> Making chips takes an immense amount of water

This is misleading, modern chip fabs recycle their water basically 100%. It's not being evaporated for cooling like in some data center deployments, it's just part of the process.

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hliyan 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

That is not entirely accurate, as per the article:

> TI will use about 1,700 gallons of water per minute when the new Sherman fab is complete, with plans to recycle at least 50% of that

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xyzzyz 3 days ago | parent [-]

Just for context, around 200 times that amount simply evaporates from the Lake Texoma’s surface every minute.

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hliyan 3 days ago | parent [-]

Would this be the calculation you used? https://g.co/gemini/share/0639e6364e50

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xyzzyz 3 days ago | parent [-]

Basically yes. I googled average lake evaporation rates, and did the same multiplications as Gemini.

	▲	bilekas 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		You mean you sis the math yourself? Novel idea these days. /s

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uoaei 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That is of course the ideal, however local economic conditions (low/subsidized water prices, etc.) may dictate a different path by incentivizing another way of doing things (open cooling systems, etc.).