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

Someone should sponsor that guy a gigapixel microscope such as those

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

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

Another great resource is this site: https://misdake.github.io/ChipAnnotationViewer/?map=Zeppelin... It has a Google Maps like interface for exploring die shots and even some annotated versions of chips.

See also: https://siliconpr0n.org/

Reminds me of Koooooooyanisqatsi

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

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...

Are there any shots of audio amplifiers?

Realistically, are these enough to replicate the chips?

>> Are there any shots of audio amplifiers?

https://www.righto.com/2020/06/reverse-engineering-and-compa...

https://www.righto.com/2019/02/op-amp-on-moon-reverse-engine...

https://www.righto.com/2018/06/silicon-die-analysis-op-amp-w...

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.

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

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.

see also: https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/ (yes, afaik flickr is still their main/only homepage except for Twitter: https://xcancel.com/fritzchensfritz)

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?

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.

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

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

see also https://wikichip.org/

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.

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.

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" :)

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

There is a famous video from Hitachi[^1] showing the Youngs double slit experiment[^2]. You may like it!

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PanqoHa_B6c

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

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

You can see a simulation of an 6502 CPU running here.

http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html

Also this person has some simple tutorial on how a toy CPUs work. He even made a simulator so you can make your own using gate logic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZwneRb-zqA&list=PLFt_AvWsXl...

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

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.

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 :)

Branch Education makes good videos.

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

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

His videos are really fun!

>That TI PA-7000 FPC looks like chaos

I think it looks very well structured compared to the Soviet KM1801VM2

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Birdman86#/media/Fil...

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).

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

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.

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

A few early CPUs (famously including the 6502) were fully reverse engineered through "ordinary" die photos, and they even have gate-level simulators now where you can basically see the individual transistors switching: http://www.visual6502.org

I don't know if that's still near feasible for an 8088 or 8086. Anything past that, almost certainly not. Anything modern, absolutely not.

How old is the kid?

When my kids were less than 10 I took them to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA and showed them how all the mechanical computers work. They have some exploded and simplified exhibits that are very visual so kids can get it pretty easy. Especially if they’re the kind of kid that builds with blocks. Games like Turing Tumble are good too. Then you just wave your hands and say chips work like this on the inside, but with electricity instead of gears because it’s faster, smaller, cheaper and uses less energy. But at the end of the day, it’s basically all clockwork. Then they smile and say, “makes sense”. And I leave it at that.

When the kids were teenagers I gave them a more thorough explanation.

If you’re not in the Bay Area then the Computer Museum does have YouTube videos. There are many others as well.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XSkGY6LchJs&pp=ygUbbWVjaGFuaWN...

I only had a quick skim through their videos tab and almost every video is something I'd watch. Thanks for sharing. Looks like I have a fun evening ahead.