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.
Looks like they put the oversized load on a boat for as long as they could, but have to do the last leg by road.
I mean, everyone has been crying and whinging for years, decades even, that the USA needs to ramp up semiconductor fabrication in case shit goes south in Taiwan. We are finally getting some domestic production power and we’re getting outraged by the traffic delays? America will sink itself because of our people’s own addiction to comfort and complaining about any slight to that comfort.
The top two things any given American will complain about on a local level.
- The terrible condition of their local roads
- Roadwork to fix the terrible condition of their local roads.
Yep, the fab plant is a little east of Columbus (just south of where I live actually). This is one of like 2 dozen “super loads” that has to make its way from the Ohio River up to the plant. I swear there is a website somewhere that keeps track of when the are coming, the routes they take, and the closures involved but my Google-fu is failing me now.
If it makes you feel any better it’s probably Google that’s failing, not you
Even before Google stopped working, I’m not sure the results of googling “super load” would have been what you are looking for.
As excited as I am to see my home city actually growing and gaining national attention, I miss the chill cow-town vibes. Traffic is only gonna get worse from here.
Columbus will always be growth limited until it gets some goddamn light rail/subway in place.
The biggest news here is that semiconductor production is amping up in the states, which is good for national security and reduces reliance on Taiwan.
Shouldn’t come as much surprise though. We’re not going to risk nuclear armageddon over nVidia’s stock price.
There’ll be lots of huffing and puffing, stern statements and red lines drawn, but if China decide they really want it, they’ll take it and the rest of the world won’t really do much.
Everyone has way too much of their infrastructure in China and they know it.
The bigger news here is something from his administration is coming to fruition that creates American jobs and reduces foreign dependency on a major commodity for both civilian and military applications.
And not a single photo? The thing in the main photo aint it
Not sure if this image from the DOT is actually of this specific shipment because I found this image from April when they moved the eighth part and it’s less that half the weight. Here’s a two minute video of it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
See ODOT’s website for photo and route.
https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/traffic-advisories/district-9/superload
But how many football fields does it weigh?
Well a football field is 57,600 sq ft, and a cubic foot of dirt weighs between 110-140 lbs depending on composition. That means that an average football field at a depth of one foot weighs around 6,912,000 lbs.
This thing weighs 916,000 lbs. So it is 0.1325231481 football fields.
They did something similar with some transformers here in Australia, and unfortunately there were some possibly associated traffic incidents where people might have not been going the right speed and got rear-ended. One man died, even.
Please avoid the route, even when it is pulled over to “rest”, as your fellow motorists may not be able to resist rubbernecking.
Why didn’t the transformers just drive themselves? Or better yet turn into airplanes?
/s
