[qsmi]

Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site" in the city of Columbus Ohio? Why not choose Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with an existing route to Europe? Fabs are international affairs, no matter where they're rooted, because just to keep the place running one needs a constant stream of parts from everywhere. It seems like being in a sea/rail/truck hub would be a logistics advantage.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Cleveland

Edit: On second thought, Arizona doesn't have port access either so I guess it's not really a significant consideration.

[MrDunham]

So, I live in Columbus Ohio and I’m friends with two of the top people in our economic development department the broker this deal.

I can’t speak well to why not Cleveland but I can say that the actual city that they chose (New Albany, OH, 25 min to downtown and 15-20 to the airport) was built by Les Wexner, founder of L brands/Victoria’s Secret, is now home to data centers for Facebook, Google, and an AWS data center (there are two more within 30 minutes), and the general metro is one of the fastest growing regions in the US.

There is also a ton of available land on the fringes of the Columbus region and the sheer scope of acreage needed is bonkers.

[yucky]

>Les Wexner

Didn't Epstein have some sort of exclusive investor relationship with Wexner? I seem to recall that was where he got his start.

[MrDunham]

I don’t know the exact details but I have heard that Epstein is a big reason that Les is not CEO anymore.

[timr]

Yes. He also had a home in New Albany.

[timr]

> was built by Les Wexner

I grew up near there. I guess I wouldn't quibble with the idea that Wexner "built" New Albany -- since it definitely isn't the same anymore -- but it was a town before he came along (two roads and a farm supply store, basically).

I used to go to summer camp at the old New Albany HS, and got my pickup truck stuck in the mud there many, many times while doing some odd job or another.

[newhotelowner]

I am in Columbus Ohio.

Columbus Ohio is one of the fastest growing city in the USA and MidWest. Population growth is high too. A lot of people from other Ohio cities are moving to Columbus Ohio. https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus-among-fastest...

Ohio State University is very close to this site.

Huge immigration population with a science degree.

Columbus is within 600 miles of 60 percent of American population.

A lot of cheap farm land outside of Columbus area.

> Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with an existing route to Europe

Port is less than 2 hrs from this site.

[7952]

It has an international airport, intermodal rail freight depot and interstate highways.

I would guess that raw materials can be transported by road or rail. Access to a waterway is sometimes needed for very heavy indivisible parts (not sure if this is commons for fabs) but that is unlikely to be a regular occurrence. Just drive it down the interstate with a police escort at 2am.

[qsmi]

I am pretty shocked but I guess ASML delivers by 747. [1][2] But they do seem to know what they're doing. :)

"The current generation of EUV machines are already, to put it bluntly, kind of bonkers. Each one is roughly the size of a bus and costs $150 million. It contains 100,000 parts and 2 kilometers of cabling. Shipping the components requires 40 freight containers, three cargo planes, and 20 trucks."

[1] https://technical-news.net/euv-lithography-asml-delivers-100... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/asml-extreme-ultraviolet-lithogr...

[bduerst]

>Amid the recent chip shortage, triggered by the pandemic’s economic shock waves, ASML’s products have become central to a geopolitical struggle between the US and China, with Washington making it a high priority to block China's access to the machines. The US government has successfully pressured the Dutch not to grant the export licenses needed to send the machines to China, and ASML says it has shipped none to the country.

Fascinating

[cududa]

Plus Lake Erie gives you access to the Atlantic. Port of Cleveland got a huge update 10+ years ago and is still only used at about 7% capacity

[nwiswell]

> needed for very heavy indivisible parts (not sure if this is commons for fabs)

It is not common. Semiconductor equipment is generally designed to be sent via air freight and assembled on site.

Some of the supporting operations (water and air purification plants, on-site chemical production, LN2 production, etc) may require some large parts but that's a case-by-case basis and probably avoidable.

[long_time_gone]

> Does anyone know why Intel would want to build a "mega-site" in the city of Columbus Ohio?

My guess would be access to talent and costs. Columbus is more than 2x bigger than Cleveland. Building cars is also an international affair and we see those plants all over the place.

[MrDunham]

> Building cars is also an international affair and we see those plants all over the place

I moved from the Bay Area to Columbus Ohio and, funny enough, there’s a Honda factory about 30 minutes outside of downtown and 45 from the airport.

[theandrewbailey]

Yup, Honda has a big plant in Marysville, in the next county to the northwest.

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

[MrDunham]

Correct.

On a side note, counties here a little bit wonky. I live in Dublin which is about 20 minutes out of Marysville.

If you live in Dublin you could be living in one of THREE counties

[dtwest]

Columbus metro area is roughly the same size as Cleveland metro area so I don't think that is the reason.

