[Beldin]

As a student, I did a tour of ASML. One of the coolest things was one of the tour guides bragging how they would inspect the prospective location for a new plant and deny sale if they didn't like it.

Why? Because their machines are incredibly sensitive... and equally expensive. And your customers get angry if the machine doesn't work reliably - and rightly so.

I don't know if they do that still, and it likely was somewhat hyperbole, but the core of it is actually correct: the machine is indeed that sensitive, and is indeed that expensive. Every second of lost operation is expensive, and creating a fab around one of them is not quite as straightforward as just pouring some concrete somewhere and adding walls and a roof.

[AceJohnny2]

I recall when STMicroelectronics built their new fab [1] near Grenoble, France, it was built on a kind of stilt-and-spring system to insulate it from vibrations from a nearby highway.

(and similarly, the nearby ILL Synchotron [2] had issues that were eventually tracked to trucks passing on its nearby highway)

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/jNESRpcdMkAtVURM9

[2] https://goo.gl/maps/4oXRXw6pxkxMFCUt5 Note that the satellite view is blurred because that whole area technically belongs to the french CEA, their Nuclear Administration!

[lights0123]

It's interesting to see that Mapbox blurs its highest zoom level there, but it's second-highest zoom still provides quite a lot of detail to the point where you can make out every car and their color and rough shape.