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Samsung asks for planning permission for 11 fabs in Texas
- CoastalCoder 4y agoHere's something that confuses me about building fabs in Texas. IIUC: 1) Power disruptions in fabs are very expensive. 2) Texas's power grid has gained a reputation lately for being unreliable. If those things are true, how do they plan to deal with that? Heavy investment in onsite power generation?
- Fargoan 4y agoProbably. I would think that would be common in that industry no matter the location
- CoastalCoder 4y ago> Probably. I would think that would be common in that industry no matter the location In particular, I was thinking about the power disruptions in Taiwan earlier this year [0]. IIRC, there was concern that a power drop could ruin some/all chips currently in the fab pipeline, and might also require several days to re-initialize the pipeline's equipment. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/03/power-outage-in-taiwan-affects-main-iphone-chipmaker-tsmc-factory/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/03/power-outage-in-taiwan-affect...
- Victerius 4y ago3) Foundries are water guzzlers and Texas is mostly arid. The Northeast or the Great Lakes would make more sense.
- bushbaba 4y agoDidn’t intel’s fab recycle the bulk of their water? https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/water-facility-milestone-billion-gallons-recycled.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/water-...
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- silisili 4y agoThat area of TX gets about 40 inches of rain a year, about as much as Seattle. It's not as 'wet' as some areas, but far from the dusty tumbleweeds people often associate with central and west TX.
- randrews 4y agoParts are, but other parts, like the gulf coast, have plenty of water. Texas is not the giant desert you see in cowboy movies.
- vel0city 4y agoParts of Texas are literally considered rain forests.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoAlso odd since their state government leaders are highly politically motivated and want to make political waves even if their actions are irrational (like on power production, blaming wind turbines instead of recognizing their failure to winterize wind and coal power systems).
- jrockway 4y agoI think it's a favorable tax environment. Just remember that these companies claim to be progressive, but if they can save $20 on their taxes, that all goes out the window.
- notatoad 4y agothat's a fair criticism a lot of the time, but I don't think Samsung ever makes any real claims of being progressive. not too many woke companiese have a division that builds tanks.
- jackmott 4y ago
- JaimeThompson 4y agoHow are you defining woke as you use it here?
- edmundsauto 4y agoI think the tax environment for companies is favorable, also fewer environmental regulations (and making chips uses some nasty chemicals) Just wanted to say that taxes in Texas are less favorable than eg California when it comes to middle class citizens - no income tax, but very high property taxes.
- b112 4y agoI've driven through Texas, and there is this 300 mile+ stretch, in the North, that is hell on earth. Pure putrid smog, the skies darkened, the air thick, dank, cloying from refineries or something. So yeah, great place to build something, and save cash on tech to cleanup your waste. Yay Texas! I swear people must die 10 years sooner in that stretch.
- lkbm 4y agoProposed starts of operations are 2034-2042. I'd expect a fair bit of on-site generation/storage, but I also would hope ERCOT gets its act together by then (or is replaced with a multi-state system).
- tekno45 4y agoPrivate solar farm makes sense in certain parts of texas. But then water is probably the harder issue.
- galangalalgol 4y agoTexas is very good at water planning. Solar does make sense if you have lots of land. How much skilled labor actually works at a fab? Attracting skilled labor to work far enough out, that that amount of land is affordable could be a problem. If the weather, and power situation remain. It might be hard in any case.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoIt’s not just land, but geography. Germany has a lot of land too, solar has been less than stellar there.
- thehappypm 4y agoDepends where in Texas. Houston area is more similar to the Deep South in weather, no shortages of water, in fact dealing with floods is a huge part of their urban planning challenge.
- ars 4y ago> 2) Texas's power grid has gained a reputation lately for being unreliable. Having the appearance of something is not the same as actually being that thing. They had one outage during a cold snap, and then warned about high usage, but there has not actually been another outage. California is also warning about an outage. https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_SRA_2022.pdf https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20... the graph on page 6 (labeled as page 5) should be more instructive.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Aloha 4y agoAs a Texan, I can concur. That said, the failure and piss-poor government response to it makes me almost viscerally angry. Texas has promoted itself as an energy leader, from traditional oil and gas production, to large (and growing) production of renewables, we shouldn't be having these failures. The issue for me isn't the failure of the power grid, extraordinary events happen - its that: One - it's happened before (twice before). Two - we should have had a governmental response to adequately winterize the grid. Three - the deregulated power system in Texas creates perverse incentives to building more capacity in - and power usage in Texas is growing faster than either base load or peaking capacity is. These are all governmental and regulatory failures, and ones that were both foreseeable and preventable.
- galangalalgol 4y agoThey are in fact doing rolling "brownouts" as of a few days ago. I put it in quotes because the friend who told us about it had been without for a couple hours at that point.
- trashcan 4y agoThis is not being done by ERCOT that manages power distribution in Texas. Your friend had a local power failure, probably caused by a downed power line. Rolling blackouts would be documented here if they were happening: https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages More info: https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/do-you-know-the-difference-between-a-local-outage-and-an-ercot-mandated-rolling-blackout/ https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/do-you-know-the-difference-b...
