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

199 pointsposted 5 days ago
by uticus
(commons.wikimedia.org)

37 Comments

mrcsharp

11 hours ago

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

chrisgarand

4 hours ago

On the less serious side I like EvilmonkeyzDesignz youtube shorts.

They generally looks for the doodles on older chips, but also looks at MEMs devices as well: https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz

They would definitely be able to add to the list (they have a video of 100 chips for their 100k subscriber mark).

atonse

4 hours ago

Never heard of this channel. I was mesmerized by this video, thanks. But I have to get back to Adulting for now.

Velocifyer

7 hours ago

Branch Education makes good videos.

solarwindy

7 hours ago

Outstanding video, thank you. No wonder this took months’ worth of research and animation to make.

guerrilla

11 hours ago

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...

gblargg

8 hours ago

I was also fixed on PowerPC after noticing how regular the dies were. Cache on the right, then what looks like bank after bank of fairly uniform control logic. It's almost like they decided on a general structure and fit everything into this, rather than letting things organically form as needed.

intrasight

10 hours ago

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.

ge96

6 hours ago

Would be interesting if all of a sudden, a paradigm shift, all he chips are designed as concentric rings for some reason

taraindara

2 hours ago

Imagine someone quietly developing, and then suddenly releasing a modern chip with this kind of design in mind. They’d get a lot of publicity just for being different. And the process would be their own, so if anyone likes it, or there turns out to be any benefits to the design, it would be a while until someone replicates it.

anyfoo

an hour ago

My feeling is that this would make bin packing on a silicon wafer less optimal?

mk89

8 hours ago

How can someone explain this to a kid? Is there somewhere an even more simplified version than Arduino or similar to show how all these things actually work? I know arduino is not a cpu, but overall, how these things work together, would be great to see/show.

I don't expect to show how electrons move :) I mean, some model, a toy or so, that shows how these things work. I remember it only from books/specs, but even there, at a certain point there are "limits" :)

devilbunny

7 hours ago

Some of the later steps may be beyond them, depending on the child's age, but Charles Petzold's wonderful book Code explains how you could set up a processor from logic gates with only a little handwaving.

If they are a little older and interested, NAND 2 Tetris is a good self-paced course.

thessalchips

8 hours ago

I‘m teaching a course on computer architecture at my university and there are these model processors called MUx (MU0-7) that explain how a CPU works from the ground up. I‘m not aware of any toys (my students keep asking me about that as well), but I wrote an interactive visualizer that illustrates the simplest processor and how data moves through it: https://pascalbormann.de/mu-vis/ Not mobile friendly unfortunately and maybe a bit too advanced for kids, but it could be a starting point. The code is here if you want to build on it: https://github.com/Mortano/mu0-visualization

thabit

8 hours ago

A breadboard CPU would be a good "toy" no?

thessalchips

7 hours ago

True but to do anything interesting you do need a whole bunch of wires and components, even for an 8-bit CPU. Maybe it is a good start to instead combine gates to do some useful work. People are also building CPUs in Minecraft, that should get kids engaged :)

jjk7

3 hours ago

That's how I was taught, build up a CPU using TTL logic chips.

Even just starting with the building blocks is useful, like build a flip-flop

foz

9 hours ago

I love these. The https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz channel does some wonderful explorations of chips with high powered microscopes, finding easter eggs and graphics left by designers. So much fun.

avipars

4 hours ago

His videos are really fun!

hyperbrainer

10 hours ago

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?

potato-peeler

10 hours ago

Realistically, are these enough to replicate the chips?

pbw

10 hours ago

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.

dan_hawkins

10 hours ago

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.

dfox

10 hours ago

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

ttoinou

11 hours ago

Reminds me of Koooooooyanisqatsi