back to article Mohawk Valley, NY to become the new Silicon Valley in fab fab deal

A deal between SUNY Poly (State University New York), the state of New York, GE and Austrian sensor and analog IC company AMS will see an East Coast US chip fab built to research and make nano-scale devices. AMS is putting an initial $2bn into their venture, which the state will top up with $200m. GE will stump up $200m and …

  1. PleebSmash
    Devil

    Silicon Valley is about unicorns, not silicon

    While your robots and a handful of researchers assemble cheap chippery, Silicon Valley will be hard at work on taming the latest unicorns such as the "Squarespace of elevator pitches", "the Facebook of LARPing", and the "LinkedIn of dumpster diving".

  2. Hud Dunlap
    Unhappy

    So how many jobs....

    ....does NY get for $1.5 billion dollars

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So how many jobs....

      Enough to make Cuomo get an "attaboy!", and not one more...

    2. PJF
      Mushroom

      Re: So how many jobs....

      MAYBE in initial construction, but, long-term, lemme guess.... big fat nil.

      Tax increase WILL be inevitable.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So how many jobs....

        Such corruption ... NY is giving California a run for its money.

        NY had the Old Silicon Valley, in Binghamton-Endicott-etc, now a polluted and economically depressed zone for 30+ years. Utica, Kingston, Albany, etc, etc - same thing. There are nice parts of both upstate and NYC but there are so many nicer places without the insanely high taxes and runaway bureaucracy. Emperor Cuomo II is doubling down on the bad parts.

  3. Cranky Yank

    Utica has something that Silicon Valley doesn't have -- SNOW. Lots & lots of snow & ice in the winter. Yet New York State continues to delude itself with the "Tech Valley" moniker. As someone who has lived in both 'Valleys, the attempt to link the two together via naming is hilarious.

    1. Fred Goldstein

      Yep, let's compare the valleys.

      Earthquakes aren't good for chipmaking. Score for NY.

      Plentiful water is needed. Score for NY.

      Plentiful electricity is needed. Probably score for NY.

      Cost of living? Score for NY.

      Local wine: NY is catching up (the days of cheap labrusca are over).

      Snow. Score one for CA if you hate the stuff, but upstate folks love the outdoors, skiing, skating, etc. They do have snow plows, boots, and warm coats.

      1. Col_Panek

        However, the politicians may be slightly worse, if that's possible.

    2. Mark 85
      Facepalm

      There's a lot of places deluding themselves. One place had a small coding shop for webpages open and the local paper loudly proclaimed that the town (population 5,000) was going to be the new "Silicon Valley".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What they aren't telling you...

    They aren't telling you that all of the high paying core jobs will be filled with out-of-state staff relocated into the area.

    Right now the "initial" jobs are janitorial, grounds maintenance, secretarial, etc.

    I highly doubt we will get any "real" jobs from this immediately, like is being promised.

    If anything, it will take a decade, when the people brought in have had time to settle, train their replacements, and whatnot.

    This area has had a mass exodus of skilled labor, with many companies shedding contracts in NY and relocating to other facilities out of state. The job market in CNY is dismal, at best.

    Add to that the fact that SUNY has recently destroyed their degree requirements by reducing contact hours, cutting classes from program requirements, adding in the "Political Correctness/Diversity" classes in their place, and other such shenanigans, brought on by state budget cuts to the educational sector. That's after raising tuition costs to a "Am I at Yale Jr?" level...

    Another local college, MVCC, recently gutted their engineering programs to comply with the new SUNY contact hour mandates.

    The EE program dropped telecommunications 1 & 2, axed the second year digital electronics courses, and ripped out some analog design courses.

    They also flushed over half of their engineering professors out when a new dean of STEAM came in, and decided "Fab Labs are the way of the future", and started firing anyone who didn't grovel at his feet.

    ANON because it's safer for me as a former student to not be in the crosshairs...

  5. bbulkow

    Upstate NY: do you even know what a fab is? Or a research fab?

    I recently got to visit one of the world's premiere research fabs - Boise, ID. Engineers in silicon valley ( and all over the world ) control robots that execute the processes at the research fab. They fly in all kinds of silicon production equipment from all over the world (including Santa Clara). The research fab has a very large number (100's++) of "process gasses" of various toxicities but admittedly small amounts, because they're doing research. After the process is proven, some engineers visit for a few weeks, then they move the process to one of their production fab lines somewhere else in the world ( such as Singapore or Japan or Italy ).

    We don't put fabs in silicon valley anymore because silicon valley is about people, brainpower, capital.... not toxic processes. The cynical might say anywhere there is a fab is CERTAINLY NOT silicon valley because no wise engineer would move their family to the shadow of a toxic plant.

    Fab lines, in order to be clean, have very, very few people .... and a lot of toxics .... sure there will be a few thousand jobs as add-ons for shipping equipment and hotel stays for traveling workers....

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Upstate NY: do you even know what a fab is? Or a research fab?

      We don't put fabs in silicon valley anymore because silicon valley is about people, brainpower, capital.... not toxic processes. The cynical might say anywhere there is a fab is CERTAINLY NOT silicon valley because no wise engineer would move their family to the shadow of a toxic plant.

      That and the state of California has banned many chemicals from being imported into the state.

  6. Daedalus

    Geography FAIL

    If Utica NY is "east coast" then bloody London is just outside Cardiff. The nearest point on the Atlantic coast is about 170 miles away.

    The locals may claim to be close to the "North coast", but that's a conceit of a different kind.

    1. Col_Panek

      Re: Geography FAIL

      No, we do not claim such a thing.

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