Any Fab Labs left in Texas or Silicon Valley?

[roddyama]

I'm trying to find out how many semiconductor fabrication labs are left in the US. In particular, I'm interested in what the strategies are for protection against power loss and/or power fluctuations.

[millwood]

Originally posted by roddyama
I'm trying to find out how many semiconductor fabrication labs are left in the US.

it is actualy a mystery that fabs leave the US. They don't. what usually happens is that the owners will sell out the equity (via divestiture or spin-off) or shut down the plant and sell the equipment to liquidators or brokers. Those liquidators or brokers will then auction off the equipment, mostly to asian buyers.

Very rarely you will see equipment being moved from country to country by the same owner.

[roddyama]

Originally posted by millwood


it is actualy a mystery that fabs leave the US. They don't. what usually happens is that the owners will sell out the equity (via divestiture or spin-off) or shut down the plant and sell the equipment to liquidators or brokers. Those liquidators or brokers will then auction off the equipment, mostly to asian buyers.

Very rarely you will see equipment being moved from country to country by the same owner.

So who is left? Motorola? AMD? ...?

[GaryB]

Originally posted by roddyama

So who is left? Motorola? AMD? ...?

Well there are actually a lot of fabs left in the US. Off the top of my head I know about the following:

Intel in Oregon, California, and New Mexico
Motorola in Arizona and Texas
TI in Texas
AMD in Texas and California
IBM in New York and Vermont
Micron in Idaho and Virginia
Infineon in Virginia
National in Maine
AMI in Idaho
Jazz in California
IR in California
Cypress in California, Minnesota, and Texas
Samsung in Texas
Wafertech in Washington
Maxim in Oregon
Analog Devices in Massachusets
Agere in Florida


I'm sure there are quite a few smaller ones that I'm forgetting.
---Gary

[roddyama]

Originally posted by GaryB

Well there are actually a lot of fabs left in the US. Off the top of my head I know about the following:

Intel in Oregon, California, and New Mexico....

Thanks Gary,

It is my understanding that a loss of power of a few seconds is enough to ruin a run of chips. My interest is in how these labs protect against power outages and power fluctuation.

[fcel]

Typically, those manufacturing building has installed diesel generator and UPS for back up power.

Jazz semiconductor reported years ago that they lost $3Million dollars because there was a glitch of power interruption for a few microseconds. Their building are also structurally constructed so that the whole building can sway 18" horizontally in case of earthquake and at the same time with no interruption of power supply. I believe the whole building is more than 2 million sq ft and a couple stories high.

[roddyama]

Originally posted by fcel
Typically, those manufacturing building has installed diesel generator and UPS for back up power.

Jazz semiconductor reported years ago that they lost $3Million dollars because there was a glitch of power interruption for a few microseconds.

I would imagine that the UPS is pretty formidable if it needs to fill in for the time it takes to get the gen-set fired up and on line.

[Da5id4Vz]

I’ve been talking with people a lot about high availability, high reliability power systems.

For one system we are talking about two separate sources of power going to each equipment rack. A power strip would run on the left and tight of each rack supplied from separate sources. Each piece of equipment would have redundant power supplies each fed from opposite sides of the rack.

Each of the two power sources in the rack is fed from a separate power distribution unit (PDU). The PDU is a cabinet with a step down transformer and load panel. These PDU also contain transfer switches with two inputs each input is fed from a separate UPS. Each PDU has a primary and a shared secondary UPS. This configuration provides N+1 protection to each equipment rack. The UPS are online technology. The outputs are always running through the inverter stage. When power is lost the inverters run off battery instead of rectifier. This provides high stability and high isolation from the utility. Of course, as soon as utility power is lost the diesels fire up to feed the UPS. Transfer switches between utility and diesel need to be synchronous transfer so that the transition off generator back to utility can be made seamlessly. Generators are N+1 with 12 hour day tanks and 45 days of extended underground fuel.

Although the generators are usually online in less than 10-20 seconds, the UPS usually can deliver full load for 20 -30 min.

Of course backing up the equipment is only half the challenge. If the HVAC stops working everything cooks. More generators.

A good power engineer will be able to design such a system and provide calculations showing its design availability. An example would be 99.999% (sometimes called 5-nines) available. I think that’s around 6 seconds of predicted average outage annually. 6-nines is becoming an increasingly common target for availability in t-com and power systems.
In California vibration is also a huge issue for chip fabs. Not just the usual building vibrations, but the class X Richter scale kind too. Many processes are performed in environmentally isolated subsystems. These pods are clean rooms, with vibration and power isolation that exceed the quality of the clean rooms they sit inside off. Beyond local process isolation, whole buildings are built or retrofitted to sit on bearings or springs.

[Magura]

Very interesting info...thanks.

Magura

[millwood]

Originally posted by fcel
I believe the whole building is more than 2 million sq ft and a couple stories high.

Jazz's long beach fab is in a 4-5 story building. I don't know if it can sway 18" or so (nobody told me so). I suppose it has some serious UPS in it.