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Comment by ensan | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to proximity research institutions, the choice of location is strange to me. Somewhere in the northern Indiana/Illinois/Michigan (i.e. "Greater Michiana") would have made a lot more sense. That way, you would be close to,

UIUC, Northwestern, UChicago, UMichigan, Purdue, Notre Dame, UIndiana, Argonne National Lab, etc.

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The Ohio State University is in Columbus and if not the largest university in the world it is in the top 3.

Yes, but OSU is not especially well known for computer architecture. In comparison, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois are all top-5 schools in EE/hardware. And the Champaign area is even more affordable than Columbus. So choosing Columbus must have satisfied multiple constraints, some of which aren't obvious.

Champaign doesn't have sufficient infrastructure (think construction workers even) so they'd be looking at Chicago suburbs. This would make Labor costs way too high. Wisconsin would be a fantastic choice but Foxconn boondoggle probably ruined that possibility.

Largest university in the world? Top 3 in the US maybe but the largest universities in the world (I'm not talking about networks) are an order of magnitude bigger.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_universities

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_public... Top 3 US, as you said, but nowhere near top 3 in the world, as you also said. Also, enrollment sure isn’t everything. Speaking as someone who used to live near Orlando, UCF is #2 on that list and I had consistent bad luck hiring computer science grads from there. And 3 of the top 5 are in Florida (it’s been like that since 2015) and I don’t see tech employers scrambling to move to Florida en masse. The focus and quality of the institution definitely matters.

The number of enrolled students is not a good argument here.

> When it comes to proximity research institutions

...which has nothing to do with running a fab, if we're being honest about it.

It doesn't have anything to do running a fab per se, but obviously location is a factor in attracting talent.

I don't have a handle on how important this truly is (they build fabs in suburban Arizona, of all places) but if they're not interviewing on campus, it's a two hour drive from CMU and a two hour flight from MIT. For anyone used to the slow driving times in California, Columbus is basically close to everything east of the Mississippi.

I really do suspect they'll have some jobs for the ECE graduates from OSU, but I guess time will tell.

Do the people that need to work at the fabs come from those schools?

No. It is unskilled labor save for the jobs that are not on the shop floor.

For such a high-tech industry, the choice of location is also about taking advantage of the talent and research ecosystem that is already established there.

They needed to be close to a large city center. Chicago is too expensive -- so the option you are proposing is something like Indianapolis?

"They needed to be close to a large city center"

I wasn't familiar with with this requirement but how close is close? I don't think the new semiconductor plants in Texas & Arizona are that close to a city center.

And how expensive is too expensive? At least compared to cities of similar size & stature, Chicago itself is not that expensive and can get much cheaper as you move slightly away from it (in the right direction).

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