time finding the speeds you're looking for, judging by
| what I've found - seems like there's some limited AT&T
| fiber, but it's not widespread. My service is reliable,
| though, and I haven't found bandwidth to be a problem as
| a full-remote employee.
|
| Utilities are solid and seem much less suspect to outages
| compared to Seattle, a city I have a lot of experience
| living in. It's as though having more extreme weather
| more often ensures that the infrastructure is up to a
| certain rigor.
|
| Roads are important here, and are well-maintained and
| addressed (e.g. expect trucks to be salting roads in
| anticipation for snow storms). Roads are also incredibly
| well-laid out in an inner/outer belt system that I miss
| when driving in other cities.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I am very happy in Columbus. I hear Cleveland has better
| nightlife, but I came from up that way and the snow
| difference between Columbus and Cleveland is huge. I do not
| miss it.
| justin66 wrote:
| Has snowplow service improved at all in Columbus? I was
| always struck by how bad it was compared to Cleveland. They
| got less snow, but dealt with the snow they got pretty
| badly.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I spent a few days in Cincinnati on our baseball tour a few
| years ago and had a great time. Seemed to have a city/small
| town vibe, and is a days drive from Chicago or Atlanta.
|
| Don't know the area terribly well, but it seemed like a place
| that we wanted to "get to know" better.
|
| My family also really liked Pittsburgh.
| twoquestions wrote:
| Toledo's pretty good too, and there's a bunch of smaller cities
| around that have already shrunk as much as they're going to.
| Roads are decent too, even though everyone complains about the
| construction (until they take a trip through Michigan).
|
| Be careful going too cheap, as the rural parts have utterly
| terrible Internet service. A buddy of mine can't even play Deep
| Rock Galactic with us and his Discord calls sound robotic.
| reaperducer wrote:
| When people ask me about Ohio, I always whole-hartedly
| recommend Cincinnati.
|
| But then you added "stuff to do within a reasonable driving
| distance," and I think that tips the scales in favor of
| Cleveland.
|
| And if you want to leave the car at home, you can take Amtrak
| from Cleveland to New York, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia,
| Baltimore, and D.C.
|
| I still love Cincinnati, but until international flying gets
| back in order, it's not an ideal starting point for adventure.
| hardolaf wrote:
| I mean, you can take the Amtrak from Cleveland to Chicago...
| but it leaves at like 3:30 AM which is why I never take
| Amtrak to Cleveland to visit my family from Chicago.
| mc32 wrote:
| Isn't Cincinnati excessively humid? On the other hand I hear
| the winters are cold but they lift pretty quick and don't
| linger on.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Humid, yes. Excessively so? Not compared to a lot of other
| places in America. Houston. Louisiana. Florida. Coastal
| Carolinas. I guess it depends on how well your particular
| body handles humidity.
|
| Cincinnati has fairly mild winters compared with the rest
| of Ohio. A meteorologist there explained it to me once. I
| think something about being in a valley, and the rivers
| (Ohio and Little Miami) moderate things a bit.
|
| He said in weather circles, it's sometimes called "the
| banana belt of Ohio."
| kragen wrote:
| Moving to Ohio was one of the worst decisions I made in my
| life. Dayton is proud of its history of innovation but most of
| the innovators left for California 50 years ago where
| innovation was allowed. What's left is the lumbering
| bureaucracies and sprawling empires that grew from the
| innovators' products: NCR, the GM plant, Otis.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Aside from Cal, which other State(s) do you consider to be at
| least growing a culture of innovation? Just curious because
| might move to US from Canada in the future.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Minnesota's twin cities plus Rochester. Excellent place if
| you're interested in biomedical, health care technology
| innovation. Top ranked companies headquartered there, a
| great university, the Mayo Clinic. Really top notch.
|
| But if you're moving from Canada to escape the cold,
| Minnesota is not the place to stop. It's a bit warmer than
| Winnepeg, but colder than Toronto and the rest of Eastern
| Canada by quite a bit.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| Innovation is a function of you and the people you work
| with, not where you live. You should be looking at the team
| you will be working on, not the reputation of a physical
| place or company. If you fail to do that, you will be
| disappointed when the reality inevitably doesn't match the
| hype. Nearly every state has loads of smart and innovative
| people, despite what HN's regional bias would lead you to
| believe. The exception would be the very tiny states, but
| they still have smart people, just fewer of them.
| kragen wrote:
| The people you work with (in person) is to a significant
| extent a function of where you live, though, and what the
| team is allowed to attempt is even more so. Maybe there
| are a hundred smart and innovative fluorine chemists in
| your state, but 30 of them are assholes, 20 retired, 40
| already have jobs too good to hire them away from, and
| the other 10 aren't allowed to do any lab work because of
| NIMBYs or because your legislature associates chemistry
| primarily with _Breaking Bad_. (That 's a big problem in
| California today, but it wasn't 50 years ago.)
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Thanks, sounds reasonable. Although I'll probably look at
| the area too.
| hardolaf wrote:
| Chicago, IL is a hotbed. Boston, MA also is doing great
| these days. Texas and Ohio seem to be in a race to the
| bottom in terms of the types of work they're trying to
| attract.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I'm sure there are more, and I haven't been everywhere, but
| these are ones that stand out to me:
|
| - Greater Boston area (outside of Boston, the high tech
| companies are pretty scattered)
|
| - Chicago (and the North/West suburbs)
|
| - Virginia (Tysons, Alexandria)
|
| - North Carolina (Research Triangle)
|
| - Portland
|
| - Austin
|
| The obvious ones: Bay Area, LA, NYC, Seattle area
|
| If you're into specific industries, then there are areas
| that are more focused than others.
| ghaff wrote:
| Boston isn't as scattered as it was 20 years ago. A lot
| of pharma and biotech in Kendall Square as well as
| outposts of California companies. And there are various
| startups maybe especially in the Seaport. Amazon has a
| lot of space in the Seaport as well.
|
| But, yes, the computer industry in Massachusetts always
| tended to be in Metrowest and the defense contractors
| were/are out in the suburbs as well.
| kragen wrote:
| Maybe Taiwan, Singapore, and Bangladesh? Canada's pretty
| great too.
| gaoshan wrote:
| The region you live in matters greatly. Take Dayton. It
| doesn't impact me as I have not been anywhere near Dayton in
| all the years I've live in Ohio. Columbus, on the other hand,
| is a really nice city with a great vibe. I'm guessing it
| could be like saying, "Don't move to California. Moving to
| Riverside was the worst decision of my life." The real
| message is don't move to places that are down and out.
| kragen wrote:
| Columbus did seem nicer when I visited. But is it really
| "not down and out"?
| werm82 wrote:
| It's one of only 14 cities in the US to gain 100k
| residents in the last decade.
| kragen wrote:
| What startups has it produced in the last decade? Or,
| more knowably, the decade before that, 02002-02012?
| werm82 wrote:
| CoverMyMeds, Root Insurance, and Olive are a couple of
| unicorns.
| mNovak wrote:
| CoverMyMeds was the recent poster child ($1B exit). Ohio
| has a large focus on insurance and med/biotech.
