Samsung to build 3nm node in Texas? Yeehaa!

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>Extreme cold in Tejas is only going to effect electricity availability once every decade.

This was a 'once-in-a-century' event for us. Even Austin only rarely has snow or a mild freeze. For Houston (my home) to have 72-96 hours of a hard freeze was unique (not since 1904?).
Our infrastructure is build to take 100+ degree summer heat, not hard freezes.

/I've had no power for 2 days (some have been without electricity for 4+ days) and still no running water
 
>Extreme cold in Tejas is only going to effect electricity availability once every decade.

This was a 'once-in-a-century' event for us. Even Austin only rarely has snow or a mild freeze. For Houston (my home) to have 72-96 hours of a hard freeze was unique (not since 1904?).
Our infrastructure is build to take 100+ degree summer heat, not hard freezes.

/I've had no power for 2 days (some have been without electricity for 4+ days) and still no running water
^this. I have heard if the temp swing was analogous to the hottest day, Dallas would be at 128F. Not sure electrical infrastructure here (or almost anywhere) could handle that either.
 
Why? They already built one a decade back in Austin.

https://www.samsung.com/semiconduct...ng-opens-largest-wafer-plant-in-austin-texas/

Austin already has like four different fabs, and Dallas is the home of Texas Instruments (with at least 5 in the area).

Extreme cold in Tejas is only going to effect electricity availability once every decade.
If there is already 4 there, that is exactly why the next fabs should be built elsewhere in another state at the minimum. Everything in 1 place is a single point of failure for things like electricity outages, earthquakes, etc. Better production resiliency if a new fab was someplace else. Something happens in either location, you have the other as your backup. Put them all together, this would just be more fucking stupidity that would bite us in the ass next time shit goes tits up. And it WILL happen again, it's just a question of when.
 
If there is already 4 there, that is exactly why the next fabs should be built elsewhere in another state at the minimum. Everything in 1 place is a single point of failure for things like electricity outages, earthquakes, etc. Better production resiliency if a new fab was someplace else. Something happens in either location, you have the other as your backup. Put them all together, this would just be more fucking stupidity that would bite us in the ass next time shit goes tits up. And it WILL happen again, it's just a question of when.

They're all in the same place for a reason though. If they can be 50% more efficient because of that location, a rare once in a decade event isn't worth changing that over.
 
If there is already 4 there, that is exactly why the next fabs should be built elsewhere in another state at the minimum. Everything in 1 place is a single point of failure for things like electricity outages, earthquakes, etc. Better production resiliency if a new fab was someplace else. Something happens in either location, you have the other as your backup. Put them all together, this would just be more fucking stupidity that would bite us in the ass next time shit goes tits up. And it WILL happen again, it's just a question of when.
But then they have to further stretch their supply and distribution chains. Keeping it all in one state probably in close proximity simplifies a lot of that and it’s one of the major factors that keeps China such an attractive manufacturing a location. Samsung may simply opt to install their own power generators, Texas’ lack of regulation in that regard would make it a fairly simple endeavour, and I’m sure Samsung wouldn’t mind showing off their new generators.
 
I don't see the current weather situation in texas a problem for Samsung. If/when this happens again, Samsung will just raise prices and make more money. they're not about to lose anything.
 
If there is already 4 there, that is exactly why the next fabs should be built elsewhere in another state at the minimum. Everything in 1 place is a single point of failure for things like electricity outages, earthquakes, etc. Better production resiliency if a new fab was someplace else. Something happens in either location, you have the other as your backup. Put them all together, this would just be more fucking stupidity that would bite us in the ass next time shit goes tits up. And it WILL happen again, it's just a question of when.

We already do that. Intel has fabs in Oregon, Arizona, NM, and Ireland and Israel, but they tend to cluster them together (for greater efficiency). They have 4 fabs in Arizona, 4 in Oregon, 3 in Ireland...you get the picture?

Samsung would be wise to do the same (build the second fab near the first.) Austin just went on a huge road building campaign in the last 20 years (and an underutilized new airport) so it has the spare infrastructure! It will never run out of water, as it's in the hill country.

I think that these factors are all more important than n a once-a-decade weather event. There are fabs up in Idaho with much worse winter weather than that (every year)!

https://www.eetimes.com/micron-opens-fab-to-develop-300mm-wafers/#
 
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Well this would be pretty cool to have in my home state. Here is the link https://www.techpowerup.com/278403/...silicon-manufacturing-plant-in-the-us-by-2023
Seems like it would be good. But chip plants produce a lot of toxic waste and they just dump it right into the river. They build a nice big chip plant here near Saratoga, NY and I talked to the guy that disposes of the waste. Right in the river. They dilute it with millions of gallons of good water that could have been used for better things. Bottom line is they can dump as much toxic waste as they want as long as they dilute it.
 
