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Illustrating the complexity of silicon (Deep zoom of a CPU)

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SpiralElektronik:
Hi all,

Ever since I was a little kid I have always wanted to see what silicon actually looks like. Of course there are loads of beautiful die-shots out there but none that really captures the immensity of a big CPU or similar. So three years ago I started my slightly idiotic journey of trying to capture the immensity of a silicon die in  photo and ultimately video. I choose an intel 486 DX2 as my subject. In part because I had one lying around, it is easy to expose the die etc. But also because the feature size of 1 µm meant that I could capture every detail of it and still capture the entire silicon die. I have tried to make this illustration as realistic as I possibly could, I used 3D software but all of the textures are actual photographs and the color grading done is minimal.

If you want to see what an old 486 DX2 cpu looks like take a look here:



free_electron:
most of the people that made that are now retired and the design files are stored in some archaic format that nobody can read anymore. The computer systems , hardware and design software are long gone.

T3sl4co1l:
Great shot!  Yeah, really blends well between photo and magnifier.  There was just that motion blurred? frame at the start of the zoom which stuck out to me, very nice overall.

Occurs to me, if you could zoom just a little bit deeper -- and actually photograph the flyby, not just simulate it -- this was just a 3D projection of the flat image, I expect? -- I can just imagine how much detail you'd see, for the thickness and depth, and maybe even the refraction, of the glass layer; they really did quite a good job with aspect ratios, and there's real height to that construction, it's only flat because there's so much of it.  That, and the iridescence from polarization, reflection angle, angled path and just any sources of diffraction, would make a really cool scene.  I suppose it'd be a PITA to set up a microscope to do all that, but imagine...

The other thing that came to mind, the broken edge was a bit of a Chekov's Gun to me -- was there anything interesting visible on the corner?  I can just imagine using that as a diving-in point to show, like, a 3D cross section of the circuitry, but oh man, how much work would that be?! :-DD Or transitioning to a matched perspective SEM (after etching away the glass), say.

Well, not to give you too much work or anything, :P but suffice it to say it was thought-provoking, cheers. :)

Tim

mawyatt:
Nice video  :-+

Keep in mind that with todays SOTA CMOS processes one can integrate an entire 486 equivalent processor under a single bond pad...amazing ::)

Best,

HuronKing:
I'm sure this won't generate a ton of discussion but this is cool.

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