| PKop wrote:
| Root insurance has been a recent one
|
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rootinsurance
|
| CoverMyMeds another
|
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/covermymeds-com
|
| At least for a Midwest city, investment does seem to be
| picking up
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/columbus-startup-funding-
| skyrocketing...
| kragen wrote:
| That's pretty significant!
| fullstop wrote:
| Most people are trying to move in the opposite direction. With
| that being said, here's a few interesting things about Ohio:
| 1. Vehicle safety inspections are not required 2. It's
| very flat, but their flag is the only non-rectangular state
| flag 3. Due to an oversight (congress never voted --
| oops!), Ohio was not officially admitted to the union until
| 1953.
|
| If you want stuff to do within a reasonable distance you might
| want to look at the eastern side, near Pittsburgh.
| rurp wrote:
| I'm not sure what #1 means. Can you expand on it? I don't
| recall ever putting a car through something like that.
| fullstop wrote:
| Many states require an annual vehicle safety inspection,
| often accompanied by an emissions test.
|
| In Pennsylvania, I have to have my car tested each year.
| They make sure that tire tread depth, remaining brake pads,
| exterior lamps, and windshield wipers are all functional /
| within tolerance. There's other stuff that you can be
| failed for, such as excessive rust, etc.
|
| That's one other thing to know about Ohio. Your car _will_
| rust. It 's a cancer that will slowly eat your car, even if
| you do an undercarriage wash.
| wfleming wrote:
| Some states do an annual safety inspection of vehicles -
| it's usually more or less "do your turn signals, brakes,
| and head lights work". Nowadays some states also need to do
| an emissions check. Some states require it every other
| year, some states I guess don't really require it at all?
| brewdad wrote:
| I had to do an "inspection" when I moved to AZ and first
| registered my car. I dreaded what they might find since
| it was kind of a heap of junk. The inspection consisted
| of making sure the VIN matched up on the various
| locations on the car.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| IDK how many states don't require it, but Indiana, just
| to the west of Ohio, does not require safety inspections
| for personal vehicles. A few counties near Chicago do
| emissions testing I think.
| mNovak wrote:
| Not sure I'd suggest eastern Ohio, that's rural Appalachia, I
| would not recommend for interesting things.
| fullstop wrote:
| I was more suggesting that you leave Ohio to do interesting
| things in the Pittsburgh area.
| geenew wrote:
| Couldn't find much info on the process size in the Reuters
| article, but the Intel press release[0] says this:
|
| " "The Ohio factories are designed for the 'Angstrom era,' with
| support for Intel's most advanced process technologies, including
| Intel 18A."
|
| This[1] doesn't give a transistor density for 18A, but the 20A
| transistor density is greater than the TMSC 3nm, fwiw.
|
| [0]
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...
| [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16823/intel-accelerated-
| offen...
| ksec wrote:
| 18A is consider as 1.8nm in TSMC terms.
| HPsquared wrote:
| 1 A = 0.1 nm, which is roughly the diameter of a hydrogen
| atom.
| tux3 wrote:
| This mandatory comment is your threadly reminder that node
| names are entirely unrelated to any physical dimensions, as
| has been the case for many years now.
|
| You should not interpret node names as meaning anything
| more than a point on the semiconductor roadmap. Nodes that
| share the same names across foundries will not have the
| same performance characteristics, but are usually roughly
| comparable (especially since Intel's new naming scheme).
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Well, there's always a distance between SOMETHING that
| each company can point to, it's just those things are
| constantly changing.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Definitely not entirely unrelated.
| localhost wrote:
| Somewhat related- this reminds me of this recent fact
| that I learned [1] that 1" camera sensors are not 1" in
| any dimension whatsoever. That number is rooted in
| historical diameter of a tube that video camera "sensors"
| were housed in. That tube was 1" in diameter.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/-njHjebtIg4?t=495
| HPsquared wrote:
| CRT monitors and TVs were the same: the advertised size
| was the size of the picture tube, not of the visible
| area.
| qsmi wrote:
| > node names are entirely unrelated to any physical
| dimensions
|
| I agree they're not necessarily related to any particular
| transistor dimension but are you sure it's entirely
| unrelated to any physical dimensions? If so, here is a
| question I have. 28nm, 22nm, 20nm, 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, 5nm,
| 3nm. What progression is that? Why skip 6nm and 4nm?
| dragontamer wrote:
| A "full node" step is 1/2 the area of the previous. Since
| area is dimension-squared, 28 x 28 == ~800 area, while 20
| x 20 == ~400 area.
|
| So 28 -> 20 is a "full node" decrease (ie: twice the
| transistors).
|
| ---------
|
| We can see the full-node step from 14nm -> 10nm as well:
| 14 x 14 == ~200, 10x10 == 100. So its a full node step.
| The next full-node is 7 x 7 == ~50, which is half of 100.
| After 7 comes 5, because 25 is half of 50.
|
| The next full node is sqrt(12.5) or 3.5, smack dab
| between 3 and 4, so not really easy to round.
|
| ---------
|
| The steps in between are "half-node" decrements, where
| you didn't quite achieve a full 1/2 area reduction. An
| incremental technology that represents something in
| between the full node step progression.
| qsmi wrote:
| That's an interesting explanation and somehow I never
| heard it explained that way before. It makes sense if one
| thinks of the transistor count doubling relative to where
| that company previously was, and not where the industry
| is. In the transistor density plot each curve is roughly
| x^2, but with different initial conditions.
|
| https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication
| dragontamer wrote:
| 2^x, not x^2.
|
| x^2 is 1, 4, 9, 16, 25.
|
| 2^x is 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32
| [deleted]
| gaoshan wrote:
| This is actually a brilliant location for them. One of those
| places that has much more going for it than people not from the
| region would realize.
|
| International airport, large rail depot, extremely low cost of
| living and a city/region that has more good restaurants and
| activities than might be expected. Ohio State University is in
| the city and is a huge school that is rapidly growing in academic
| standing. Road transit in the area is also very good allowing
| access to any part of the city from any other part in rapid
| fashion. Good schools, relatively low crime, etc. Probably the
| only drawback, from a lifestyle point of view, would be the
| winter and that's not even that bad, compared to other winter
| regions.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Does it have a sufficiently educated workforce, or can it
| convince enough of one to move there, though?
| gaoshan wrote:
| It has Ohio State University. One of the largest Universities
| in the world (50,000-ish students) and one that has been
| rising in the rankings steadily over the last couple of
| decades. It's quite a decent public school today. There are
| over a dozen colleges and universities right in and around
| the city.
| MichiganHere wrote:
| planetsprite wrote:
| However it's misguided. Cost of labor is still 10x higher than
| a plant with the same productivity in a relatively poorer
| country. American manufacturing is mostly indirect social
| welfare now, it's not economically efficient.
| enkid wrote:
| Is cost of labor really one of the major costs of a
| semiconductor plant? Plants in South Korea and Taiwan are
| economical and they have relatively high labor costs, so I'm
| not sure I buy this.
| vizzier wrote:
| This was my thought as well, chip production has to be so
| necessarily automated to maintain a clean state that it
| feels like the cost of engineers to maintain systems is
| always going to be high, but also a small cost of the
| overall system. I'd love some real numbers.