Seems like it would be good. But chip plants produce a lot of toxic waste and they just dump it right into the river. They build a nice big chip plant here near Saratoga, NY and I talked to the guy that disposes of the waste. Right in the river. They dilute it with millions of gallons of good water that could have been used for better things. Bottom line is they can dump as much toxic waste as they want as long as they dilute it.

That's because if they dilute it enough it's no longer toxic or "toxic waste", it has become environmentally safe.
 
I do not see this winter storm deterring Samsung from the location. Samsung will likely update the plans to handle such weather conditions in case they take place again during the life of the fab.
 
Even though the waste is deluted, It gets reaccumulated in the foodchain and guess who's on top of that

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I foresee Texas becoming the next silicon valley in the next 15 years.

What's good for Elon, is good for the gander.
 
This is good news. I'd really to see us have fabrication plants in the US for computer chips. Especially if AMD, Intel and nVIDIA can start pushing some of their CPU/GPU fabrication this way and in good volume it can potentially mean more inventory of future CPUs/GPUs which is always good. Out!
 
I foresee Texas becoming the next silicon valley in the next 15 years.

What's good for Elon, is good for the gander.

It already is the next Silicon Valley.

Austin has been getting invaded for the last ten years, and has twice -daily flights to San Jose (a lot for such a small airport).

Before the latest Austin Silly Valley invasion (Oracle , Samsung, et-al), there was Motorola (1973) and then AMD (1979) building Austin's first two fabs 40 years ago.

Dallas is already the home of Texas Instruments (who managed to bungle every high-margin industry they tried to enter, all paid-for by calculators/DSP components profits.) They still survive today (and own their own fabs); and then there's tons of tech industry overlap from having Lockheed Martin in the same town as TI!
 
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It already is the next Silicon Valley.

Austin has been getting invaded for the last ten years, and has twice -daily flights to San Jose (a lot for such a small airport).

Before the latest Austin Silly Valley invasion (Oracle , Samsung, et-al), there was Motorola (1973) and then AMD (1979) building Austin's first two fabs 40 years ago.

Dallas is already the home of Texas Instruments (who managed to bungle every high-margin industry they tried to enter, all paid-for by calculators/DSP components profits.) They still survive today (and own their own fabs); and then there's tons of tech industry overlap from having Lockheed Martin in the same town as TI!

TI is a foundry now. The calculator and (did you mean DLP?) business has always been what the outside world see’s, but it is completely insignificant to the over all output. We now focus on making products for companies that are fabless as well as allocating most of our capacity to analog. We have been highly profitable for last 10 years. Currently building our biggest fab ever in north Dallas of all places.

We all just got 20% profit sharing, for I think the 3rd or 4th year in a row.

Our “digital” fab did suck back at the beginning of the 2000’s and it still sucks to this day. But I guess we figured out how to do analog pretty good. We did screw up the digital stuff, but the other half was that we couldn’t compete with lower overhead of the Asian fabs. Those companies could charge pennies for chips we still had in development. We do well compared to other American or European fabs.
 
TI is a foundry now. The calculator and (did you mean DLP?) business has always been what the outside world see’s, but it is completely insignificant to the over all output. We now focus on making products for companies that are fabless as well as allocating most of our capacity to analog. We have been highly profitable for last 10 years. Currently building our biggest fab ever in north Dallas of all places.

We all just got 20% profit sharing, for I think the 3rd or 4th year in a row.

Our “digital” fab did suck back at the beginning of the 2000’s and it still sucks to this day. But I guess we figured out how to do analog pretty good. We did screw up the digital stuff, but the other half was that we couldn’t compete with lower overhead of the Asian fabs. Those companies could charge pennies for chips we still had in development. We do well compared to other American or European fabs.


Oh, absolutely, you just couldn't be bothered to compete in digital :D

Even crappy Global Foundries jumped two nodes higher than 45nm!

Being proud of building a 300mm fab in 2009 is like being proud you tied your own shoelaces this morning - yeah, it's fairly rare for an Analog line, but not unheard-of

You guys better get your second fab done in double-time, as increasing wafer size is the oldest trick in the book (and easily copied by other houses who already have that size wafers)

https://semiengineering.com/foundries-eye-300mm-analog-fabs/
 
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Seems like it would be good. But chip plants produce a lot of toxic waste and they just dump it right into the river. They build a nice big chip plant here near Saratoga, NY and I talked to the guy that disposes of the waste. Right in the river. They dilute it with millions of gallons of good water that could have been used for better things. Bottom line is they can dump as much toxic waste as they want as long as they dilute it.

Dilution is the solution to pollution.
 
Interesting. Never heard the term before.
late 90s DFW was a pretty happening place. I worked in the telecom corridor in Richardson. Everywhere you looked was a tech company. Nortel imploding hurt that, but there is still a big presence anchored by TI.
 
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