workshop35
Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2013
- Messages
- 781
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20220713VL206.html
Let the conspiracy theories and semiconductor company hate begin
Let the conspiracy theories and semiconductor company hate begin
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Conspiracy? They don't need to. Power outages happen. Their choices are to have a backup power source which would be obscenely expensive or raise prices and bill the loss to the customers. Pretty easy choice if you ask me.
its always this shit..... its always power loss or some flood... billions at stake but lets leave it chance....
I've been in datacenters or working very near to them since 2007. I'm no rookie. Every datacenter in the country built in the last 15 years or greater in some cases can run COMPLETELY on generators. My facilities in Ashburn Virginia were required to run off generators only one year for two weeks during the summer as the grid couldn't handle datacenters and larger facilities. Mind you, we're talking about datacenters only, so everyone can access pornhub and their yahoo mail.1 day of disruption of the wafers is enough to pay your "obscenely expensive" bill ... it happen last year at samsung during the ice storm...my buddy is a manager in charge of a line and he said ercot cut them off and they lost thousands of wafers (stuck in machines mid cycle)....wafers...not chips
Finally I did! Yay!Who had "power outage" on their bingo card?
This is Micron. We know which one it is.Sometimes a power disruption is just a power disruption. Or part of a larger nefarious scheme.
I've seen 2 datacenters in my career lose power when doing a power failover test to generators. 2 very large DC companies. It can happen.I've been in datacenters or working very near to them since 2007. I'm no rookie. Every datacenter in the country built in the last 15 years or greater in some cases can run COMPLETELY on generators. My facilities in Ashburn Virginia were required to run off generators only one year for two weeks during the summer as the grid couldn't handle datacenters and larger facilities. Mind you, we're talking about datacenters only, so everyone can access pornhub and their yahoo mail.
Yet major production facilities with umpteen millions of dollars on the production line continually have environmental issues affect their production.
At *SOME* point this will become unbelievable. I don't know when we'll get there, but we'll get there.
Congrats! You win 30% more expensive DRAM!Finally I did! Yay!
FUCK YEAH!Congrats! You win 30% more expensive DRAM!
Of course it can happen. Planes fall out of the sky to no fault of the pilot. Things happen. But would you be arguing that these facilities electrical issues are purely due to construction or implantation issues? Or were they simply ill designed from the beginning?I've seen 2 datacenters in my career lose power when doing a power failover test to generators. 2 very large DC companies. It can happen.
I see. The Micron-sponsored Bingo cards were a clever diversion in that case. Don't tell [Spectre] though. It'd crush his spirit, and right after that beautiful victory speech!This is Micron. We know which one it is.
I completely agree that a production facility would be a larger ask to back up. But it can be done. Any when the stakes are high enough it's worth it. I guess losing millions isn't worth it.Yeah a lot depends on the infrastructure. It doesn't help to have two substations if they are both fed from the same unreliable supplier.
And running a data center on generator power is one thing, a large factory is probably 2 orders of magnitude more power. Factory I worked at pulled over 200 megawatts. How many near line generators would that take?
Its a pretty simple calculation. Cost of lost production versus cost of mitigation.I completely agree that a production facility would be a larger ask to back up. But it can be done. Any when the stakes are high enough it's worth it. I guess losing millions isn't worth it.
Certainly, but in that case then segment it out, put critical systems on generators, such as saving your wafer's so you don't have to bin them and once out of the process so they can be stored, done, let everything else shutdown.Yeah a lot depends on the infrastructure. It doesn't help to have two substations if they are both fed from the same unreliable supplier.
And running a data center on generator power is one thing, a large factory is probably 2 orders of magnitude more power. Factory I worked at pulled over 200 megawatts. How many near line generators would that take?
Saving your wafers means having every machine processing wafers on backup, which means having 99.9...% of the facility power be backed up. Getting them to a safe state means completing the current layer, and each layer takes hours.Certainly, but in that case then segment it out, put critical systems on generators, such as saving your wafer's so you don't have to bin them and once out of the process so they can be stored, done, let everything else shutdown.
But as noted, sure the costs vs insurance and other things have been considered and if they have a 99.999% or what ever up time....
Depending on how many different machines are running at once, it might be worth looking at keeping the ones that are close-ish to done running, to avoid wasting all that sunk time.Saving your wafers means having every machine processing wafers on backup
I'm sure all of this has been planned out to the nth degree. I dont work in a fab but im in the semi industry for test/dev. We have backup plans, risk mitigation strategies, all this stuff and its not that critical when we lose power, chilled water, ln2, air, ect. Worst for us is we lose time on a test flow or a wafer gets scratched or a probe card gets mangled.Depending on how many different machines are running at once, it might be worth looking at keeping the ones that are close-ish to done running, to avoid wasting all that sunk time.
Saving your wafers means having every machine processing wafers on backup, which means having 99.9...% of the facility power be backed up. Getting them to a safe state means completing the current layer, and each layer takes hours.
At several hundred megawatts, you're talking about having a full scale natural gas power plant on site as a backup. Medium term I suspect as grid-scale batteries become cheap enough to go from doing frequency stabilization and storing 1 or 2 hours of power to storing 6-24 hours worth we might see large semi-conductor facilities I suspect we'll see them co-located with the fabs.
Until then though, the people who run the fabs actually can run the numbers on how much it would cost to have enough backup power on site to do a safe shutdown vs how much losing every in process wafer and a month or two of yearly revenue costs. They've all concluded that backup power is even more expensive than the risk of loss.
And no they couldn't decide otherwise but decide not to do it for decades as a way to generate artificial scarcity any more than they could keep any of the price fixing schemes they get busted for every 5 or 10 years when someone decides to blow the whistle and retire on their 1% share of the collected govt fines.
Mostly I'm assuming the person above who gave a 200MW figure for a fabs power consumption is in the right ballpark. That's a full up natural gas powerplant in size. If the actual value is an order of magnitude lower, a collection of semi-trailer sized generators doing a few MW each could carry the load. (As long as the machines could be UPSed long enough for the generators to start anyway.) The fact that they don't do this suggests to me that the 200MW figure is at least in the right ballpark.You clearly know a hell of a lot more about this than I do! Appreciate the info.