| bendhoefs wrote:
| It's not like semiconductor plants are using the cheapest
| possible labor they can get their hands on. I imagine there
| are very few people working in semiconductor plants that
| don't have post secondary education.
| N1H1L wrote:
| The midwest has some of the greatest engineering schools in the
| nation. I have been beating this drum hoarse for a few years
| now - but it's true. Specifically, members of the Big 10
| conference are probably the best engineering schools conference
| in the world. Within 300 miles from Columbus (where you have
| Ohio State - Big10), you have Penn State, Michigan, Michigan
| State, UIUC, Indiana, Purdue from the Big 10 along with
| Carnegie Mellon, Case Western and Pitt. Even the state of
| California doesn't have so many so good tech schools.
| kragen wrote:
| CMU, CWRU, UMich, UIUC, and Indiana U are wonderful schools,
| but none of them are in Ohio [correction: I'm an idiot, CWRU
| is]. OSU doesn't belong in that list.
| justin66 wrote:
| I can assure you that CWRU is still in Cleveland, Ohio.
| kragen wrote:
| Ugh, how embarrassing. Of course it is. And it's still a
| great school. Unlike U of Indiana, I _haven 't_ been to
| CWRU. Thank you for the correction.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| Do you know where Don Knuth did his undergrad?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth for the
| answer. Then, he wised up and came out here... ;-)
| kragen wrote:
| Yup! That's where the much-honored Type 650 was.
| justin66 wrote:
| No need for embarrassment but I do wonder where you
| thought it was. :)
|
| One night while struggling with a problem for work I took
| a walk and wandered by where I calculated the IBM 650
| must have been located back in the day, hoping for some
| kind of inspiration, or something. It was a good
| distraction but it did not work at all.
| graycat wrote:
| "U of Indiana"? Used to be called Indiana University (IU)?
| kragen wrote:
| Corrected, thanks, I'm an idiot. And I've actually _been
| there_.
| graycat wrote:
| I was a math grad student at IU. The place had one heck
| of a good music school, say, comparable to the best in
| the world. An Isaac Stern protege, later a concert
| master, violin prof, conductor, etc., put his old Italian
| violin under my left chin, and I was hooked.
|
| Took a violin course; the teacher, one on one, was FAR
| too good for what I needed and later played the Brahms
| concerto in Toronto! According to the rules, at the end
| had to play for the violin faculty, including the former
| concert master of the Cleveland Symphony -- poor guy!
| Eventually I made it through much of the Bach E Major
| Partita and the Chaconne! Great fun! Met my wife.
|
| The math department had some good mathematicians. The
| weekly seminar flew in some of the best mathematicians in
| the world. Later where I got my Ph.D., at a much more
| _famous_ school, the seminars were nowhere near as good.
|
| As a grad student, since I was teaching ugrad courses, I
| got paid, enough actually to live nicely, e.g., eat all
| my meals in restaurants, and save some money!
|
| But I didn't _fit_ into their program: (1) My first
| semester they put me in their abstract algebra course.
| Okay: I 'd done well in a similar course in ugrad school,
| and my ugrad honors paper was on group representations.
| So that I wouldn't have to waste time in the course, the
| prof and I had an unspoken agreement: At the end he gave
| me a little oral exam in his office -- I went through
| some Galois theory! (2) They put me in a topology course,
| from the famous book by Kelley. In the first class, the
| prof said that the homework was to work all the
| exercises! HA! Some of the exercises were notoriously
| difficult! I wondered if HE could work all the exercises!
| Besides, in ugrad school I'd taken a _reading course_
| from that book -- once a week gave a lecture to a prof,
| chapter by chapter, one week on the theorems and the next
| week on the exercises. For the material on Moore-Smith
| convergence, a second prof showed up -- maybe he wanted
| to learn some about that topic! I wrote out solutions to
| about 1 /3rd of the exercises (to be _honest_ not the
| same ~1 /3rd I'd done in ugrad), turned them in at the
| end, and did show for the final exam. (3) They put me in
| a real analysis course. On the first test, with just one
| exercise, in set theory, the prof wanted to "see me after
| class". He had marked my test paper as wrong. Gee, I
| doubt that many students got that exercise. Since the
| previous summer I'd had a course in axiomatic set theory,
| the test was easy for me. When I explained to the prof
| that my notation, I didn't have time on the test to
| define, was standard, he saw that (A) my solution was
| correct and (B), as we both noticed and he confessed, was
| one step shorter than his. I didn't know that prof, had
| never had any interaction with him, but concluded he was
| for whatever reason _on my case_. My victory over him on
| that test was enough for me -- I never saw him again. No
| biggie loss: The book he was using was awful, e.g., was
| just some typed notes -- Royden, one of the best math
| texts ever, was MUCH better!
|
| So, net, I did my teaching, used some of the money I was
| getting, more than I needed, to have fun while saving
| some money, did my teaching, met my wife, and started
| violin -- I liked it!
|
| Since that was Indiana, that is, out in the Midwest flat
| farming country, a lot of the other grad math students
| were pretty good athletes. So one afternoon I showed up
| at the volley ball game those students held. Soon I was
| very much not wanted! I was the last to be _chosen_! And
| soon even the other team would make sure I never got to
| touch the ball! Those guys took athletics VERY seriously,
| much more seriously than the math!
|
| But in the ugrad teaching, nearly all the girls tried
| hard to look pretty and be _sweet_! One course I taught
| was some math for elementary education majors. There were
| maybe 30 students in the class. There was one boy there,
| maybe looking to meet the girls! So, all the rest were
| girls. And they had their _career_ direction decided, no
| doubt, high determination -- they 'd get a teaching
| certificate, a husband, a home, and some babies. NO
| DOUBT! And they were just AWFUL at that math, and soon
| just terrified of it! Due to the influence of computing,
| I had to teach them about base 2 and base 16 -- that was
| more painful for them than having their teeth pulled! I
| also taught calculus, trigonometry, etc., and in those
| courses the girls did fine, no angst! So, there was
| _something_ about elementary education majors!!!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > As a grad student, since I was teaching ugrad courses,
| I got paid, enough actually to live nicely
|
| When was this? Nowadays the grad students are constantly
| complaining that they don't get paid enough to live and
| mandatory fees are too high.
| lief79 wrote:
| Many years ago, I did some tutoring for a friend in
| elementary education math. It was sorta neat, in that
| they were teaching them different number theories (in
| practice some discrete math) and forcing them to learn
| how to work with numbers in much the same way their first
| students would. It was smart and made a lot of sense when
| viewed in this manner.
|
| The problem was the author of the book had no idea why
| they were doing this, or what the purpose of this was. It
| provided the curriculum, but had already lost the
| inherent reason behind it.
| kragen wrote:
| That sounds wonderful! Except for the elementary
| education majors and the volleyball. Are you still in
| touch with people there?
| graycat wrote:
| "still in touch"? Naw. That was a long time ago!
|
| The money: I lived with low rent, in a dorm that had the
| option of no meals in a university cafeteria. Since I was
| teaching, I paid no tuition and, as I remember, paid no
| fees. My teaching was a bargain for the university, i.e.,
| I was no doubt MUCH cheaper per course taught than a
| prof. They had me teaching a wide variety of courses and,
| one semester, two courses. That wasn't fair to me, but I
| didn't mind.
