Imagine the nine day long traffic jam.

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.

  • A Basil Plant@lemmy.worldEnglish
    151·
    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.deEnglish
        2·
        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?

        • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          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.eeEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            It’s kind of like needing the proper units for the scale you need to work at.

        • ludrol@bookwormstory.socialEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          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’