Nice article. Hopefully the complexity of fabs and their operations makes it obvious why chip shortages can easily take 3-5 years to address if creating new fa

Nice article. Hopefully the complexity of fabs and their operations makes it obvious why chip shortages can easily take 3-5 years to address if creating new fab capacity is the problem. It also costs between $30B-$50B to create a new "mega/ultra/super fab" operating at volumes typical of TSMC, Intel, Samsung, etc. Even then, the small corner of a fab my business operates in isn't even mentioned in the article because it's far "too small" - all the businesses combined into our segment has total market revenue ranges in the $5B-$10B/year range. We are essential but small money-wise for most people to care. The other part of the story with water - some of the most advanced water purification and recycling development is happening in this realm as well. Another company product line unrelated to ours is able to detect 10-nanometer-sized contaminants in water at volume both to assure incoming water purity as well as outgoing. Much of the total volume of water is recycled. There are also surprising ways seemingly unrelated parts contribute. For example our product operates on clean-room floors but we put a ton of effort to reduce the floor footprint (we're 30% smaller than the de facto competitor). That directly reduces the amount of water consumed as a multiplier effect because it means you get more productive output per square foot of HVAC air processing capacity. That HVAC is primarily chilled water based. It also reduced energy consumption or increases productive output per unit kW. Whenever you have high capital investment, you get the most innovation in basic technologies required for the business and the most spin-offs as well. Whenever you have low investment, you get zero innovation.