|
| It was an old dorm, REALLY nice. And it was next to the
| music school and, still, not far from the math department
| or lots of places to eat.
| hardolaf wrote:
| My undergraduate degree in ECE at OSU went far more in-
| depth on topics and set me up far better than the graduate
| programs at Purdue or UIUC do in their first year of
| graduate school. A huge part of that is that OSU's ECE
| department does not have senior-level courses. They only
| have senior/graduate courses. So the seniors are taking
| graduate level courses (when I went there, at least 4 were
| required to graduate). Also, you list Indiana U? Really?
| I'm sorry, but it's second-tier compared to Purdue.
| tourist_on_road wrote:
| Something to note -- Indiana U doesn't have engineering
| stream unlike Purdue. Only thing close to engineering is
| computer science and Intelligent systems engineering.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Right - Indiana splits up subjects across universities so
| they can focus money. It is by design that Purdue is the
| engineering school and Indiana is the liberal arts
| school.
|
| IU is a great liberal arts school - but doesn't compete
| in engineering by design.
| kragen wrote:
| Purdue has a great reputation but I don't know anything
| about it personally except via Eugene Spafford. I may be
| biased because I like Scheme -- SICP was a life-changing
| epiphany for me, and _Essentials of Programming
| Languages_ was also quite revelatory -- and Indiana has
| done a lot of inspiring Scheme work. I don 't know of
| anything of similar importance from OSU but maybe they're
| really great in CPU design or subthreshold logic families
| or something?
|
| As for getting in-depth information on topics, you don't
| need a university for that anymore. Library Genesis and
| sci-hub has more in-depth information on topics than you
| could ever possibly absorb, assuming it's legal in your
| country. What universities uniquely offer is community,
| financial support, and research: without universities,
| sci-hub would be a pretty empty place.
| hardolaf wrote:
| You're not going to learn electrical and computer
| engineering by reading stuff on Sci-Hub. You might get
| some knowledge, but so much is just simply never
| published that it's essentially tribal knowledge. Heck,
| even with professors walking you through every step of
| learning the topics, it's hard.
|
| As for computer architecture, OSU is not heavily into
| computer architecture. It's much more focused on custom
| accelerators and ASICs as well as semiconductor research.
| And it is recognized as one of the best ECE programs in
| the world with one of the main problems with it being
| that the CS department is comparatively weak.
|
| My graduating class, in a December, was still over 1,000
| engineers. Spring graduation typically had 2.5-3.5K/yr.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Purdue is an engineering factory. It is both quality and
| quantity.
|
| There were 1800 engineers in my graduating class (1995).
| rxhernandez wrote:
| I'm sure there's more great ones in California but I can
| count 14 off the top of my head; I think all of them are
| nearly within 300 miles of LA too.
|
| 1. Caltech
|
| 2. Stanford
|
| 3. Cal
|
| 4. UCLA
|
| 5. Harvey Mudd
|
| 6. USC
|
| 7. UCSD
|
| 8. UCD
|
| 9. UCSB
|
| 10. CPSLO
|
| 11. UCI
|
| 12. CPP
|
| 13. UCSC
|
| 14. UCR
| outside1234 wrote:
| Caltech, Stanford, Cal, and Harvey Mudd are on the same
| tier with Purdue, Michigan, Illinois, CM.
|
| The other ones are good schools, but in a distinctly second
| tier to that group.
| rxhernandez wrote:
| You think UCLA, USC, and UCSD are second tier? Last I
| checked, UCSD is #9 for engineering in the nation, which
| is above UIUC at #10. USC is #12 and UCLA is #16 relative
| to Columbia at #15, John Hopkins at #17, Harvard at #21,
| Princeton at #22, and UW at #22.
|
| What on earth do you mean by second tier?
| adamcstephens wrote:
| The other difference, which parent didn't mention, is the
| Ohio has plenty of water.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I mean, if you are going to count campuses, Penn State has
| like 20+ alone.
| kragen wrote:
| It sounds like maybe you think UCLA and Berkeley are as
| closely related as the different campuses of Penn State,
| but that is far from the truth.
| Bayart wrote:
| I know what one of those acronyms means.
| mikestew wrote:
| If you substitute "University of California" for "UC",
| you'll be able to decipher a lot more of them if you know
| your California cities. For example, "UCSD" translates to
| "UC San Diego". "CP" gets you "California Polytechnical",
| but good luck sussing "SLO" unless you've been anywhere
| near San Luis Obispo.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| The problem is not the schools in the Midwest but that many
| don't want to live in the Midwest. I am married into a family
| from Illinois but they have all left or are leaving because
| they are tired of the weather. I also went to grad school in
| Illinois and never considered staying after I finished. I did
| actually like it but wasn't a place I wanted to stay forever.
|
| University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne was _the_ pre-
| eminent school for Computer Science. It's still a fantastic
| school but most don't seem to want to live in a cornfield.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Not sure if Colorado counts as midwest but there's also the
| School of Mines outside Denver. Very good engineering school.
| brewdad wrote:
| School of Mines is 1,300 miles from this location. It's not
| really relevant compared to the others on the the list.
| moralestapia wrote:
| My two c, I have been left with a very good impression of
| people from Penn State and Michigan State, very talented and
| diligent at work.
| TheCondor wrote:
| With a potential $100b investment, it's not about what they
| have now, it's about what will be in 20 years.
|
| Ohio is a great place for this kind of corporate
| gentrification. As a CMU grad, I know there was a collective
| desire to get students to stick around, but there was better
| lifestyle, more money, etc.. leaving after school and a
| fairly large number of us weren't from the area to begin
| with. Something like this can be a game changer for the
| region, plus, there will be dozens of additional companies
| that set up camp and start up there for support.
|
| If it really works and the region supports it and leans in,
| _all_ of the schools anywhere near by will step up their
| engineering programs.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Do chip plants employ many engineers? Seems like they would
| mainly need IT and facilities staff.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Relative to economic output, not really. In absolute
| terms, yes, because the plants are massive and
| "facilities staff" misses a lot when you're talking about
| machines worth 150 million a piece, clean rooms, and
| billions in depreciation per year.
| quocanh wrote:
| From what I understand, a chip plant's workers have PhDs
| because when problems arise on the line, they require a
| lot of knowledge to fix.
| smaddox wrote:
| The R&D fab(s) definitely have a high number of PhDs. I
| don't know about the production fabs. PhDs will
| definitely visit when starting up a new fab or process or
| when issues need to be addressed.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If it is anything like BioTech, they will. I was shocked
| when I joined a large firm and realized that the person
| spending most of their day breaking down boxes and
| checking log books has a masters from Berkeley. Most of
| the techs running equipment have masters/Phds.
|
| As I have come to realize, when a mistake or delay costs
| $XX million, it often makes sense to hire with high
| educational background. I have also come to realize that
| your bog standard MS or Phd isn't as talented as you
| might think.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They keep the process parameters within the optimal zone.
| That is considerably more complicated than it sounds.
| They also work on incremental improvements.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Ohio has a lot going for it, geographically. It has major pre-
| war cities that contain identifiable centers. It has the same
| overall population density as Spain. Its major cities could
| easily be served by high-speed rail. It has a reliable source
| of fresh water. If it weren't for its across-the-board anti-
| government slate of elected officials, it could regain its
| prominence among the states.