However, it could still have a talent advantage. Having OSU nearby is helpful, and maybe it is easier to attract talent to move to a city with a big university.

[HelloMcFly]

Columbus grew 15% in the last decade, Cleveland shrank 6%. That could also have something to do with as there's reason to believe it will continue to attract skilled talent.

[hardolaf]

You don't need skilled talent to operate fabs. You need people who can go through a 2 year degree program.

[totalZero]

New Albany is a suburb of the capital of the third most active manufacturing state in the US. Intel is courting the federal government for direct semiconductor industry support that goes beyond tax breaks on semiconductor fabrication equipment.

> Edit: On second thought, Arizona doesn't have port access either so I guess it's not really a significant consideration.

From a pure logistics perspective, I'd say that Arizona beats Ohio. BNSF connects Arizona with both the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. (Not to mention Lake Michigan.) It's impossible to drive Route 66 from California to Texas without rolling alongside extensive trains hauling cargo through the desert.

For me, the trains are one of the most scenic aspects of that drive.

LAX is the eighth-busiest air cargo terminal in the world, and it has plenty of cargo flights to Asia where computer devices are often assembled. PHX is also one of the busiest cargo airports in the United States, albeit much less so than LAX or CVG.

Fabs have massive physical plant inputs (eg. lithography machines), substantial commoditized manufacturing inputs (eg. boules/wafers, freshwater, industrial gas), and core outputs with small size and high value (ie. chips). The former two can be pipelined without knowing the exact product-by-product breakdown of customer demand, and the latter cannot.

Infrastructure and labor concerns might also tip the scales one way or another. Water supply, wastewater management, energy cost, grid resiliency, labor supply, access to institutions for professional training, and other considerations can differ wildly between the two regions.

[potiuper]

"Without identifying Intel, JobsOhio sent a request out to its regional economic development directors asking for potential sites that meet the company’s parameters. They had just three days to respond. One Columbus was the only regional partner to respond with a potential location: Jersey Township in western Licking County, near New Albany" https://www.dispatch.com/in-depth/business/2022/01/21/how-mi...

[asdff]

Port of Cleveland is not a big container port like you'd imagine using for consumer goods. It's for supporting industry, mostly steel, through moving commodities. Think a big open barge full of coal, and holding facilities for limestone or iron ore. There's probably a limit to the size of the sort of ship can navigate to the port of Cleveland as well, you definitely can't fit a huge cargo ship in that port.

[dayofthedaleks]

Yep, the constraints of the St. Lawrence Seaway mean we get the cutest little container vessels every couple of weeks from Europe. Sometimes they have a portion of the deck set aside for windmill parts.

Presumably this plant will be trucking containers to Baltimore's port or sending air freight out of the cargo-only airport nearby.

[justin66]

> Why not choose Cleveland Ohio where one has port access with an existing route to Europe?

Don't most chips travel internationally by air?

[m3kw9]

Probably trucking it for 1 day isn't a big deal

[MrDunham]

Having moved to Columbus a couple years ago everyone loved to say that over 60% of the US population is within a one day drive of Columbus.

For the Bay Area readers the distance from Cleveland to Columbus is roughly the same as San Francisco to Sacramento

[asdff]

It's hard to understate just how driveable this side of the country is from Ohio. In about 7 hours one direction you are in Chicago. 7 hours another direction you are in Toronto. 7 hours another direction you are in NYC, or DC, or Boston. Stretch it to 15 hours or so and you can drive all the way to New Orleans, or most of Florida in that time, and anywhere in between. Anywhere east of the Mississippi really is seemingly doable for a road trip in about a days drive, especially if you are driving in shifts. You can get flights pretty fast as well, but the issue is the ohio airports have limited direct connections; its frequent to fly to ohare or charlotte first. It's not like LAX where you can score a direct flight to half the western US from southwest for $59.

[selimthegrim]

>Stretch it to 15 hours or so and you can drive all the way to New Orleans

Having done this, I would recommend it only in urgency

[daemoens]

Much less congestion as well. I drive between them weekly and rarely see traffic anywhere close to California. It's a pretty comfortable 2 hour drive.

[asdff]

Highways do back up in Cleveland and Columbus in the cities during rush hour though, as well as when there is any construction or accidents or inclimate weather.

One thing I noticed is that the freeways in, say, Cleveland, are all 5 lanes wide or so in each direction, serving a population of 400k in the city and 1.2m in the county. You go to LA and what do you see? The same size freeways as Cleveland, 5 lanes wide or so, only its serving a city of 4 million and a county of 15 million. It's like, of course there is no congestion in Cleveland and tons of congestion in LA, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see an issue with capacity. There's literally an order of magnitude more people using the same capacity of infrastructure.