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This doesn't seem like the giant step I thought it was: > Unlike the costly bleeding edge 2 and 3 nanometer chips made by giants like TSMC, TI’s chips are mad
by hliyan 1y ago
This doesn't seem like the giant step I thought it was:
> Unlike the costly bleeding edge 2 and 3 nanometer chips made by giants like TSMC, TI’s chips are made on cheaper, legacy nodes: 45 to 130 nanometers.
What's worse:
> Making chips takes an immense amount of water, and about a quarter of Texas is in drought. Luckily, Sherman has water rights to nearby Lake Texoma.
Indeed lucky for TI, but probably not so for area residents.
- Gud 1y agoWhat the fuck. This is terrible news.
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- zozbot234 1y ago> Making chips takes an immense amount of water This is misleading, modern chip fabs recycle their water basically 100%. It's not being evaporated for cooling like in some data center deployments, it's just part of the process.
- uoaei 1y agoThat is of course the ideal, however local economic conditions (low/subsidized water prices, etc.) may dictate a different path by incentivizing another way of doing things (open cooling systems, etc.).
- hliyan 1y agoThat is not entirely accurate, as per the article: > TI will use about 1,700 gallons of water per minute when the new Sherman fab is complete, with plans to recycle at least 50% of that
- wqaatwt 1y agoWhy are they all building factories in places like Arizona and Texas? Aren’t there plenty of areas where water is ample and land prices relatively cheap.
- blks 1y agoTaxes and labour laws/no unions
- masklinn 1y agoAlso limited to no environmental regulations and very… accommodating… administrations.
- axiolite 1y agoLand in Texas and Arizona *is* rather cheap. They already have fabs nearby, and so, fab suppliers/services in the area. They have a large employee pool in the vicinity, with modest salary expectations. The southern US mostly doesn't have blizzards and ice that regularly knocks out electric supply lines, and/or makes it impossible for employees to get to/from work for days/weeks at a time. Water is about the cheapest resource around. Even in water-stressed areas (while it may cost several times what it would in wetter parts of the US) it's still an insignificant expense for any industry that doesn't need an absolutely obscene continual supply. Roof-top PV solar power works out a lot better in the southern US than further north.
- le-mark 1y ago> The southern US mostly doesn't have blizzards and ice that regularly knocks out electric supply lines Except for when they do, then they are literally paralyzed until it melts. This may only happen once per decade, bot wow it sucks. One ice storm in Birmingham was so bad kids were stuck at school for 3-4 nights.
- dboreham 1y agoRepublicans.
- 1y ago
- trebligdivad 1y agoThere's lots of more boring chips in phones and mundane devices that are fine on older processes; things like audio stuff and battery controllers. If you want to get away from relying on China, then those chips are the ones that are in everything from your USB hubs, keyboards, phones, washing machines - everything Less sexy, but in many ways more critical to keeping stuff going.
- zozbot234 1y agoThe trailing edge is also where Moore's law in its original sense is still going strong. The fabrication processes get cheaper and more refined over time, while this is becoming a lot harder with new leading-edge nodes.
- AuthorizedCust 1y agoTexas is a big state. It’s lazy journalism to generalize the state as droughty, which is implied by that sentence. Lake Texoma has been hovering by the “full” mark pretty consistently for over 55 years. Recently, its water level has significantly declined to—wait for it—100% full! If you monitor water maps, the east half of Texas’s water supplies don’t often get far outside of “full”. More data: https://www.waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/texoma https://www.waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/texo...
- monero-xmr 1y agoAlso the water doesn’t disappear from the universe. It either evaporates or is pumped back out. People who lose their minds over water have been saying for 50 years we were about to enter a desert world
- rini17 1y agoClean water does disappear. Not from universe bit from places you need it most. That there's plenty of it in the air or sea or Saturn rings, is little consolation.
- scarab92 1y agoThese fabs don’t evaporate the water though, they use it as process water, and then treat it to wastewater standards before discharging to the municipal wastewater system. Assuming the municipality recycles their wastewater, which they would do in any drought prone region, this water will become clean water again. It’s essentially a closed system.
- rini17 1y ago> It’s essentially a closed system. Source? Especially the claim that they are using external municipal wastewater treatment seems highly implausible, they are using nasty chemicals.