| asdff wrote:
| The worst thing going for Ohio is the political landscape. An
| effort to restart passenger rail with a line from Cleveland
| to Akron was killed in the early 2000s, thanks to a small
| township of like 2000 people that would have had to hear a
| passenger train in addition to the freight rail traffic
| currently using the rail line already in place in their back
| yard. Regional planning is impossible with such a selfish and
| fractured political foundation, not to mention the
| gerrymandering done by statehouse republicans that maintains
| this state of dysfunction and pushes the state red.
| amelius wrote:
| For a fab, every US location is probably better than Taiwan.
| That's to say: it probably doesn't matter that much where they
| put it.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm somewhat concerned for Taiwan though... At least having a
| headstart on chip production gives them some cover from those
| who would be more likely to step in as China makes strides
| towards potential invasion. Could make HK look like a beach
| party.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think it's more about diversifying locations for labor
| pooling... Phoenix is growing and now going to have fabs for
| Intel, Samsung and TSMC. I think it's more about hedging or
| spreading out the labor pool a bit more and less competition.
|
| As for location, in terms of shipping, they're probably about
| on par to each other. Not sure how stable it is regarding
| weather conditions, or natural disaster risk in Ohio vs Arizona
| though.
|
| In either case, it's good to see some uptick in distributed
| manufacturing. Concentrating most high technology
| infrastructure into a relatively small region has proven a
| disaster when problems inevitably happen.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| A smaller but still important metric....the possibility of
| turning it permanently blue? (one can hope)
| taylortrusty wrote:
| I suspect part of the appeal is it's not permanently blue.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| People always complain about the downsides of all these
| blue areas but at the end of the day there is still a
| massive population that continue to live there. For
| example: Exodus from California is mainly limited to people
| making less than 100k a year. People making more than that
| actually increased their population in California. So this
| is mainly a rich vs poor issue. I'm excited at the prospect
| of transforming some of the rural states into a mindset of
| progressivism. It will help prevent some of the gridlock
| that is holding back the country from trying big bold
| ideas.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean it's pretty much known that rich people can avoid
| nearly any consequence intended or unintended of
| politicians......
|
| It's why people view the ability to ignore politics as a
| privilege having the resources to just avoid whatever
| they happen to do gives you a massive degree of freedom.
|
| Also aren't these progressive policies supposed to have
| helped people on the lower end of the economic scale
| rather then forced them out?
| gaoshan wrote:
| The Columbus area is blue. Most of the biggest cities in Ohio
| are. It's the countryside and rural areas (Ohio has a lot of
| small towns) that are deep red.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Yes but increased population will increase the number of
| blue which tilts the whole state in favor of blue. Yes,
| there will be shenanigans(voter intimation, making blue
| areas harder to vote) from the red side like we see in
| other currently purple states but those tactics become more
| ineffective the more blue voters you have so this can only
| be a net positive.
| [deleted]
| destitude wrote:
| They are extremely anti-renewable energy though. There was
| attempt (not sure if it passed) to make wind turbines illegal.
| hguant wrote:
| I don't want to say so, but...so? At Intel scale, they're
| able to buy carbon offsets or - gasp! - install their own
| solar/wind in their properties. The municipal and state
| governments are I'm sure bending over backwards to get the
| plants and infrastructure investment, a permit to run
| whatever solar/wind/renewable they want is probably chump
| change for them.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| I'll eat a sock if they bother with solar in Ohio. I guess
| it's better than nothing but large parts of Ohio just don't
| get that much sun. Wind is much more likely.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/amazon-behind-another-
| ohio...
|
| I doubt socks are tasty, but please let us know.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Cincinnati (where I live) is about half a year away from
| completing the largest city financed solar array in the
| US [0,1]. Ohio gets plenty of sun, in fact it averages
| more sun than _anywhere_ in Germany which is known for
| it's solar [2,3].
|
| In Ohio for residential, which is a good bit more
| expensive than commercial/utility scale solar, the
| payback period is about 12 years[4], well within the
| margin of getting your money back and then some.
|
| 0: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/mayor/news/cincinnati-
| to-const... 1: https://newmarketsolar.com/ 2:
| https://www.nrel.gov/gis/assets/images/solar-annual-
| ghi-2018... 3: https://solargis.com/file?url=download/Ger
| many/Germany_PVOUT... 4:
| https://www.energysage.com/local-data/solar-panel-
| cost/oh/
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > in Germany which is known for it's solar
|
| Pretty sure Germany is more know for poor green energy
| planning, burning more coal, and instance on non optimal
| strategies for power generation (killing nuclear).
| Torifyme12 wrote:
| Also for managing to be so dependent on Russian gas it
| torpedoes a lot of measures to contain them
| ct0 wrote:
| Sounds more like they are anti turbine. Where does someone
| put a turbine when it's at the end of its life?
| penneyd wrote:
| Where does someone put a coal fired power plant when it's
| at the end of its life?
| ummonk wrote:
| Aren't coal power plants made from recyclable materials
| like metal and concrete rather than unrecyclable
| composite materials?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| https://www.eenews.net/articles/volatile-place-new-laws-
| thwa...
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| I think this is due to a lot of money in the region coming
| from things like coal and natural gas. There's a _lot_ of
| money to be had for folks that just happen to own land that
| sits above valuable minerals.
|
| I've only ever seen billboards for "clean coal" in SE Ohio,
| SW PA, and West Virginia.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Except there really isn't that much money in Coal - and
| Ohio doesn't has little of it anyway.
|
| Ohio produces 1/20th the coal of WV - which is a much more
| economically poor state - and coal isn't even really that
| important to WV's economy. Ohio's economy is much more
| similar to PA - and PA produces 10x more coal:
| https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/weekly/
|
| Coal is all politics.
|
| I mean, it is still used for a lot of energy production -
| almost everywhere in the US - Ohio definitely:
| https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=OH.
|
| I'm sure power plants don't want to shut down overnight
| because someone bans coal completely - and they shouldn't.
| But it's just not economical in most places - the plants
| are phasing out naturally almost everywhere.
|
| The less scale there is with coal - the less viable it
| becomes. It's a vicious cycle.
|
| Power plants naturally phasing out because coal isn't
| economical will have almost 0 impact on Ohio.
|
| Places like WV - that's a different story. WV sells coal!
| Ohio doesn't.
|
| Coal also doesn't employ people like it used to. It employs
| 3,000 people in Ohio: https://www.ohiocoal.com/information-
| library/history-coal-mi.... That's out of a ~5.4M labor
| force: https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh.htm. That's ~0.05% of
| the workforce... Even WV is only ~0.15%...
|
| It's really only important to a few barons who want coal to
| stick around long after it's economically viable (the
| governor of WV).
| umvi wrote:
| > extremely low cost of living and a city/region that has more
| good restaurants and activities than might be expected
|
| That's what people said about Salt Lake City and Boise... until
| about 5 years ago. Cost of living has skyrocketed since 2017,
| housing alone has doubled in price. It doesn't take long for a
| low cost of living region to become high cost of living.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Cost of living is relative. San Francisco is about 50% more
| expensive than Seattle. Which in turn is about 70% higher
| than SLC, judging by a quick scan of apartment rents.
