Die shots of as many CPUs and other interesting chips as possible

mrcsharp

I'm always fascinated by how brilliant us humans can be. So much so that we can put billions of transistors in very small spaces and in complex structures while also mass producing it.

I highly recommend watching this video about lithography and the machine that makes it all possible [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg

intrasight

Nice

I have on my desk the book "State of the Art" by Stan Augarten. It shows the progression of transistors and integrated circuits from conception through 1983.

The book was one of the inspirations for me to become an electrical engineer. My older brother loaned me a copy of it when it was published in 1983.

sllabres

A nice collection of die shots is on Fritzchens Fritz [1] on flickr

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/albums/721576504...

7222aafdcf68cfe

If you're into this, and enjoy more details, many more get published weekly on Mastodon under the #nakeddiefriday tag - https://infosec.exchange/tags/nakeddiefriday

guerrilla

Which one of the CPUs do you think looks the cleanest, aesthetically? The first Alpha looks rather chaotic, while the Samsung Alpha looks very uniform. That TI PA-7000 FPC looks like chaos. I think the two PowerPCs look the best, which is what I'd expect too. Well, actually I'd expect some of the other RISC to look simpler too...

hyperbrainer

I do not know enough to analyse these chips in any meaninful way, but is there a trend or cool feature to be seen across?

roflmaostc

Someone should sponsor that guy a gigapixel microscope such as those

https://gallery.ramonaoptics.com/gallery/viewer/42009871001#...

potato-peeler

Realistically, are these enough to replicate the chips?

dan_hawkins

Absolutely not. It's like opening a hood of your car, taking picture of what you see and then try to build replica of the engine based on that.

pbw

To capture the individual transistors on a modern CPU, you'd need an image tens of terabytes in size, and it'd have to be captured by an electron microscope, not an optical image. And even that wouldn't let you see all the layers. Some of the very old CPUs, I'm not sure what resolution would be required.

dfox

Mostly no. You do not see the lower layers and for anything sub 1um or so the resolution is too poor anyway.

atannen

HN

Die shots of as many CPUs and other interesting chips as possible

Die shots of as many CPUs and other interesting chips as possible