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.
Intel will be paying people to build and work at the factory. Highly skilled labor that can’t be shipped overseas easily. It will also likely bring other companies to the area because of access to those highly skilled workers. The state will likely make more a lot more back in taxes and economic growth than the cost of the transports.
Intel also works with local community colleges to offer semiconductor specific training to be a manufacturing technician, and it’s not a huge jump to be a maintenance/repair tech or jump to IT within the fab and in my experience all those roles from technician to IT pay fairly good wages high 20’s to mid 30’s/hr and up depending on experience.
I hope truckers, pilot car drivers and dispatchers will be making crazy money off this parade as well. Ohio exists, might as well make the best of it. XD