| asdff wrote:
| Cost of living in Columbus is low if you are looking at it
| with Coastal city eyes. That being said, its still the most
| expensive city in Ohio. Houses in the hot neighborhoods
| people write articles about were hitting 700k 6 years ago.
| Rents in new apartments are like $1300 for a 1 bedroom.
| rmah wrote:
| Is $1300/mo supposed to be high? I've seen parking spaces
| going for $600/mo where I live.
| asdff wrote:
| IMO thats high for ohio with the wages seen, considering
| you can find studios at that rate or 1br for a few
| hundred more in the LA area.
| kesslern wrote:
| > That being said, its still the most expensive city in
| Ohio.
|
| Yes, because it's the only major city that's growing.
| Cleveland, Cincinatti, Toledo, and Dayton are all losing
| population year-over-year while Columbus's grows.
| asdff wrote:
| Just remarking its not entirely cheap. You can move there
| and get a job that pays well, but you aren't alone, other
| people are going to have well paid jobs too and you will
| find the same competitive housing market for decent
| neighborhoods that you see in places like Portland or
| wherever. Especially when you consider how your full tax
| structure works it might not be as much of a deal over
| time as CA with prop 13 as your taxes will be reassessed
| every few years and if the market climbed, so did your
| tax bill. There's probably fewer opportunities to leg up
| your earned income to match in a place with less jobs and
| smaller network effects like Central Ohio than there is
| in major job centers with more options for lateral moves.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I don't get why cost of living is factored at all.
|
| The biggest expense is typically housing. And if you bought
| the house, it means the biggest expense is... building
| equity into an asset you can sell afterward.
|
| Keep in mind the engineer who purchased a 2 million house
| in Palo Alto can sell it for two million, and then move to
| Ohio to a much cheaper house purchased in cash. The reverse
| isn't true.
| asdff wrote:
| You also pay taxes. But you are right that for the first
| movers it will be an easy transition into living
| opulantly in Ohio. The same can't be said for the next
| generation of workers, who graduate and have no capital
| accrued from working at bay area rates, and start their
| careers working for these Ohio based employers at Ohio
| based salary rates, and since Columbus is experiencing
| the same lack of supply issue everywhere growing faces,
| this generation are going to find a cutthroat market for
| them like the current generation of engineers fleeing 2
| million dollar homes in Palo Alto.
| fossuser wrote:
| As long as the market is allowed to build housing to meet
| demand it's not too bad.
|
| Main issue in Palo Alto (and to a large extent the rest
| of the bay area) is that there's massive population
| growth in the bay area, but very little housing is
| allowed to be built. This creates artificial scarcity and
| the people that bought houses 30yrs ago accrue massive
| wealth because of it at the expense of new people (and
| the new people that manage to buy at exorbitant rates
| also end up paying the majority share of taxes too).
|
| This is the natural incentive made worse by things like
| locked property taxes and rent control. You really need
| legislation that allows the market to build (easier said
| than done).
| 015a wrote:
| Also, within "can still drive home every couple months to see
| the family" distance of UIUC and Purdue, which are two of the
| top ten Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
| universities in the US.
| Animats wrote:
| jnorthrop wrote:
| Not to mention low probability of natural disasters:
| Earthquakes, tornados, wild fire, hurricanes, etc.
| politician wrote:
| Access to large amounts of fresh water.
| asdff wrote:
| You just get different natural disasters. Flooding that could
| damage your basement and foundation and prevent you from
| accessing certain roads is a regular occurrence, some people
| are always pumping out their basements every time it rains. A
| bad roof you could get away with in California where it rains
| 5 x a year could quickly spiral into more expensive rot and
| repairs in places that see heavy rains. Storms can still fall
| trees onto your house or car. Snowstorms often don't stop
| your employer from demanding your presence in the office or
| schools from closing because we are supposedly hardy in the
| midwest, and increasingly as the weather gets milder, ice
| storms that manifest as rain during the day but dangerous ice
| as soon as the sun sets and temperatures fall, coating your
| car in an inch thick layer of ice when you leave for work in
| the morning. And plus when the west burns up in flames, the
| smoke plume wafts east and settles down on the midwest,
| giving you the bad air anyhow. Speaking of air quality, if
| you have any allergies, the midwest is also not for you. You
| get slammed from pollen both from a variety of seasonal
| weeds, as well as from the intensive agriculture performed in
| the region.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Low geopolitical risk is probably one of the best factors.
| mNovak wrote:
| Fun fact, Ohio was supposedly high on the Soviet nuke
| target list, because of Wright Patterson AFB, which houses
| the Air Force Research Lab (and aliens).
|
| I have an old Soviet invasion map of central Ohio, marking
| all potential airfields etc.
| robbintt wrote:
| Yep - one of my classrooms in Ohio was in the old fallout
| shelter. I saw the signs with radioactive label every
| morning going into the building. The location is now
| demolished.
| paulv wrote:
| Same. My high school was very near a GE plant in northern
| Cincinnati and I frequently heard how we were a target
| because of that. Seems plausible but based on other
| comments in this post, it may have just been cold war
| propaganda.
| s5300 wrote:
| We also have a particle accelerator in Southern Ohio,
| I've heard it would be on a lower priority tier of things
| to nuke/otherwise destroy. Not sure how accurate the
| statement was, but I think it was from somewhere credible
| enough...
|
| Wright Patt definitely has some high level stuff stored,
| I have a few friends who work engineering there.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "old Soviet invasion map"
|
| Soviets had a concrete plan to invade Ohio? Wow. How were
| the troops supposed to cross the ocean?
| madengr wrote:
| dylan604 wrote:
| >How were the troops supposed to cross the ocean?
|
| The invaders would cross the ocean from an orbital path
| streaking in as multiple units launched from submersed
| platforms or silos in the Motherland raining down from
| heaven. Those invaders would not need to put a single
| boot on the ground.
| brewdad wrote:
| When I was growing up the rumor was that both sides had
| enough nukes to destroy the entire earth 10x over. I have
| no idea whether that is even close to true but at that
| point every city is a target because, why not?
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| There's a lot more to it than urban legends. A FEMA
| publication[1] from 1990 has a map on page 86 with
| assumed Ohio targets.
|
| Tiny Waverly would have definitely been wiped off the map
| because of its fuel refining facility. There's a non-zero
| chance I keep my EMP-proof diesel truck running due to
| growing up in those times.
|
| [1] https://www.jumpjet.info/Emergency-
| Preparedness/Hazard-Maps/...
| PKop wrote:
| Do you have a link to this map?
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| The small town I grew up in also had a specific Soviet
| doomsday theory. Which in hindsight, doesn't feel very
| plausible.
|
| In the wake of the George Floyd protests family talked
| about their concern that out of state "Antifa looters"
| were spotted driving down the interstate headed right for
| them.
|
| I don't mean to call you a liar, Im sure there indeed are
| some obscure targets, and your home might be one.
|
| I do think it's a fascinating phenomenon- this idea of
| small town obsession with their own destruction.
|
| A quote from Terrence Malick's BadLands goes something
| like:
|
| > and if the reds ever do drop the bomb, well I hope they
| drop it right here in Rapid City (South Dakota).
| [deleted]
| xhrpost wrote:
| Lol, growing up in Ohio I've heard this same thing but
| for various different reasons over the years. Would be
| interesting to see an authoritative source if one exists
| echelon wrote:
| > I have an old Soviet invasion map
|
| Can you please post this? That sounds so interesting.
