[HN Gopher] Amazon Acquires 400 Acres Near New Intel Development...
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       Amazon Acquires 400 Acres Near New Intel Development in Ohio
        
       Author : ericmay
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2023-01-25 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.dispatch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.dispatch.com)
        
       | tester756 wrote:
       | Is Ohio becoming tech heartland?
        
         | nDIgger wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | agentwiggles wrote:
         | Seems at least semi-possible given all the recent investment.
         | I've lived in Columbus for the last decade or so and generally
         | enjoy living here.
         | 
         | I view all this development with some trepidation as more high-
         | paying jobs and big salaries threaten to do to Columbus and the
         | surrounding area what has happened to lots of other tech cities
         | though. Housing here is still _semi_ reasonable but definitely
         | increasing fast, and the city has a fairly small footprint
         | compared to other major metros.
         | 
         | Even so, it's an exciting time in a state which I think is
         | usually fairly underrated as flyover country.
        
         | ch4s3 wrote:
         | Hard to say yet, but it isn't impossible and the triangle
         | between Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Columbus isn't the worst
         | option. There are a bunch of universities in range to draw
         | talent, including Carnegie Mellon, OSU, and some smaller state
         | and private schools. The land is cheap and the cost of living
         | is pretty low.
        
         | ProAm wrote:
         | I'm not sure if you've ever been to Ohio, but no.
        
         | ydnaclementine wrote:
         | Always has been
        
           | LarryMullins wrote:
           | Ohio invented outer space after all.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | samvher wrote:
       | It's not obvious to me why it would be very beneficial to have a
       | data center close to an Intel plant, but it sounds a bit like it
       | might not be a coincidence that they're close together. If
       | someone knows why this pairing makes sense, care to explain?
       | 
       | (The closest thing I can think of is low delivery costs on
       | electronics, but that seems really tiny compared to basically
       | anything else that matters here, and it's not like they would
       | typically get delivered straight from a plant, so that doesn't
       | seem like it would be it.)
        
         | whalesalad wrote:
         | A rising tide lifts all boats. If there is a big tech partner
         | in that particular region, there will be better supporting
         | infra as well (employee base, friendly local municipalities,
         | fiber internet, power infrastructure, etc)
         | 
         | plus they can yeet the xeon's over the highway via a pneumatic
         | tube system
        
         | jcims wrote:
         | Probably more about utilities/logistics of supporting both
         | plants.
        
           | discodave wrote:
           | To wit: One way you can find Amazon (or other) datacenters on
           | Google maps is to look for the substation next door.
        
         | tomschlick wrote:
         | Most likely its just that the county officials there are
         | willing to clear red-tape and expedite
         | zoning/permitting/inspection for large corps looking to place
         | high tech jobs there. Possibly negotiate property tax breaks
         | too.
        
           | tersers wrote:
           | This is the simplest and most likely answer, not everything
           | in tech is a big masterminded ploy
        
           | acdha wrote:
           | That would be my assumption as well: they're relatively
           | similar in what they're looking for many of the same things:
           | reasonable prices for land, water, electricity, etc.,
           | amenable local government, and reasonable housing +
           | workforce. Intel's going to need more people but otherwise I
           | wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that both lists of
           | candidate locations ended up being very similar.
        
         | wyldfire wrote:
         | Probably useful for Amazon to leverage:
         | 
         | * similar subsidies that Intel benefits from
         | 
         | * public resources that Intel benefits from
         | 
         | * population/education/employees/housing that Intel draws to
         | work there
        
         | jonas21 wrote:
         | It's a coincidence in the sense that there's probably not a
         | particular reason for Amazon to want to be next to Intel.
         | 
         | It's not a coincidence in the sense that Ohio recently passed a
         | bunch of tax incentives for building "megaprojects" [1], and
         | New Albany in particular seems to be investing heavily in the
         | infrastructure that would be required for such projects. So
         | it's not surprising they both ended up there.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/tax/library/ohio-
         | modifies...
         | 
         | [2] https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2022/08/04/new-
         | al...
        
         | virtuallynathan wrote:
         | Power availability?
        
         | tpmx wrote:
         | I could easily imagine some of those spammy, idiotic and
         | successful youtubers going on and on about how this will enable
         | AWS to much more efficently ship those ~100 gram Intel CPUs
         | from where they are manufactured to where they will be used and
         | thereby gain a decisive competitive advantage.
        
       | snihalani wrote:
       | This is what the layoff money was used for
        
       | doublerabbit wrote:
       | Great, another Datacentre. Why not a 400 acre animal reserve?
       | 
       | Sorry down-voters, but I just value the planet more than another
       | Amazon datacentre. Ironic seeing as their name is opposite to
       | what the name Amazon really stands for. I just fail to see what
       | this achieves for the planet.
        
