NICE PIECE on the Examiner today – yeah, I’m biased – about solar panels from Subhankar Kundu. The semiconductor companies are cheesed off with the Indian government not helping them enough.
We had a chat about this. A fab costs $2 billion at least to build. Orders are falling, falling, falling. This is the first time the clearly cyclical semi business has experienced this. TSMC is at 40% capacity. So will the fabs shift to producing polysilicon for the solar panel business? It’s not so easy. All it will take is for photovoltaic panels to become cheap and the famous Moore’s Law will kick in. And countries like India which have heaps of sun will benefit.
Will it happen? Probably not for a good while. It’s a crying shame. ♦
mike- pleased as punch here with my new build- 9650/ud3p/4870/8gigs/4 wd 640s+2 gkill 64 flash with native w64…the 4 640s really crank. I do 98% on that and then boot into the flash buggers when i need to play farcry2..overclocked to 3600 with nary a whimper machine is still so new i am just scratching the surface. on a topical note we are getting more sun now…other waves of the future son of Iram fusion io is getting some press but i say 2/3 yrs before things get ‘real’ with economies of scale and commoditization.
cheers from maine- shep