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| https://www.sovietmaps.com/
|
| Also I submitted that link as a fresh thread [1], because
| this admittedly fun rabbit hole has little to do with
| Intel and Columbus' sprawl.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30030346
| Melatonic wrote:
| I have a book that is all those old soviet maps - amazing
| how detailed they were. All hand drawn and they had
| detail down to individual houses and streets. Many time
| those maps were more detailed than the ones the US was
| making about itself!
| asdff wrote:
| Low Geopolitical risk but high risk to personal liberties,
| especially if you are a woman. Look at Ohio and its slow
| decline from purple into red state. Gerrymandered to hell
| and back too to prevent this from changing in the
| foreseeable future, and a state democratic party that is
| powerless against the state republicans who have secured
| tenures for life thanks to their inventive mapmaking
| processes. Companies move to Ohio because a corrupt
| politician offered them a cherry deal on property like this
| more often than not.
| decremental wrote:
| Name exactly one personal liberty afforded to women in
| California that is not afforded to women in Ohio.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| You must not be aware of the ongoing threats to abortion
| in Ohio?
|
| https://www.abortionislegalinohio.com/
|
| You can say that it's not technically illegal now, but
| it's unquestionably under assault in a way that it's not
| and won't ever be in California.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I was going to say the same as you did: SCOTUS may very
| well make the legality of abortion a state-controlled
| issue, so that's definitely at risk in Ohio.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| So you're saying maybe in the future there might be an
| issue?
|
| Also plenty of people here want to ban abortion too. Tons
| of small counties have managed to prevent any kind of
| reproductive health clinics from opening or defacto
| forced them to close.
| sneak wrote:
| Building in a country about to (10-15y) have a civil war
| doesn't seem like the best idea, then.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Half of Ohio is flat, and gets lots of storms that blow
| through the plains and prairies from the west, so not exactly
| low probability of tornadoes.
|
| Source: I grew up in central Ohio. Public schools made it a
| point to practice tornado drills. In addition, there was an
| old Cold War-era air raid siren a block from the house I grew
| up in that had been repurposed and tested for tornado
| warnings. One of these:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rRSY0dRIU
|
| Edit: read about Xenia, Ohio:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenia,_Ohio
|
| > Xenia has a history of severe storm activity. According to
| local legend, the Shawnee referred to the area as "the place
| of the devil wind" or "the land of the crazy winds"
| (depending upon the translation).
|
| > On April 3, 1974, a tornado rated F5 on the Fujita scale
| cut a path directly through the middle of Xenia during the
| 1974 Super Outbreak
|
| > Xenia was struck by an F2 tornado on April 25, 1989, and
| again by an F4 tornado on September 20, 2000.
| eeeeeeehio wrote:
| Even large, damaging tornadoes have quite localized impacts
| (max of maybe a mile in path width) -- and you don't
| generally do much more than stay up to building code in
| order to prepare for one. In contrast, earthquakes
| devastate entire areas and require substantial changes to
| building construction in order to protect against them.
|
| The probability of a large, damaging tornado at a
| particular spot in Ohio is quite small compared with the
| risk of damaging earthquakes in other locations.
| https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-
| will-o...
| danielvaughn wrote:
| The first thing I thought about was tornados, actually. That
| Amazon facility in Missouri was just totally flattened back
| in December. Given the cost of manufacturing chips, it seems
| like it would be a huge loss if it was hit.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > An initial $20 billion investment - the largest in Ohio's
| history - on a 1,000-acre site in _New Albany_ will create 3,000
| jobs
|
| I grew up just north of there. An Intel factory nearby would be
| good news for anyone in the rust belt. I hope this doesn't fizzle
| out like Wisconsin's Foxconn plant.
| 55873445216111 wrote:
| There are always unknowns, but Intel is a much more reliable
| partner than Foxconn. The Wisconsin Foxconn deal smelled very
| fishy from day 1 IMO.
| qsmi wrote:
| Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site" in
| the city of Columbus Ohio? Why not choose Cleveland Ohio where
| one has port access with an existing route to Europe? Fabs are
| international affairs, no matter where they're rooted, because
| just to keep the place running one needs a constant stream of
| parts from everywhere. It seems like being in a sea/rail/truck
| hub would be a logistics advantage.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Cleveland
|
| Edit: On second thought, Arizona doesn't have port access either
| so I guess it's not really a significant consideration.
| MrDunham wrote:
| So, I live in Columbus Ohio and I'm friends with two of the top
| people in our economic development department the broker this
| deal.
|
| I can't speak well to why not Cleveland but I can say that the
| actual city that they chose (New Albany, OH, 25 min to downtown
| and 15-20 to the airport) was built by Les Wexner, founder of L
| brands/Victoria's Secret, is now home to data centers for
| Facebook, Google, and an AWS data center (there are two more
| within 30 minutes), and the general metro is one of the fastest
| growing regions in the US.
|
| There is also a ton of available land on the fringes of the
| Columbus region and the sheer scope of acreage needed is
| bonkers.
| yucky wrote:
| >Les Wexner
|
| Didn't Epstein have some sort of exclusive investor
| relationship with Wexner? I seem to recall that was where he
| got his start.
| timr wrote:
| Yes. He also had a home in New Albany.
| MrDunham wrote:
| I don't know the exact details but I have heard that
| Epstein is a big reason that Les is not CEO anymore.
| timr wrote:
| > was built by Les Wexner
|
| I grew up near there. I guess I wouldn't quibble with the
| idea that Wexner "built" New Albany -- since it definitely
| isn't the same anymore -- but it _was_ a town before he came
| along (two roads and a farm supply store, basically).
|
| I used to go to summer camp at the old New Albany HS, and got
| my pickup truck stuck in the mud there many, many times while
| doing some odd job or another.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| I am in Columbus Ohio.
|
| Columbus Ohio is one of the fastest growing city in the USA and
| MidWest. Population growth is high too. A lot of people from
| other Ohio cities are moving to Columbus Ohio.
| https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus-among-fastest...
|
| Ohio State University is very close to this site.
|
| Huge immigration population with a science degree.
|
| Columbus is within 600 miles of 60 percent of American
| population.
|
| A lot of cheap farm land outside of Columbus area.
|
| > Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with an existing
| route to Europe
|
| Port is less than 2 hrs from this site.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Why not choose Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with
| an existing route to Europe?
|
| Don't most chips travel internationally by air?
