4 ms·

Does All Semiconductor Manufacturing Depend on Spruce Pine Quartz? (2024)

81 points by colinprince 1y ago

effnorwood 1y ago
[dead]
electric_muse 1y ago
[flagged]
- HPsquared 1y ago
  See also all the hype about rare earths being needed for electric motors and generators, or cobalt for batteries. Neither of those are really strictly needed. Induction motors can be used instead which don't require any magnets (but those are a few percent less efficient); Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries don't need cobalt (they are slightly less powerful but cheaper and safer).
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    > Induction motors can be used instead Most of the automotive industry uses Electrically Excited Synchronous Motors (EESMs) as an alternative to NdFeB magnet motors not induction motors, but they have's taken off yet because investment in mass scale production only began 1-2 years ago. This will change over the next 2-3 years because BMW, JLR/Tata, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Renault Group have begun moving to EESMs. EU OEMs who have a major foothold in the EESM market like Valeo are lobbying 80% EU indigenization for automotive parts in the EU [0], and India is also started a fairly large industrial subsidy to mass produce EESM powertrains [1] and a number of the players like Sterling Gtake have gotten tech transfers from European vendors like AEM that started off as NatSec funded applications [2]. That said, I also haven't seen a same push for a domestic EESM supply chain in the US unlike the EU and India - GM vendor Niron Magnetics [2] is the only American manufacturer I know trying to manufacture EESMs domestically. That said, for a number of brownfield military applications, the migration away from NdFeB magnets cannot occur without essentially rendering entire product lines inoperable and unrepairable. This is why NiB magnet chains are viewed as extremely critical. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/valeo-ceo-backs-minimum-eu-content-cars-aid-regions-competitiveness-2025-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/valeo-... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-revs-up-alternate-ev-motor-tests-china-curbs-rare-earths-exports-2025-09-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-revs-up-alternate-... [1] - https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-and-partnerships/case-studies/advanced-electric-machines/ https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-and-partnerships/case-studies... [2] - https://www.nironmagnetics.com/ https://www.nironmagnetics.com/
    - HPsquared 1y ago
      Sounds like a development of the slip ring synchronous motor (same thing mechanically as a car alternator) but with inductive power delivery to the rotor instead of slip rings. Quite cool if they can make it work! Basic slip ring motors would also work in EVs (though not as nicely).
- fallpeak 1y ago
  Did you write this or is it AI? Not hating, but it pings several of my "AI writing" heuristics and I'd like to improve my model if possible. edit: Never mind, given your comment history this is definitely LLM output.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    Is it wrong? The part about the crucibles is somewhat interesting, if true, as it reminded me of a passage in the Manhattan Project engineering story that was posted the other day. They thought the melting point of plutonium would be a lot higher than it turned out to be, so they commissioned a lot of exotic crucibles [1] that turned out to be unneeded. They were apparently developed at MIT with cerium sulfide, a compound I'd never heard of before. 1: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/an-engineering-history-of-the-manhattan https://www.construction-physics.com/p/an-engineering-histor...
    - littlestymaar 1y ago
      > Is it wrong? No, but it's a summary of the original article without anything added. I agree with GP that it's very likely LLM generated from the article.
      - CamperBob2 1y ago
        I see a few other posts by electric_muse that are LLM-suspicious, but it bugs me that the style is so much like my own writing. Only a matter of time until I'm the witch on trial, I suppose.
        littlestymaar 1y ago
        I don't really look at the writing style, as it's a very good way to fall for false positive. And I actually won't blame a non native speaker for editing their thoughts using an AI much more proficient in English than them. Instead I look how much actual information (be it anecdotes, personal opinion, different perspective, etc.) a comment contains. Here it's just a very straightforward TL;DR; of the original article, it contains no substance beyond that so I don't think anyone would bother write it (or at least they would likely advertise it as a TL;DR;).
relaxing 1y ago
It’s interesting that the North Carolina quartz deposits are mined by two foreign interests. That despite the size of the US there was no company that could do it as economically as the Belgians and Norwegians. Presumably due to lack of expertise?
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Belgium and Norway are firmly in the US' orbit. They're not going anywhere.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    ... assuming the Trump administration doesn't fuck things up even more than it already did. Europe is fast divesting from the US.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > Presumably due to lack of expertise Nope. The American entities used to be independent companies but faced financial troubles when the mining industry died in the US during the 2010s due to a mix of a commodity glut, lack of state support, and competitors like Norway and China infusing state originated capital into their players
