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.

  • 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?

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      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.ee
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        5 months ago

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

    • ludrol@bookwormstory.social
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      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’