Posted on 07/24/2002 6:12:42 AM PDT by JameRetief
Intel's Rio Rancho fab hit by Act of God
Wafers toasted, roasted by lightning
By : Wednesday 24 July 2002, 09:49
The report said that Intel lost $800 million worth of chips because of the lighting strike.
That sounds like an overestimate to us, unless the lightning strike really ripped through the facilities.
The paper quotes a fire expert from the US National Lighting Safety Institute as reporting that the problem could be insufficient lightining conductor facilities at the fab. As the picture in the link below shows, thunderstorms are quite common in this part of the US.
This is a big surprise, although we've been on an extensive tour of the Albuquerque plant on Rio Rancho road and have noticed that the back up plans there aren't perhaps as good as you'd expect from a top notch firm like La Intella. We noticed there appeared to be no back up electricity supplies, for example.
There are some other problems with Rio Rancho. Fabs use an incredible amount of water and Albuquerque, in general, has something of a water shortage.
While on our tour, we also discovered that if you were going to sneeze while you were in your bunny suit, you had to bend over and put your face as close as possible to the vents in the floor, so as to avoid contaminating the expensive chips.
Intel could neither confirm nor deny the reports of damage at press time. µ
See Also
Top Intel fab at centre of huge storm Nothing happened that time
INQUIRER satellite flies over Intel fab
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