  - relaxing 1y ago
    So Norway had a longer view on the commodities market? Or wanted to prop up its own industry?
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Historically it's been the latter as a stabilization fund [0], but is increasingly moving to the former because due to political pressures Norway has had to push for ESG, which has begun to degrade some of the political power a fund like the GPFG has, because China, India, the UAE, KSA, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian and EMEA countries are spinning up SWFs and SDFs that do not really care about ethical concerns. It's not like 20 or 30 years ago when the only pension funds with massive amounts of dry powder were the Ontario Teachers Fund, CalPERs, or the GPFG. There are alternative capital markets now because it has become easier to raise capital outside the West. For example, look at the IPO boom happening in India todau - a number of Silicon Valley startups that would have listed on the NYSE decided to list on the NSE instead because it's easier for a company with $50-100M in revenue to IPO in India versus the US today, which is what Freshworks trailblazed in 2021. The same thing happened in China and HK in the 2010s, which helped build the domestic capital market needed to trickle down into VC funding that helped spawn companies like DeepSeek and Biren. In Asian and Middle Eastern countries, the gold standard for SWFs and SDFs is Temasek in Singapore and what became the Master Trust in Japan - they are entirely focused on developing new industries by coordinating state capital and SoEs with private sector capital, and are driven by the primary goal of developing industry - not moral or ethical considerations. National security and sovereignity is the overarching goal. Western funds have become heavily politicized due to the rise of activist investors along with the fact that the majority of capital at this point is a mix of private sector capital and very large (think billions of dollars of AUM) family offices where a heir or group of heirs wants to leverage their fortune for their pet project (eg. Actual Communism and extreme far left politics like Fergie Chambers [yes I recognize the irony] or extreme far right politics like Timothy Mellon) [0] - https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/sovereignwealth/files/fund_profiles_final.pdf https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/sovereignwealth/files/...
mhb 1y ago
! Spruce Pine quartz that doesn’t quite make the purity cut gets used for sandtraps in high-end golf courses.
impish9208 1y ago
Hunterbrook did a great piece about this after Hurricane Helene last year. https://hntrbrk.com/essential-node-in-global-semiconductor-supply-chain-hit-by-hurricane-helene-video-reveals-entrance-to-mine-has-flooded https://hntrbrk.com/essential-node-in-global-semiconductor-s...
back2dafucha 1y ago
This is similar to the "rare earths" myths floating around. Its a prepper story for sure. "Rare Earths" are literally everywhere but require large open mines which are not environmentally acceptable and cost effective in the US (depending). The existing mines are still here but shut down decades ago. Ask Apple how it feels about paying a pretty big chunk of money to reopen one. That guys mine was worth more closed than open. Like so many things we sent that task to China a long time ago.
- egl2020 1y ago
  AFAIK the mine is less of a problem than the refinery and its waste.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Not all rare earths are equally distributed. Lithium sure, but not a number of other REEs like Neodymium, Dysprosium, Molybdenum, and others are only found in unequally distributed concentrated deposits.
  - amluto 1y ago
    You might consider looking up what a “rare earth” is. Your list is rather confused.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Fair enough. Neodymium and Dysprosium are REEs. Molybdenum is not but it is a critical element that is also commonly brought up in the same conversations as REEs. I think recentering the convo to "critical minerals" would solve the issue.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > "Rare Earths" are literally everywhere but require large open mines which are not environmentally acceptable and cost effective in the US (depending). The existing mines are still here but shut down decades ago. The problem is, "cost effective" has different meanings depending on if one includes externalities such as geopolitical risks into the cost.
throwup238 1y ago
This topic has come up several times on HN [1][2] and no, the industry does not because there are other source, although more expensive. Other customers had to switch to Russian/Chinese sources due to the disruption but HPQ customers did not. I figured at the time that other vendors would have a chance to take some HPQ market share but when Spruce Pine went down, Quartz Corp just shifted their refining operations to another plant in Drag, Norway and used existing feedstock and reserves to maintain supply to their customers. Sibelco restarted operations within a few weeks [3]. It was all a non-event in the semiconductor industry, especially compared to real disruptions like the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake that took out a fifth of 300mm wafer supply leading some fabs to shut down entire product lines. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701862 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818248 [3] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267697/north-carolina-quartz-sibelco-resumes-operations-hurricane-helene https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267697/north-carolina-...