- marcinzm 4y agoGiven this is just an initial permission with no concrete plan to build they may also be trying to induce a bidding war with another location that is more favorable (but more expensive).
- wnevets 4y agoAs long as it doesn't get chilly, a little too warm or too many people set their AC to below 78 the texas power grid works great!
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- gwern 4y agoApparently they just... shut down: https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/samsungs-austin-facility-shutdown-february-freeze/269-09e1de20-509d-42d5-8af0-7b69c80242da https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/sam... I've read about chip fabs colocating with power plants, but apparently they just plan to sign agreements with the local utility for guarantees: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2021/09/24/samsung-utilities-are-key-to-17b-decision.html https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2021/09/24/samsung-u...
- extheat 4y ago> just shut down Yes, a year ago.
- gwern 4y agoSure. My point is that you might think they have some sort of fancy backup system or to be totally self-contained because otherwise the alternative is that when the grid has problems, they shut down, and surely they wouldn't do that?! But turns out, they do, and that is not merely a hypothetical and happened quite recently. So, the answer to 'what alternative do they use' may just be 'nothing'.
- mshumi 4y agoBuffer of batteries and generator backup
- KennyBlanken 4y agoFabs have all sorts of power systems because even the slightest blip or glitch in power could mean millions in losses I know a decade or two ago IBM was using superconducting magnets for power smoothing to handle sub-millisecond events. Then you have battery and flywheel systems for bigger drops that are designed to carry load until generators can start and accept load (usually a very short period of time if the generator's oil and coolant are on heaters.)
- rossdavidh 4y agoAustin resident here, who used to work in fabs. Basically, there was a time (1980's) when fabs in Austin had their own power generation. AMD, which used to have its own fabs, had its own power for them. Then, they (not just AMD but everybody with fabs in Texas) eventually decided it wasn't worth the cost, and started using the regular power grid, because Austin's power had become more reliable. Obviously, as the percentage of solar, wind, and natgas has increased, and the percentage of coal has decreased, this reliability has been thrown into question. Also, the rapid population increase has also just meant a general problem of building new capacity fast enough. My guess is that they have an eye on it, and it is also possible they will build their own power generation, but more likely they are just getting guarantees of some sort that enough power capacity will be built.
- mortenlarsen 4y agoThe recent issues did not have renewable energy as the main cause. Fox News is entertainment, not news (by their own claim).
- makomk 4y agoRenweable energy was not the "main cause" because it reliably fails to generate adequate amounts of power at that time of year and so the grid was entirely reliant on other generation (mostly natural gas) to fill in the gap. Basically, it wasn't the fault of renewable energy because everyone knew it was useless anyway.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI would like to point out that the New York Times has made the same claim very recently too (in the same context, a defamation trial). Events like the Texas blackouts rarely have one sole cause. Reliance on renewables was clearly one factor out of many.
- michaelmrose 4y agoIt's actually not a meaningful factor AT ALL. Where renewables failed it wasn't because the nature of the technology but because of failure to winterize.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> Here's something that confuses me about building fabs in Texas. > Texas's power grid has gained a reputation lately for being unreliable. As stated, there's nothing to be confused about. You'd want to build new fabs in Texas for the same reason you want to buy stocks while they're down rather than while they're up. The reputation only matters if you're trying to sell your new fab to someone else. If you want to use it yourself, what matters is the reality.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago> The reputation only matters if you're trying to sell your new fab to someone else. If you want to use it yourself, what matters is the reality. Certainly. My point was that (perhaps) the grid in actuality has reliability issues, and the reason I thought that might be true is because of its current reputation.
- seydor 4y agoMexican labor
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bob1029 4y agoThere is no way in hell you can run a modern fab using on-site power anymore. Maybe in the 80s/90s, but now you got things like EUV light sources that require megawatt-class power delivery all on their own. Just stepping back 1 generation to DUV and you are "only" talking ~100kW per machine, which is still insane. What would probably happen is a special grid arrangement. If you are going to build eleven of these things, entire power plants, switchyards and transmission lines will need to be constructed ahead of time. They will likely need to run isolated from the broader grid in some manner. I cannot imagine Samsung executive management agreeing to this many factories (even with subsidies) unless some guarantee could be made WRT power delivery.
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoReputation is not fact. Texas ranks roughly in the middle https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastructure/energy https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastruct... Texas’s reputation is due to political leaning of major news media.
- cryptonector 4y agoWith the recent Supreme Court's decision limiting the EPA's power (unless Congress acts to delegate the specific power that the court says the EPA lacked), soon it should be possible for the Texas grid to become more reliably by increasing the us of natural gas and decreasing the relative use of wind and solar.
- ekidd 4y agoOut of curiosity, what makes you think that the EPA is responsible for Texas having such a high rate of renewable energy? This seems slightly surprising, because there are large portions of the US grid without as many renewables. Could you point me to an article explaining your theory in more detail, with evidence? One alternate hypothesis might be that renewables are cheap and profitable, with low capital requirements. In a place like Texas, with lots of sun and wind, it might be tempting to build more renewables than the grid could support. Combined with weak regulation, this would risk destabilizing the grid. In a complex system like an electrical grid, failures can occur for all sorts of complicated reasons. I'd be interested in understanding what happened here, based on evidence.
