roddyama said:
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.
Re: Re: Re: Any Fab Labs left in Texas or Silicon Valley?
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 said:
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
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.
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.
redundant backup duplication:
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.
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.
semiconductor fabrication is a dying breed in the US, thanks largely to environmental regulations and lawyers. The chemicals used in the fabs are largely unknown in terms of their toxicity (?). IBM just got off a lawsuit in CA (Santa Monica I think) by its employees who developed brain tumor. A couple of others are pending in NY (East Fishkill).
Everyone in the industry is watching that very closely. If IBM loses, it will have a huge negative impact on the industry and may speed up the move offshore.
Everyone in the industry is watching that very closely. If IBM loses, it will have a huge negative impact on the industry and may speed up the move offshore.
Much as I like to bash lawyers, I don't think one can really blame them in this case. If you look at the cost of building a state of the art fab these days, you will find that you need to ante up in excess of $3B. Thats enough money to make anyone look long and hard before building. Tax benefits from countries hungry to have this business can make one location look much more attractive than another. China and Taiwan have been very aggressive with their tax benefits. Several states in the US have also worked hard in this area, which is why Virginia suddenly has a few fabs and why IBM is still in NY.
---Gary
power to the nines.
As David pointed out, 5 nines has been the standard, but going out to 6 is happening more often. A national broadcaster here local has a well built example I will outline.
It first starts out at multiple streetfeeds - 3 in this case, so that one can be taken out for service and still have a backup (DC has a really crappy power grid. Each summer manhole covers are thrown a hundred feet in the air as the cables they cover explode ). This then goes into the transfer switch which looks at the shore power and the 4 rather large gensets - 1600hp each. Only 2 is required for the entire load, so they have a signficant backup there also. As the gensets are already kept warm, they can start and stablize in about 5 seconds - take a full load in about 10.
If the shorepower should fail, drop a phase, brown-out, drop freq below a set number or some other failure mode, the gensets are started and switched.
Now inside the building, the building is divided up into three systems. One is electrical you can afford to lose. THe second system is things that can afford to drop for a few seconds, such as the HVAC system. The last system is for those things that cannot lose power at all. These are always connected to the inverters - which are connected to a huge room full of batterys in the basement. They are always fed from this system and are not directly connected to the usual electrical system. If street power fails, things connected to this system never notice. The batterys have the ability to run the system for about 4 hours.
But as David mentioned, without cooling, this place is in serious trouble fast. As we all know, an amplifer without cooling is shortlived - and computers too. So in reality, almost all of the building's power needs are protected in some fashion.
Now, such a system can actually save you money too - it by design will correct your power factor. Which given all the inductive loads otherwise, this will save you money. How much depends on your local power company rates. Two - it can peak shave. If the power company can call you up in the heat of summer and ask you to drop off the grid and use your gensets, they will reduce your power bill by a *very* large number. Why? In the case above, it means that they don't have to build very expensive peaking units to supply the couple of megawatts the building would need otherwise. Peaking units are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and expensive to fuel.
These systems are pretty cool. Expensive. The local Reuters shop replaced its batterys a year or two ago - several hundred big lead acid lumps had to be hauled up to the penthouse floor - which was not served by a elevator. But it sure is nice to work in a building with one of these.
As David pointed out, 5 nines has been the standard, but going out to 6 is happening more often. A national broadcaster here local has a well built example I will outline.
It first starts out at multiple streetfeeds - 3 in this case, so that one can be taken out for service and still have a backup (DC has a really crappy power grid. Each summer manhole covers are thrown a hundred feet in the air as the cables they cover explode ). This then goes into the transfer switch which looks at the shore power and the 4 rather large gensets - 1600hp each. Only 2 is required for the entire load, so they have a signficant backup there also. As the gensets are already kept warm, they can start and stablize in about 5 seconds - take a full load in about 10.
If the shorepower should fail, drop a phase, brown-out, drop freq below a set number or some other failure mode, the gensets are started and switched.
Now inside the building, the building is divided up into three systems. One is electrical you can afford to lose. THe second system is things that can afford to drop for a few seconds, such as the HVAC system. The last system is for those things that cannot lose power at all. These are always connected to the inverters - which are connected to a huge room full of batterys in the basement. They are always fed from this system and are not directly connected to the usual electrical system. If street power fails, things connected to this system never notice. The batterys have the ability to run the system for about 4 hours.
But as David mentioned, without cooling, this place is in serious trouble fast. As we all know, an amplifer without cooling is shortlived - and computers too. So in reality, almost all of the building's power needs are protected in some fashion.
Now, such a system can actually save you money too - it by design will correct your power factor. Which given all the inductive loads otherwise, this will save you money. How much depends on your local power company rates. Two - it can peak shave. If the power company can call you up in the heat of summer and ask you to drop off the grid and use your gensets, they will reduce your power bill by a *very* large number. Why? In the case above, it means that they don't have to build very expensive peaking units to supply the couple of megawatts the building would need otherwise. Peaking units are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and expensive to fuel.
These systems are pretty cool. Expensive. The local Reuters shop replaced its batterys a year or two ago - several hundred big lead acid lumps had to be hauled up to the penthouse floor - which was not served by a elevator. But it sure is nice to work in a building with one of these.
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