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site"
| in the city of Columbus Ohio?
|
| My guess would be access to talent and costs. Columbus is more
| than 2x bigger than Cleveland. Building cars is also an
| international affair and we see those plants all over the
| place.
| dtwest wrote:
| Columbus metro area is roughly the same size as Cleveland
| metro area so I don't think that is the reason.
|
| However, it could still have a talent advantage. Having OSU
| nearby is helpful, and maybe it is easier to attract talent
| to move to a city with a big university.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Columbus grew 15% in the last decade, Cleveland shrank 6%.
| That could also have something to do with as there's reason
| to believe it will continue to attract skilled talent.
| hardolaf wrote:
| You don't need skilled talent to operate fabs. You need
| people who can go through a 2 year degree program.
| MrDunham wrote:
| > Building cars is also an international affair and we see
| those plants all over the place
|
| I moved from the Bay Area to Columbus Ohio and, funny enough,
| there's a Honda factory about 30 minutes outside of downtown
| and 45 from the airport.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Yup, Honda has a big plant in Marysville, in the next
| county to the northwest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marysville_Auto_Plant
| MrDunham wrote:
| Correct.
|
| On a side note, counties here a little bit wonky. I live
| in Dublin which is about 20 minutes out of Marysville.
|
| If you live in Dublin you could be living in one of THREE
| counties
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Probably trucking it for 1 day isn't a big deal
| MrDunham wrote:
| Having moved to Columbus a couple years ago everyone loved to
| say that over 60% of the US population is within a one day
| drive of Columbus.
|
| For the Bay Area readers the distance from Cleveland to
| Columbus is roughly the same as San Francisco to Sacramento
| asdff wrote:
| It's hard to understate just how driveable this side of the
| country is from Ohio. In about 7 hours one direction you
| are in Chicago. 7 hours another direction you are in
| Toronto. 7 hours another direction you are in NYC, or DC,
| or Boston. Stretch it to 15 hours or so and you can drive
| all the way to New Orleans, or most of Florida in that
| time, and anywhere in between. Anywhere east of the
| Mississippi really is seemingly doable for a road trip in
| about a days drive, especially if you are driving in
| shifts. You can get flights pretty fast as well, but the
| issue is the ohio airports have limited direct connections;
| its frequent to fly to ohare or charlotte first. It's not
| like LAX where you can score a direct flight to half the
| western US from southwest for $59.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >Stretch it to 15 hours or so and you can drive all the
| way to New Orleans
|
| Having done this, I would recommend it only in urgency
| daemoens wrote:
| Much less congestion as well. I drive between them weekly
| and rarely see traffic anywhere close to California. It's a
| pretty comfortable 2 hour drive.
| asdff wrote:
| Highways do back up in Cleveland and Columbus in the
| cities during rush hour though, as well as when there is
| any construction or accidents or inclimate weather.
|
| One thing I noticed is that the freeways in, say,
| Cleveland, are all 5 lanes wide or so in each direction,
| serving a population of 400k in the city and 1.2m in the
| county. You go to LA and what do you see? The same size
| freeways as Cleveland, 5 lanes wide or so, only its
| serving a city of 4 million and a county of 15 million.
| It's like, of course there is no congestion in Cleveland
| and tons of congestion in LA, it doesn't take a rocket
| scientist to see an issue with capacity. There's
| literally an order of magnitude more people using the
| same capacity of infrastructure.
| 7952 wrote:
| It has an international airport, intermodal rail freight depot
| and interstate highways.
|
| I would guess that raw materials can be transported by road or
| rail. Access to a waterway is sometimes needed for very heavy
| indivisible parts (not sure if this is commons for fabs) but
| that is unlikely to be a regular occurrence. Just drive it down
| the interstate with a police escort at 2am.
| cududa wrote:
| Plus Lake Erie gives you access to the Atlantic. Port of
| Cleveland got a huge update 10+ years ago and is still only
| used at about 7% capacity
| nwiswell wrote:
| > needed for very heavy indivisible parts (not sure if this
| is commons for fabs)
|
| It is not common. Semiconductor equipment is generally
| designed to be sent via air freight and assembled on site.
|
| Some of the supporting operations (water and air purification
| plants, on-site chemical production, LN2 production, etc) may
| require some large parts but that's a case-by-case basis and
| probably avoidable.
| [deleted]
| qsmi wrote:
| I am pretty shocked but I guess ASML delivers by 747. [1][2]
| But they do seem to know what they're doing. :)
|
| "The current generation of EUV machines are already, to put
| it bluntly, kind of bonkers. Each one is roughly the size of
| a bus and costs $150 million. It contains 100,000 parts and 2
| kilometers of cabling. Shipping the components requires 40
| freight containers, three cargo planes, and 20 trucks."
|
| [1] https://technical-news.net/euv-lithography-asml-
| delivers-100... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/asml-extreme-
| ultraviolet-lithogr...
| bduerst wrote:
| >Amid the recent chip shortage, triggered by the pandemic's
| economic shock waves, ASML's products have become central
| to a geopolitical struggle between the US and China, with
| Washington making it a high priority to block China's
| access to the machines. The US government has successfully
| pressured the Dutch not to grant the export licenses needed
| to send the machines to China, and ASML says it has shipped
| none to the country.
|
| Fascinating
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| New Albany is a suburb of the capital of the third most active
| manufacturing state in the US. Intel is courting the federal
| government for direct semiconductor industry support that goes
| beyond tax breaks on semiconductor fabrication equipment.
|
| > Edit: On second thought, Arizona doesn't have port access
| either so I guess it's not really a significant consideration.
|
| From a pure logistics perspective, I'd say that Arizona beats
| Ohio. BNSF connects Arizona with both the Pacific Ocean and the
| Gulf of Mexico. (Not to mention Lake Michigan.) It's impossible
| to drive Route 66 from California to Texas without rolling
| alongside extensive trains hauling cargo through the desert.
|
| For me, the trains are one of the most scenic aspects of that
| drive.
|
| LAX is the eighth-busiest air cargo terminal in the world, and
| it has plenty of cargo flights to Asia where computer devices
| are often assembled. PHX is also one of the busiest cargo
| airports in the United States, albeit much less so than LAX or
| CVG.
|
| Fabs have massive physical plant inputs (eg. lithography
| machines), substantial commoditized manufacturing inputs (eg.
| boules/wafers, freshwater, industrial gas), and core outputs
| with small size and high value (ie. chips). The former two can
| be pipelined without knowing the exact product-by-product
| breakdown of customer demand, and the latter cannot.
|
| Infrastructure and labor concerns might also tip the scales one
| way or another. Water supply, wastewater management, energy
| cost, grid resiliency, labor supply, access to institutions for
| professional training, and other considerations can differ
| wildly between the two regions.
| asdff wrote:
| Port of Cleveland is not a big container port like you'd
| imagine using for consumer goods. It's for supporting industry,
| mostly steel, through moving commodities. Think a big open
| barge full of coal, and holding facilities for limestone or
| iron ore. There's probably a limit to the size of the sort of
| ship can navigate to the port of Cleveland as well, you
| definitely can't fit a huge cargo ship in that port.
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| Yep, the constraints of the St. Lawrence Seaway mean we get
| the cutest little container vessels every couple of weeks
| from Europe. Sometimes they have a portion of the deck set
| aside for windmill parts.
|
| Presumably this plant will be trucking containers to
| Baltimore's port or sending air freight out of the cargo-only
| airport nearby.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I have in-laws in the Columbus area and have visited there
| several times.
|
| You might be able to pay us to live there, but it would have to
| be 'retire after a year' kind of money. It has all the charm of a
| strip mall.
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