81 points by colinprince 1y ago

effnorwood 1y ago

[dead]

electric_muse 1y ago

[flagged]

HPsquared 1y ago
See also all the hype about rare earths being needed for electric motors and generators, or cobalt for batteries. Neither of those are really strictly needed. Induction motors can be used instead which don't require any magnets (but those are a few percent less efficient); Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries don't need cobalt (they are slightly less powerful but cheaper and safer).
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > Induction motors can be used instead Most of the automotive industry uses Electrically Excited Synchronous Motors (EESMs) as an alternative to NdFeB magnet motors not induction motors, but they have's taken off yet because investment in mass scale production only began 1-2 years ago. This will change over the next 2-3 years because BMW, JLR/Tata, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Renault Group have begun moving to EESMs. EU OEMs who have a major foothold in the EESM market like Valeo are lobbying 80% EU indigenization for automotive parts in the EU [0], and India is also started a fairly large industrial subsidy to mass produce EESM powertrains [1] and a number of the players like Sterling Gtake have gotten tech transfers from European vendors like AEM that started off as NatSec funded applications [2]. That said, I also haven't seen a same push for a domestic EESM supply chain in the US unlike the EU and India - GM vendor Niron Magnetics [2] is the only American manufacturer I know trying to manufacture EESMs domestically. That said, for a number of brownfield military applications, the migration away from NdFeB magnets cannot occur without essentially rendering entire product lines inoperable and unrepairable. This is why NiB magnet chains are viewed as extremely critical. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/valeo-ceo-backs-minimum-eu-content-cars-aid-regions-competitiveness-2025-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/valeo-... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-revs-up-alternate-ev-motor-tests-china-curbs-rare-earths-exports-2025-09-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-revs-up-alternate-... [1] - https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-and-partnerships/case-studies/advanced-electric-machines/ https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-and-partnerships/case-studies... [2] - https://www.nironmagnetics.com/ https://www.nironmagnetics.com/
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    Sounds like a development of the slip ring synchronous motor (same thing mechanically as a car alternator) but with inductive power delivery to the rotor instead of slip rings. Quite cool if they can make it work! Basic slip ring motors would also work in EVs (though not as nicely).
fallpeak 1y ago
Did you write this or is it AI? Not hating, but it pings several of my "AI writing" heuristics and I'd like to improve my model if possible. edit: Never mind, given your comment history this is definitely LLM output.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  Is it wrong? The part about the crucibles is somewhat interesting, if true, as it reminded me of a passage in the Manhattan Project engineering story that was posted the other day. They thought the melting point of plutonium would be a lot higher than it turned out to be, so they commissioned a lot of exotic crucibles [1] that turned out to be unneeded. They were apparently developed at MIT with cerium sulfide, a compound I'd never heard of before. 1: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/an-engineering-history-of-the-manhattan https://www.construction-physics.com/p/an-engineering-histor...
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    > Is it wrong? No, but it's a summary of the original article without anything added. I agree with GP that it's very likely LLM generated from the article.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      I see a few other posts by electric_muse that are LLM-suspicious, but it bugs me that the style is so much like my own writing. Only a matter of time until I'm the witch on trial, I suppose.
      - littlestymaar 1y ago
        I don't really look at the writing style, as it's a very good way to fall for false positive. And I actually won't blame a non native speaker for editing their thoughts using an AI much more proficient in English than them. Instead I look how much actual information (be it anecdotes, personal opinion, different perspective, etc.) a comment contains. Here it's just a very straightforward TL;DR; of the original article, it contains no substance beyond that so I don't think anyone would bother write it (or at least they would likely advertise it as a TL;DR;).

relaxing 1y ago

It’s interesting that the North Carolina quartz deposits are mined by two foreign interests. That despite the size of the US there was no company that could do it as economically as the Belgians and Norwegians. Presumably due to lack of expertise?

