Intel Shows How a CPU is Made

[tuannguyen]

Intel released a press kit that visually explains how a CPU is made and reveals all the major steps in a process that normally takes hundreds of stages to complete. Check out the engineering magic!

Intel Shows How a CPU is Made : Read more

 

[tacoslave]

is amd taking notes? jk i love amd

 

[tacoslave]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Collectable-INTEL-Microchip-Keychain-w/-CPU-Steel-rope_W0QQitemZ360155521483QQcmdZViewItem
i want one of those keychains!!

 

[Guest]

Sand is an element??? OMG!

 

[dmv915]

[citation][nom]tacoslave[/nom]http://cgi.ebay.com/Collectable-IN [...] dZViewItemi want one of those keychains!![/citation]
Lol, this wouldn't happen to be your auction eh?

 

[Bloodblender]

Saw this on APC's website, lol, pretty interesting stuff, but hey, at least Intel and AMD have got plenty of resources (sand) to keep making processors!

 

[annihilator-x-]

Instead of 'sand' is the second most frequent chemical element, the article should say 'Silicon' is the second most abundant chemical element.

Abundant is a better word as well as the fact that sand is mostly quartz among impurities and other minerals. Quartz itself is Silicon Dioxide crystals.

 

[nonamelab]

A little late Intel http://www.globalfoundries.com/multimedia/video/from_sand_to_chip

 

[dmitryr]

great!

 

[rickzor]

I already know that a cpu can die due to overheat deteoration or due to electromigration, but that happens all during use. I always wondered how many years could a cpu or any other chip survive if always turned off!
Maybe if turn off and praticly never used, our descendents could find perfectly working exemplars of our primitive cpus after what...2000 years or more!

Ah sorry about the relatively off topic subject, that's the efect of Life after people series on History Channel!

 

[Ryun]

[citation][nom]nonamelab[/nom]A little late Intel http://www.globalfoundries.com/mul [...] nd_to_chip[/citation]

Both of them were great. Thanks for the article, Toms, and thank you for the link.

 

[aggiebroz]

If anybody ever gets the chance, its really cool to take a tour of a microchip fab. Plus you get to wear to awsome suits.

Back about 4-6 years ago in high school I got to spend a week at AMD fab 25 (was in the process of being transferred to Spansion) in Austin, TX which now makes flash memory instead of cpus(used to make k6 and k7 chips). The clean room there is actually a higher class than most of the new cpu facilities because they actually transfer the wafers in an open container between stages of manufacturing. The guys giving us the tour said they would kill us if we touched a wafer or pressed any buttons.

 

[calmstateofmind]

pretty interesting stuff. makes you wonder how somebody could actually think this stuff up and it work as well as it does. amazes me...

 

[tipoo]

Awesome article, i posted it everywhere, lol.

 

[Pei-chen]

[citation][nom]nonamelab[/nom]A little late Intel http://www.globalfoundries.com/mul [...] nd_to_chip[/citation]
Intel's slide was made in May while AMD's video on June 30th. It looks like AMD's video is a response to Intel's press kit instead of the reason.

 

[computabug]

Copper ions are deposited onto the transistor thru a process called electroplating.
Come on... that's just... *sigh* Tuan... that's not just a typo, that's outright msngr terminology...

 

[paranoidmage]

Made up of 25 percent silicon, sand is, after oxygen, the second most frequent chemical element that's in the earth's crust.

Sand isn't an element, Silicon is.

 

[Glorian]

If anybody ever gets the chance, its really cool to take a tour of a microchip fab. Plus you get to wear to awsome suits.

Back about 4-6 years ago in high school I got to spend a week at AMD fab 25 (was in the process of being transferred to Spansion) in Austin, TX which now makes flash memory instead of cpus(used to make k6 and k7 chips). The clean room there is actually a higher class than most of the new cpu facilities because they actually transfer the wafers in an open container between stages of manufacturing. The guys giving us the tour said they would kill us if we touched a wafer or pressed any buttons.

A friend of mine used to work for AMD in Austin and in his office had several wafers mounted on stands and even several dies used to transfer the images to the wafer, was pretty awesome. Too bad AMD layed him off, funny cause he left a job at intell to work for amd.

 

[jwl3]

Anyone still think processors are overpriced?

 

[dicobalt]

That's an amazinly simple process to make a chip. I especially like how the multiple layers are made, that's so elegantly simple. The whole process looks like there is so much that could go wrong though. How do you polish a surface so smooth it's flat even on the atomic level? How do you prevent physical atomic level damage between manufacturing stages? How do you ensure contact between layers is perfect and there are no atomic sized airholes so to speak, is it perfect? Do I have little atomic sized vaccums inside my CPU between layers? Those are the most confusing parts to me. I guess I won't get an answer to those questions because the answers are what keeps intel in business lol

 

[liquidcool72]

Got this technology straight out of area 51.. Thank you little green guys!!

 

[Wayoffbase]

[citation][nom]boss84[/nom]Sand is an element??? OMG![/citation]
sand (earth), fire, water, and air. am I missing any? I don't think so

you build the chip from earth, power it with fire magic, and tame the fire elemental inside with air or water if you are a really leet druid

 

[joex444]

And what is the chemical symbol for Sand, idiot.

 

[haplo602]

duh, just rendered images ... I was expecting actual photos from a fab. this article is lame.

 

[imrul]

grammar error on page 5: "When Intel first began making chips, it company printed circuits on 50 mm (2-inches) wafers."

"it" should be "its"