Intel’s 916,000-pound shipment is a “cold box,” a self-standing air-processor structure that facilitates the cryogenic technology needed to fabricate semiconductors. The box is 23 feet tall, 20 feet wide, and 280 feet long, nearly the length of a football field. The immense scale of the cold box necessitates a transit process that moves at a “parade pace” of 5-10 miles per hour. Intel is taking over southern Ohio’s roads for the next several weeks and months as it builds its new Ohio One Campus, a $28 billion project to create a 1,000-acre campus with two chip factories and room for more. Calling it the new “Silicon Heartland,” the project will be the first leading-edge semiconductor fab in the American Midwest, and once operational, will get to work on the “Angstrom era” of Intel processes, 20A and beyond.

I don’t know why, but I’ve never thought of the transport logistics involved in building a semiconductor fabrication plant.

  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The biggest news here is that semiconductor production is amping up in the states, which is good for national security and reduces reliance on Taiwan.

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        Ehhh. We are really just hedging our bets. As I understand it we are focusing on production of the older generations of chips. That frees up Taiwan to focus on the bleeding edge chips. Losing Taiwan would still be a massive blow to the global economy.

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        Shouldn’t come as much surprise though. We’re not going to risk nuclear armageddon over nVidia’s stock price.

        There’ll be lots of huffing and puffing, stern statements and red lines drawn, but if China decide they really want it, they’ll take it and the rest of the world won’t really do much.

        Everyone has way too much of their infrastructure in China and they know it.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Exactly that is why everyone said about Russia and where are we now?

          When push comes to shove…

          And that ignores the shit show it will be for China to conquer Taiwan, which it will be even without help from the US.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      Thanks, Biden

      The bigger news here is something from his administration is coming to fruition that creates American jobs and reduces foreign dependency on a major commodity for both civilian and military applications.

  • Shihali@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Looks like they put the oversized load on a boat for as long as they could, but have to do the last leg by road.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I mean, everyone has been crying and whinging for years, decades even, that the USA needs to ramp up semiconductor fabrication in case shit goes south in Taiwan. We are finally getting some domestic production power and we’re getting outraged by the traffic delays? America will sink itself because of our people’s own addiction to comfort and complaining about any slight to that comfort.

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The top two things any given American will complain about on a local level.

        1. The terrible condition of their local roads
        2. Roadwork to fix the terrible condition of their local roads.
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            5 months ago

            I haven’t switched over fully to EV even but I’m actually FOR higher gas prices (go ahead throw your stones). Like high enough that the rich fucks in UAE don’t get richer because it actually causes people to drive less and that surcharges get used towards things like helping families that have suffered from Pb exposure and efforts to offset carbon emissions and fund clean energy research.

            • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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              5 months ago

              I agree with you…the cost of a gallon of gas is, and has always been, less than the cost to remove a gallon of gas worth of CO2 from the atmosphere, and I don’t think the price should ever have been less than that amount. I don’t think that’s an unfair position, cleaning up your mess should be a part of the cost of the good.

              But man what a way to fuck the majority of the 99%.

              • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                Maybe temporarily, but I think it would help the push back for more remote working, more thoughtful use of transportation, better motivation to use and build public transportation. It’s getting back to what op was saying about America’s unwillingness to bear some pain points that can allow for real progress and ultimately more comfort.

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        I don’t even think this is complaining about mild inconvenience, it’s just outrage addiction that has taken over most of the country.

    • 0110010001100010@lemmy.world
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      Yep, the fab plant is a little east of Columbus (just south of where I live actually). This is one of like 2 dozen “super loads” that has to make its way from the Ohio River up to the plant. I swear there is a website somewhere that keeps track of when the are coming, the routes they take, and the closures involved but my Google-fu is failing me now.

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    5 months ago

    This is why ultrasized cargo airships need to be a thing. Just sling that bad boy underneath a kilometre long hydrogen dirigible and fly it to its destination.

    • mlc894@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Or, historically, when you’re building a new factory, the first thing you do is build a rail connection right next to it

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        5 months ago

        A rail line that can handle a 280 foot piece of cargo would be heaven for high speed adoption with how straight it would have to be.