HPsquared 1y ago
Belgium and Norway are firmly in the US' orbit. They're not going anywhere.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  ... assuming the Trump administration doesn't fuck things up even more than it already did. Europe is fast divesting from the US.
alephnerd 1y ago
> Presumably due to lack of expertise Nope. The American entities used to be independent companies but faced financial troubles when the mining industry died in the US during the 2010s due to a mix of a commodity glut, lack of state support, and competitors like Norway and China infusing state originated capital into their players
- relaxing 1y ago
  So Norway had a longer view on the commodities market? Or wanted to prop up its own industry?
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Historically it's been the latter as a stabilization fund [0], but is increasingly moving to the former because due to political pressures Norway has had to push for ESG, which has begun to degrade some of the political power a fund like the GPFG has, because China, India, the UAE, KSA, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian and EMEA countries are spinning up SWFs and SDFs that do not really care about ethical concerns. It's not like 20 or 30 years ago when the only pension funds with massive amounts of dry powder were the Ontario Teachers Fund, CalPERs, or the GPFG. There are alternative capital markets now because it has become easier to raise capital outside the West. For example, look at the IPO boom happening in India todau - a number of Silicon Valley startups that would have listed on the NYSE decided to list on the NSE instead because it's easier for a company with $50-100M in revenue to IPO in India versus the US today, which is what Freshworks trailblazed in 2021. The same thing happened in China and HK in the 2010s, which helped build the domestic capital market needed to trickle down into VC funding that helped spawn companies like DeepSeek and Biren. In Asian and Middle Eastern countries, the gold standard for SWFs and SDFs is Temasek in Singapore and what became the Master Trust in Japan - they are entirely focused on developing new industries by coordinating state capital and SoEs with private sector capital, and are driven by the primary goal of developing industry - not moral or ethical considerations. National security and sovereignity is the overarching goal. Western funds have become heavily politicized due to the rise of activist investors along with the fact that the majority of capital at this point is a mix of private sector capital and very large (think billions of dollars of AUM) family offices where a heir or group of heirs wants to leverage their fortune for their pet project (eg. Actual Communism and extreme far left politics like Fergie Chambers [yes I recognize the irony] or extreme far right politics like Timothy Mellon) [0] - https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/sovereignwealth/files/fund_profiles_final.pdf https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/sovereignwealth/files/...

mhb 1y ago

! Spruce Pine quartz that doesn’t quite make the purity cut gets used for sandtraps in high-end golf courses.

impish9208 1y ago

Hunterbrook did a great piece about this after Hurricane Helene last year. https://hntrbrk.com/essential-node-in-global-semiconductor-supply-chain-hit-by-hurricane-helene-video-reveals-entrance-to-mine-has-flooded https://hntrbrk.com/essential-node-in-global-semiconductor-s...

back2dafucha 1y ago

This is similar to the "rare earths" myths floating around. Its a prepper story for sure. "Rare Earths" are literally everywhere but require large open mines which are not environmentally acceptable and cost effective in the US (depending). The existing mines are still here but shut down decades ago. Ask Apple how it feels about paying a pretty big chunk of money to reopen one. That guys mine was worth more closed than open. Like so many things we sent that task to China a long time ago.

egl2020 1y ago
AFAIK the mine is less of a problem than the refinery and its waste.
alephnerd 1y ago
Not all rare earths are equally distributed. Lithium sure, but not a number of other REEs like Neodymium, Dysprosium, Molybdenum, and others are only found in unequally distributed concentrated deposits.
- amluto 1y ago
  You might consider looking up what a “rare earth” is. Your list is rather confused.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Fair enough. Neodymium and Dysprosium are REEs. Molybdenum is not but it is a critical element that is also commonly brought up in the same conversations as REEs. I think recentering the convo to "critical minerals" would solve the issue.
mschuster91 1y ago
> "Rare Earths" are literally everywhere but require large open mines which are not environmentally acceptable and cost effective in the US (depending). The existing mines are still here but shut down decades ago. The problem is, "cost effective" has different meanings depending on if one includes externalities such as geopolitical risks into the cost.

throwup238 1y ago

This topic has come up several times on HN [1][2] and no, the industry does not because there are other source, although more expensive. Other customers had to switch to Russian/Chinese sources due to the disruption but HPQ customers did not. I figured at the time that other vendors would have a chance to take some HPQ market share but when Spruce Pine went down, Quartz Corp just shifted their refining operations to another plant in Drag, Norway and used existing feedstock and reserves to maintain supply to their customers. Sibelco restarted operations within a few weeks [3]. It was all a non-event in the semiconductor industry, especially compared to real disruptions like the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake that took out a fifth of 300mm wafer supply leading some fabs to shut down entire product lines. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701862 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818248 [3] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267697/north-carolina-quartz-sibelco-resumes-operations-hurricane-helene https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267697/north-carolina-...