TSMC Reportedly Looks To Raise a Second Arizona Chip Fab - Slashdot

TSMC Reportedly Looks To Raise a Second Arizona Chip Fab

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• 1 hidden comment

• Re:

  That was my thought, too. But the state probably offered the best tax deal, and made promises regarding water they probably can't keep (but may believe anyway).

• Re:

  Fabs recycle water now. Whatever they can accumulate, they keep. And they don't (necessarily) lose it all through evap like a nuke reactor.

• by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @07:08PM (#63039807)

  You're correct they use a lot of water, but this is the reason here [arstechnica.com].

  Basically, you need a lot of water to get going, but generally speaking ground water is not good for foundries because you need really clean, really pure water, purified to the point that it's almost unhealthy to drink. So by their nature foundries need to purify water anyways, so they might as well recycle and purify the water they're already using.

  Which makes them good neighbors, because Intel has funded 15 water reclamation projects already in Arizona, and will continue to do so because their goal is to be a net water positive to the state, not taking water out of it.

  Intel also has goals to be 100% on sustainable energy [intel.com]. You know what Arizona has a lot of? Sun and wind. They also have a stable climate with few natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes, and a reasonably experienced electronics sector.

  So once you solve the water issue like they did, suddenly Arizona looks pretty good.

  • Re:

    Thank you for that explanation. My initial reaction also was, Arizona? Don't chip fabs require lots of water?d

    I appreciate you putting it into context, thanks!

    • by BetterSense ( 1398915 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @08:05PM (#63039921)

      I'm in this business and the OP is, roughly, correct.
      
      Fabs do use a lot of water but "lot" is very relative. Most water is still used by agriculture, and presence of a fab isn't doing to be a singular drain on the water table. In addition, there are a lot of choices fabs can do to save water. Often these take the form of using more energy to save water. Reclaiming water takes a lot of energy, but if saving water is important, you can spend the energy to save water. Also, historically cooling towers were used, especially in the desert, to save a LOT of energy on cooling. However, cooling towers take water out of the watershed, so they are starting to fall out of favor, it means using less cooling towers and more megawatts of electricity on cooling. There's no magic bullet but a lot can be done to cut down water use by fabs, usually involving a bigger electric bill.

  • Re:

    Arizona also has a lot of Republicans that do not believe in sun and wind and think water is free.

• Re:

  That is mostly a myth.

  Alarmists point out that fabs use millions of gallons of water, which is true.

  What they don't say is that a million gallons of water is three acre-feet, and even a very small farm or golf course uses many times that amount.

  • Re: Water ?

    The golf courses in Phoenix are easily the biggest consumers of water. Besides, Arizona isn't just a big desert biome, only somewhere between a quarter and a third of it is, and the reputation for being hot only comes from the Phoenix area. Just 80 miles from Phoenix is a major slow ski resort town (Flagstaff) that often snows all the way into May each year.

    And Phoenix is probably the only city in the southwest that has increased its water table in recent years. The neighboring states don't, especially Cali

  • Re: Water ?

    a million gallons of water is three acre-feet

    What in the fuck? Is that in Standard English? Is this a unit of volume? Why can't you people just accept and adapt to the many advantages of the metric system?

    1000 litres (of water at atmospheric pressure and temperature) = 1000 kilograms = 1 cubic metre.

    It takes one joule to raise the temperature of one millilitre of water by 1 degree Celsius.

    Easier maths, clearer notation, and used by much of the outside world.

    • Re:

      Yes, "acre-foot" is a standard unit of volume.

      Water is sold to residential customers in gallons or cubic feet, but sold to agricultural customers in acre-feet, since that makes more sense for how they use the water for irrigation. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons or 1233 cubic meters.

      An acre-foot of water in Arizona costs a farmer about $70, including generous taxpayer subsidies to encourage waste.

      No. That is wrong. A joule is the energy needed to apply a force of one newton through a displacement of one me

      • Re: Water ?

        Yes, I stand corrected and confused.

    • Units, units everywhere and not a drop to think.

      What in the fuck? Is that in Standard English? Is this a unit of volume?

      An acre-foot is a unit of volume that is one acre (or 43560 square feet) by one foot. That is, it's a volume 43,560 cubic feet, which works out to be 325,852.4 gallons.

      It is, in the United States, a standard unit of volume for water used by the agricultural community, because it maps neatly onto water consumption on farms. You have 120 acres of land that needs an inch of water? That's 120/12 = 10 acre feet of water.

      Less commonly used ar

      • Re: Units, units everywhere and not a drop to thin

        Oh, hardy fucking har. Fuck you very much.

  • Re:

    Elsewhere I read that TSMC's water usage in Arizona is about 6 acre-feet per day, which (AFAIK) sells for about $100 per acre-foot. I suspect the vast majority of the cost to TSMC is purifying that water, since at that volume they're being delivered basically dirty water from a stream or canal.

    6 acre-feet per day, assuming that's 365 days per year, is about the same amount of water required to grow around 900 acres of cotton. (Cotton requires 2.5 acre-feet of water per year to grow during a season; 365 * 6

• Re:

  The attraction isn't Arizona, the attraction is not Taipei, China. It's also not any vindication of the CHiPs act, it's a vindication that TSMC can see the writing on the wall, or at least the threats on the wall, and are backing up their manufacturing capabilities in a safe, for some definition of safe, location.