    • You999@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      if you look at the history of what happened to each Zeppelin airship you get a really good idea why it’s a bad idea.

      LZ1: damaged during initial flight, repaired and flown two more times before investors backed out causing the ship to be sold for scrap.

      LZ2: suffered double engine failure and crashed into a mountain. While anchored to the mountain awaiting repairs a storm destroyed it beyond repair.

      LZ3: built from salvaged parts of LZ2. Severally damaged in storm. After LZ4’s destruction LZ3 was repaired and was accepted by the German military who eventually scrapped it.

      LZ4: suffered from chronic engine failure. While repairing the engines a gust of wind blew the ship free of its mooring and struck a tree causing the ship to ignite and burn to the ground.

      LZ5: destroyed in a storm.

      LZ6: destroyed in its hanger by fire.

      LZ7: destroyed after crashing in a thunderstorm.

      LZ8: destroyed by wind.

      LZ9: this one actually worked and survived for three years before being decommissioned.

      LZ10: caught on fire and destroyed after a gust of wind blew its mooring line into itself.

      LZ11: destroyed while attempting to move the ship into it’s hanger

      LZ12 & LZ13: both flew successful careers before being decommissioned a few years later.

      LZ14: destroyed in a thunderstorm.

      LZ15: destroyed during an emergency landing.

      LZ16: was stolen by the French. ***

      LZ17: decommissioned after the war.

      LZ18: exploded during its test flight.

      LZ19: damaged beyond repair during an emergency landing.

      LZ129: the Hindenburg.

      LZ127: retired and scrapped after flying over a million miles.

      LZ130: flew 30 flights before being dismantled for parts to aid in the war effort

      The problem is with airships and aerostats in general is you need a massive balloon just to lift a small amount of weight but the larger you make it the more susceptible to weather it ends up being. With the amount of surface area a balloon that’s a 1km long has you would have to spend a considerable amount of energy just to stop it from blowing away in the wind, as inefficient as it is the truck may actually use less fuel because of this.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That said, the Zeppelin NT has, as far as I know, a perfect flight record.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT

        We’ve made a lot of advances since the early 20th century, believe it or not. I don’t think using semirigid airships as both cargo transports and “satellites” needed for temporary communications purposes over a large area such as a disaster zone where cell communication has been lost would be out of the question now.

        • You999@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          The biggest advancement they made was making it smaller. Zeppelin NTs are a fraction of the size of what Ferdinand von Zeppelin was designing in his day. Because of their smaller and the switch to helium Zeppelin NTs has a miniscule payload capacity at 4200 pounds. To put that into perspective that’s the same payload capacity as a Ford F250. Even with their reduced surface area and modern flight controllers controllers the Zeppelin NTs still haven’t solved the weather issue as they are restricted from flying in winds greater than 22MPH and when VFR is not available.

          • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
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            Because of their smaller and the switch to helium Zeppelin NTs has a miniscule payload capacity at 4200 pounds. To put that into perspective that’s the same payload capacity as a Ford F250.

            And that’s only the bed capacity. An F250 can tow over 20,000 lbs depending on the trailer design. Most trucks and SUVs can tow >4200lbs.

            • You999@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              Towing capacity isn’t really apples to apples which is why I used payload capacity which is more directly comparable. Don’t get me wrong though I’d love to see an airship towing a trailer.

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                You’re comparing a pickup truck to a zeppelin, there’s no way to make that apples to apples. If someone needs to move something big with a truck they’re probably going to tow it, not try to load it into the bed.

                • You999@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 months ago

                  I am comparing payload weights because it’s directly comparable between all vehicles. I am not sure if you understand payload weight fully. This is the rating for everything you put in the vehicle (airship or not) and includes everything from people to the trailers tounge if you are towing. Just because your truck can tow 20Klb does not mean you can exceed the payload capacity. A lot of first time RV buyers learn this the hard way when they buy a 10Klb trailer to tow with their 2018 F150 only to find out there isn’t even enough payload capacity left over for the driver because the tounge weight is 1000lb. Air ships (and aircraft for that matter) use the same payload capacity calculations where again anything put inside the vehicle counts towards the payload including people. This is why we can directly compare the two vehicles payload capacity.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          They aren’t very good, and they probably can’t be. You’re limited by the laws of physics on what they can carry for their enormous size. The Hindenberg was the largest of them, but including passengers and crew together, it carried less than 100 people. They scale really, really poorly.