- 88840-8855 4y agoWHY cannot we have such stuff here in Germany? WHY is everything here so much Kleinklein? I am very mad! Good for Texas! It is the place to be.
- Y-bar 4y agoWhat? > Intel picks Magdeburg in Germany for new European chip factory https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-picks-magdeburg-germany-new-european-chip-factory-2022-02-27/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-picks-magdeburg-ger...
- rossdavidh 4y agoHi! I used to work in fabs in Texas, and then our company's new fab got made in Germany (way back in 2000 or so). I actually worked in Dresden for six months, as one of a few Americans helping to get things going. These things have a way of going in cycles. I expect Germany will get some more fab building going soon.
- throwaway4good 4y agoEU has chips act (actually passed) and is already paying Intel billions to create a new fab in Germany.
- pjc50 4y agohttps://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/83384/bosch-builds-e3-billion-german-wafer-fabs-through-european-chips-act/ https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/83384/bosch-buil... (it's just a massive US news availability bias)
- bilsbie 4y agoBetter to ask forgiveness than permission.
- terrorOf 4y ago
- rossdavidh 4y agoSometimes true, but not, I think, in fab construction, not even in Texas.
- trentnix 4y agoSamsung asks permission (but makes no actual commitments) right before Washington votes on whether to subsidize chip manufacturing. Maybe I’m just old and jaded and maybe asking permission has nothing to do with posturing for DC money, but experience tells me this might not be as genuine as the headline suggests.
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoI don’t see the problem. If the US government shows a potential interest in subsidizing fabs, the expected outcome is that chip makers would explore their options for building fans here. That’s the entire purpose of the subsidies.
- b112 4y agoWouldn't the goal be to not apply, before the law passes? The touted concept is, no one will build without subsidies. Yet without them, Samsung is planning to build! The proof? Well, they spent cash to plan, pay for application prep, and apply. So yes it seems weird. If anything, it could kill the bill.
- syrrim 4y agoPlanning is not doing. Subsidies are only useful if fabs are on the verge of being built, but are being held back. If no one would ever build a fab in the US, then any subsidies handed out will be wasted. If fabs are being built anyways, then there isn't much benefit. Samsung is saying they might build a fab, and thus could be enticed by subsidies.
- b112 4y agoTheir actions say otherwise, because to plan means you think it worthwhile.
- PretzelPirate 4y agoUnless their plan is “let’s get permissions so that if the subsidy is put in place, we’re ready to build.” That doesn’t suggest that they’d build without the subsidy, but that they want to be able to take advantage of the subsidy right away, if it gets put in place.
- neilv 4y ago
- ceeplusplus 4y agoI don't foresee a large exodus from Texas. There's been a large inflow during COVID and I don't see people leaving their big houses and cheap CoL. The Twitter crowd screams a lot about these things but if you look at sites like 538 for example, there's been only a minor shift towards Democrats in the polls due to Roe v Wade being overturned. The economy matters a lot more to people than social issues.
- smegger001 4y agothere are plenty of people for whom this is either not a deal breaker, is a non issue, or support it. secondly i think this may be a point that breakes the red hold on the state it has been purple for a long time already and this will probably result in quiet the backlash against the right.
- vel0city 4y agoI personally know a lot of right leaning, church going, gun toting, EE/material science/physics/fab-related-field people in Texas. There's plenty of people working highly skilled jobs who don't have that much of a problem with the recent reversal of Roe. You can technically be highly educated and still be pro gun, anti gay marriage, and pro-life. It's not like learning how silicon crystals form or how electrons move suddenly makes you pro choice.
- rossdavidh 4y agoSpeaking as a Texas resident who used to work in fabs, you may have a point, but only if they actually do 11 fabs. I think a more realistic interpretation is that there are 11 sites they are considering for fabs (and want to get the government paperwork ball rolling on), of which only a few will be used. Texas does have a tight labor market, but since a lot of the technical hiring would not start for a year or two, I expect that hiring for these fabs (assuming we're talking 2-4, not 11, actually get built) would be challenging, but not too challenging.
- jquery 4y ago
- andrewstuart 4y agoGovernment assistance should be tied to outcomes ... nothing else. Gigantic cash bonus when the first 2,000,000 chips are delivered in commercial products, nothing before that. Trouble is government subsidies pay for the wrong things.
- encryptluks2 4y agoI meant they could pull a Comcast and give billions for them to do nothing. Let's not forget that after that, the government gave even more money to Comcast.
- CapnReality 4y ago[flagged]
- CapnReality 4y ago[flagged]
- _JamesA_ 4y agoAs someone who lives practically next door to the new Taylor fab(s) I am not sure how to feel about this. When I moved here 20 years ago the population was 5,000. It has now grown to 30,000+ and the infrastructure has not kept up at all.
- causality0 4y agoLet's hope they're serious. North America is going to need a serious semiconductor expansion if and when the East Asian security situation deteriorates.
- tlhunter 4y agoWon't Texas just become a fiery wasteland within a decade?