4 ms·
Why Austin? I thought you needed a lot of water for fabs.
by u678u 6y ago
Why Austin? I thought you needed a lot of water for fabs.
- eutropia 6y agoI'm no expert, but my understanding is that Fabs like stable weather patterns and climates so they can more easily regulate the cleanrooms. Knowing nothing about Austin's climate, of course, I'm assuming that it's reliably hot and dry?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pradn 6y agoThere's a joke about how quickly Austin's weather can change. It's not unheard of to see 30 degree swings over the course of a few hours. Austin has no protection from polar winds coming down from the north, nor is it near water, which has a moderating effect on climate. So it does have erratic weather. It's possible to see an inch of snow every other year, and yet, in the summers, it's likely to see 100+ degree (F) weather for two months straight. It's more likely how Austin is still attractive to high-tech personnel - a good public university nearby, a reputation for being a lively city, somewhat reasonable real estate prices (relative to the Bay, but still 2X what they were 10 years ago), and excellent schools if you're in the right area, a decent number of tech options to jump to if you want to switch, a spritely startup scene, enough outdoorsy things to do, etc etc.
- Turing_Machine 6y agoTexas is quite large... you're probably thinking of West Texas (as shown in innumerable western movies). That is indeed very dry. East Texas, particularly south-eastern Texas (near the Gulf) is very humid and can experience torrential rainfall. It's more like Louisiana than El Paso, climate-wise. Austin is sort of in the transitional zone between the two. By comparison with California, Austin gets an average of 34.32 inches (872 mm) of rain per year. San Jose gets 15.82 inches (402 mm). San Francisco proper gets 23.65 inches (601 mm). Austin is considerably more water-rich than the Bay Area.
- chiyc 6y agoI think there's some consideration of how prone an area is to natural disaster, which makes Intel's picks of places like Arizona and New Mexico ideal. But I think other benefits like a strong labor market or a business friendly jurisdiction will probably have an overall bigger impact on where a business chooses to build.
- nwatson 6y agoArizona has a long tradition in and worker base for semiconductor manufacturing.
- reaperducer 6y agoKnowing nothing about Austin's climate, of course, I'm assuming that it's reliably hot and dry? Austin isn't in the desert. It gets ice storms, tornados, hurricanes, and the epic Texas thunderstorms that have various names like Blue Norther, Possum Stomper, and Toad Strangler. I spent five years in Texas, near Austin, and my college meteorology classes came back to me.
- banana_giraffe 6y agoOne of the moments I'll always remember growing up in Texas was seeing the newscaster ask the very well dressed and always presentable local weatherman "what's the weather look like tomorrow?" and when the camera turned to him we saw a disheveled weatherman, tie not done, hair messed up turn to the camera and deadpan "I have no idea" Many areas have the joke "if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes". That was less a joke and more a warning in large areas of Texas.
- unethical_ban 6y agoAs a lifelong TX resident, to say Austin gets those three phenomenons in any regular, meaningful sense is inaccurate. They can upon occasion get any of those, but not like Oklahoma gets tornadoes, Houston gets hurricanes, or Denver gets ice storms. Thunderstorms and wild swings in weather during non-Summer months are definitely mainstream, though.
- burlesona 6y agoIt is neither reliably hot nor reliably dry. The only think I think you can say about “consistency” regarding Austin’s weather is that it is hot in the summer and doesn’t snow very often.
- jaywalk 6y agoThey already have a fab in Austin.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoAnd I believe they already own the land where they'd put it as they'd been planning expansion. I don't see the city/county council going for their plans on 100% tax free infrastructure and property taxes though as Texas pretty much substitutes property tax for income tax. I think it will actually end up being built in Arizona as Austin is doing fine without Samsung trying to bully it in to ridiculous tax incentives.
- drak0n1c 6y agoTexas business-friendly laws with access to technical Austin workforce and university.
- cameldrv 6y agoAustin has a long established semiconductor workforce, and there are already multiple fabs there, as well as a lot of semiconductor design. Right now, Freescale/NXP has two fabs, Spansion has a flash fab, and Samsung already has a fab in Austin.
- BostonEnginerd 6y agoSpansion’s fab was purchased by Cypress, who were acquired by Infineon recently.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bob1029 6y agoThe reason is that Samsung already has a huge logistical presence in the city supporting the A2/S2 lines. Adding deliveries & pickups for across the street is much easier than building out a new facility in Arizona and replicating all of that over there. Additionally, if there is some technical fire in the new PSS fab, it would be expected that employees from the existing fabs could walk across the way and assist. They would probably do something where the existing engineering & manufacturing teams are divided up and shared across the facilities to get everything bootstrapped. Their systems are very strictly standardized, so staff from one factory can very easily support any other in the fleet.