          We can improve on old dirigibles somewhat with lighter weight materials and engines. We’re ultimately limited by the volume of the lifting gas, and we’re just not going to add that much more capacity. Even if someone figured out a vacuum dirigible (which would be very vulnerable to a puncture), it’d only improve things marginally. It’s an interesting engineering challenge, though.

          One thing where dirigibles might be useful is windmill blades. Blades aren’t that heavy, but they can’t get much bigger while being transported on highways. Constructing the blades on site is another option, so we’ll see which one wins.

          Science and engineering aren’t magic that makes everything better over time always, and people need to stop acting like it does. There are physical limits that we can’t breach. As another example, we haven’t significantly improved on the drag coefficient of designs by Porsche or the Chrysler Airflow back in the 1930s. There was a design Mercedes came up with a while back that’s based on the boxfish that did reduce it further, but its frontal cross section is so high that it doesn’t matter, anyway. (It’s also ugly as fuck, but that’s a different matter.)

          • crystalmerchant@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Lifting volume and flammability (is that a word?). It’s just a very volatile gas and we’re not going to magic that away with fancy tech. There are more reliable ways to move freight through the air.

  • A Basil Plant@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Isn’t Angstrom 10^-10 meters? And nanometers 10^-9 meters? So 20A (assuming A = Angstrom) is just 2nm?

    Are they trying to say that by moving to this new era, they’ll go single digit Angstrom i.e., 0.x nm?

      • Mkengine@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        So what is the actual transistor size then? And why use an SI unit then anyway? Why not use femto-bananas then when it does not reflect the real size?

        • ludrol@bookwormstory.social
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          Smallest features are around 13nm due to EUV wavelength. I think people incorporated hacks to etch smaller stuff but not much smaller.

          I think it is similar stuff as with Moore’s “law” that is not an actuall law only a trend or myth.

          In the 70’ 80’ 90’ that number represented an actuall size and it stuck into 00’ 10’ and 20’

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          Angstrom was invented in physics because they needed a length unit that was smaller than SI prefixes would allow. The industry only picked it up once they got to a certain level.

          (Contrary to what a lot of people think, physicists do not strictly follow SI. They bypass it for reasons of convenience all the time.)

          • bluewing@lemm.ee
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            It’s kind of like needing the proper units for the scale you need to work at.

  • Kanzar@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    They did something similar with some transformers here in Australia, and unfortunately there were some possibly associated traffic incidents where people might have not been going the right speed and got rear-ended. One man died, even.

    Please avoid the route, even when it is pulled over to “rest”, as your fellow motorists may not be able to resist rubbernecking.

    • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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      It was a 280 foot trailer but due to Moore’s law, it has undergone multiple shrink cycles while still maintaining 280 feet worth of storage inside.

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    5 months ago

    I wonder why they don’t move this in chunks and assemble them locally. A transport like this must cost a gazillion.

      • Zoot@reddthat.com
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        Yeah if I had to guess a lot of components need to be assembled/put together in a clean room. Then to keep everything “clean”, mine as well just assemble it all in one place, which isn’t likely doable on site.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Their stock is basically on sale right now. And the feds are throwing billions at them…

    🤑

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Wait, for real? Because they just grabbed a giant defense contract. That stock should be a pretty safe long term bet now.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’m sayinnnm

        Daddy Warbucks has likely got Intel and Boeing’s back. And something about the current air smells awfully war-y.

        Boeing hasn’t fallen as far as I’d hoped though.

        I wouldn’t trust me though. I’m a doofus on the internet.

        • ulkesh@lemmy.world
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          I’m a doofus on the internet.

          We’re all doofuses here. You’re in good company!