It doesn't happen often, but I always enjoy when I spot oversize equipment making its way across the roads. Enormous construction equipment; wind turbine blades; partial buildings. The kind of stuff that requires multiple lanes, careful route planning, and lead & follow cars. Gives a little glimpse of the immense effort we put in to building, improving, and maintaining our society.
> 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...<p>The weight gives Tom a big number for his headline - but 99% of the problem with this load is the <i>dimensions</i> - which are too big for normal railroads. (Yes, the weight is also large enough to rule out using a heavy-lift helicopter.)<p>Vs. a single 1940's-era steam locomotive+tender could weigh over 1,200,000 lbs. Modern locomotives - where electronic control makes it very easy, flexible, and wage-saving to operate 'em in sets - generally weigh a bit over 400,000 lbs. per.
Tangential, but what's the state of semiconductor fabs in the US? Looking at this Wikipedia article [0], there are quite a lot. That said, all but three (assuming I counted correctly) are pre-2020. Is the push for fabs in the US specifically to have modern, sophisticated fabs?<p>My initial understanding of needing more fabs in the US was mainly for embedded stuff like for military, automobiles, and that kind of thing. Is this push actually more so for higher end fabrication for modern non-embedded use?<p>Whatever the case is, having some more domestic production (especially for something as valuable as microprocessors) seems like a big win for any nation. I'm looking forward to seeing how the US does with chip fabrication. I don't expect them (us?) to become the dominant player, but I am bullish on US chip production.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...</a>
For other Ohioans who were wondering about this : ODOT started talking about the shipping routes a couple weeks ago and contrary to the article, we do have a timetable here : <a href="https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/traffic-advisories/district-9/superload" rel="nofollow">https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/traffic-advisor...</a><p>Im going between Cincinnati and Columbus several times over the next three weeks and am not looking forward to this even though it seems theyre taking a mostly out of the way route through the SE Ohio farming towns.
A fun little fact is that the load on a road causes damage roughly proportional to the fourth power of its mass – or at least, proportional to the fourth power of the weight of each axel. The US government publication detailing this is here – <a href="https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr61g/61g.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr61g/61g.pdf</a> – in 1962 – and it's become something of a famous approximation ever since.
This is worth watching (2m41s): LA Times, "Space shuttle Endeavour's trek across LA: Timelapse"
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdqZyACCYZc&t=3s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdqZyACCYZc&t=3s</a>
Does anyone know why Intel select Ohio over Oregon or Arizona? I tried to Google for it, but the sources are awful and nothing definitive. Intel has been quite tight-lipped about it. I saw this quote, which seems to be hiding something: <<"I want to give a lot of credit to the governor and lieutenant governor. They pursued us very aggressively," he [Intel CEO Gelsinger] said.>> What exactly is meant by "pursued us very aggressively"? I can only guess.
> 280 feet long, stretching longer than a football field<p>Seems unclear to phrase it that way when talking a about the dimensions of the load and then comparing the entire transport apparatus length.<p>Unsure how they jump from 280 being greater than 360.
> Bruning shared that other companies are piggybacking on the super load route plans now that accommodations have already been made<p>I would’ve thought the ability to do a super load or not determined a lot of your mfg/etc process. Seems surprising a company could switch over to a super load because it’s now available.
"The box is 23 feet tall, 20 feet wide, and 280 feet long, stretching longer than a football field."<p>Author doesn't understand football.
Here's an image of the huge load:
<a href="https://www.truckersnews.com/news/article/15677391/expect-delays-as-916000pound-super-load-moves-through-ohio" rel="nofollow">https://www.truckersnews.com/news/article/15677391/expect-de...</a>
I remember listening to a German podcast about this kind of transport. It's super interesting how much planning is needed before such a transport. Talk to different police departments, check weight limits of roads, corner radius, plan to disassemble some obstacles. Huge effort.
With semiconductor manufacturing being overseas (where lower wages are) for much of the past decades, how will Intel/TSMC opening up locations in the US affect prices? I imagine this just means everything will just get more expensive.
Am I way out of line to assume TSMC will be well past the capability of this fab when in finally comes on line? Not when the current schedule says it will be ready but when the first actual production wafer comes out of the factory.
They've all passed through my town. They coordinated it all with our local sheriff's office and sent out notifications well in advance so people would know to take alternate routes.
This may seem like a weird question but I wonder how much it is worth? Presumably it's very expensive and precise equipment. I wonder if it's protected from gunfire in transit.
Who is the awesome driver who gets this job? We celebrate drivers of fast cars in Nascar and formula one, how about celebrating slow drivers? where's the 15 minutes of fame for the person driving this rig? I even just watched a movie starring a truck driver and the movie was named for that truck driver.
k-pound? Is that a thing? 458 tons, for someone's definition of a ton. It's important when using imperial lbs to use tons, otherwise we 'muricans can't easily convert it into medium duty trucks in our heads to visualize the mass. ~91 in this case.