         | sib wrote:
         | 400 acres represents 0.01% of Ohio's land area. This doesn't
         | really change the state's land use profile.
        
           | doublerabbit wrote:
           | Trees, for a forest? Those would still produce more for the
           | planet than what an datacentre provides. Which takes
           | resources from the planet..
           | 
           | Water is a finite resource, you need electricity too. Carbon
           | emissions from the build. While I'm sure it will green DC but
           | doesn't solve the fact your destroying natural land for
           | nothing other than a building with servers in it.
        
             | leesalminen wrote:
             | Are you against all new development of land for commercial
             | purposes? Or is it something about data centers in
             | particular?
        
         | m348e912 wrote:
         | Not nearly as profitable.
        
         | throwayyy479087 wrote:
         | Ohio has enormous parks already
        
           | doublerabbit wrote:
           | Why not more?
        
         | MH15 wrote:
         | We've done well on that front in Ohio already
         | https://thewilds.columbuszoo.org/
        
       | yazaddaruvala wrote:
       | Probably just another data center.
       | 
       | But instead I'll take a leap and predict:
       | 
       | This is Amazon moving into not just designing Graviton but also
       | vertically integrating silicon fabrication (for CPU, memory,
       | and/or storage) into their portfolio.
        
         | bob1029 wrote:
         | Fabrication is a red line. Apple-style chip design is as far as
         | it will ever go.
         | 
         | You'd need to take the combined capital of Apple, Microsoft and
         | Amazon, along with 2-3 decades of time to even begin
         | considering becoming competitive with the likes of TSM or
         | Samsung. Who is signing up for that risk profile?
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | Interesting. I associate the region with air pollution and
       | carbon-intensive power. Ohio is near the bottom of the 50 states
       | in wind and solar energy. A few years ago I would not have said
       | Ohio was going to attract so much datacenter construction, but
       | now every big datacenter operator is there.
        
       | rotten wrote:
       | I live next to where this is going in (walking distance). We
       | already have a huge Google Data Center, One of the Ohio-east
       | region availability zones. A Meta data center and office park,
       | and a dbt data center under construction all within a short
       | radius. We also have a vitamin factory being built, we have a
       | large Amazon Fulfillment center, an R&D lab for a perfume
       | company, and an R&D lab for plastics packaging. All of this has
       | been built over the last 3 or 4 years.
       | 
       | This particular spot has electricity and water available from
       | multiple service providers. It has one of the lowest seismic
       | activity ratings in the US. We don't get hurricanes and very
       | rarely get tornados. It is very flat and has great access to
       | highways. We are within a 12 hour drive of something like 60% of
       | the population of the US.
       | 
       | There are huge tax incentives to support Intel's Ohio One, which
       | may have 6-10 fabs built within the next few years. The Intel
       | project is paying for highway development the power and sewer
       | extensions and more.
       | 
       | Spin off development is adding a slew of hotels, big box stores
       | and other development all happening at the same time.
       | 
       | The local schools are rated very highly, and we are only a short
       | drive from The Ohio State University, which is one of the largest
       | universities in the country.
       | 
       | Columbus has a vibrant startup scene with several unicorns in the
       | last couple of years.
       | 
       | They are taking our quiet country town on the outskirts of
       | Columbus, of about 15K people to 100K people over the course of
       | the next 7 years. They are taking many square miles of farmland
       | to make this happen. They are bulldozing over everyone and
       | anything that gets in their way. The developers are making money
       | hand-over-fist. In particular Les Wexner's development company
       | "The New Albany Company". Wexner is one of the key players behind
       | all of this development.
       | 
       | I live on land that goes back in my wife's family to a
       | Revolutionary war grant. I'm pretty sure we will be pushed out
       | within the next year or two as well. The only thing that has
       | stopped them so far is that we have most of the land set as
       | conservation land, which is hard to undo and just pave over.
       | 
       | That doesn't stop the bulldozers from pushing things around next
       | door to us and right up to our property line.
       | 
       | They cut down huge swaths of forest with 100, 150+ year old
       | trees. They got permission to wipe out acres and acres of
       | wetlands without having to worry about mitigation by donating the
       | money to some wildlife fund instead.
       | 
       | We have a pair of displaced bald eagles that have been spotted
       | flying around the area now trying to find a new home.
        
       | MrCharismatist wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/VssmA
       | 
       | Sounds like us-east-2d is coming.
        
         | ericmay wrote:
         | Thanks for sharing the non-paywalled article!
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | Thanks for saying this, as it made me pay attention - and so
           | I must now ask in surprise: when did we lose the automatic
           | "web"/"archive" links in HN submissions?
        
             | mtmail wrote:
             | "Ask HN: Why did HN get rid of the "web" button?"
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468746
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-25 23:00 UTC)