7 ms·

Indistinguishable from Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips (2012) [video]

183 points by taspeotis 9y ago

saganus 9y ago
I've watched this video several times (probably 5+ or maybe more) and it does not cease to amaze me. Both the presentation style and the content itself is really engaging.
news_to_me 9y ago
"We're making things smaller than the wavelength of light [that] we're using to make the features" Incredible.
- danbruc 9y ago
  Without wanting to diminish the technological achievement behind that in any way, but it is really not that uncommon to create features that are smaller than the tools we use to make them. An obvious example are the details on a sculpture which can be much smaller than the chisel used to create them. Maybe not a perfect analogy because you only really use the edge and don't just throw the chisel in the rough direction of your marble block. Anyway.
  - kevhito 9y ago
    A better analogy might be reading regular-sized braille writing by poking it with a broom handle. Or writing an essay with the pencil tool in mspaint while using a 50-radius sized brush.
avs733 9y ago
Hi...presenter here. This has been posted a couple times and it's always flattering and a bit nerve wracking. Happy to answer questions, there are a couple of errors and misspeaks. Note I'm not in that field anymore (and,thankfully, I'm in much better physical shape).
- madeuptempacct 9y ago
  Did you make bank? How did you get into it?
- barsonme 9y ago
  Jeez, it really is like magic. Awesome presentation–thanks! (Also, congrats on getting in better shape.)
  - avs733 9y ago
    Thanks :) bot working 14hrs a day 6 days a week helps.
- aphextron 9y ago
  What's the single best way to get involved in the industry? Should I bother getting a degree or just go straight for hands on manufacturing experience? Are there any universities known for good programs?
  - ambrood 9y ago
    Back when i was majoring in ECE at UIUC, we got to play around with Fab labs :). Yeah you'd pretty much need a advanced degree in EE or Physics to be a semi-conductor engineer I'd reckon.
    - aphextron 9y ago
      Surely there are entry level technician jobs though?
      - avs733 9y ago
        For those you are typically looking at an as or even a bs. They look for strong reliability, precision and attention to detail, and hands on skills. Strong evidence of an ability to learn is also gold. Plus most of those guys work 3/4 12hr shifts a week...great schedule. No work goes home with you.
kiddico 9y ago
I know that there is very high tech development going on around the world by huge organizations, and it would blow my mind with how advanced it is. But watching this made me feel like the computer I'm typing this on is some space age alien tech. It's a little mind blowing how inexpensive it is to purchase stupidly complex hardware.
derefr 9y ago
Even old computer chips were magic. Really, photolithography is magic—it jumped us way ahead in our ability to miniaturize. It really seems like the kind of thing that, in fiction, would be introduced to a culture by aliens. I've always wondered: could we have discovered/invented photolithography earlier, and thereby started the integrated-circuit revolution earlier? As far as I can tell, there was nothing holding someone back from inventing it in the 1800s, even: they had access to all the relevant chemicals, and (in some countries) lenses were already precision-ground enough to serve the purpose down to some pretty tiny process-nodes. We wouldn't have had digital logic (no transistors), but we could have been making "electronic" watches, tiny AC-to-DC power converters, and other analogue ICs even back then. But heck: suppose we had known the principles behind semiconductive materials back then, too. We could have passed right by the vacuum-tube era and started in on inventing digital ICs (and boolean algebra.) What could the 1800s have looked like then? (Is there any well-known science-fiction story exploring this premise? I might give a shot to writing it, if not...)
- amelius 9y ago
  Don't know what you mean by analogue ICs without semiconductors. Anyway, perhaps the problem was more that (almost) nobody back then saw the potential of this technology.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    Think about a PCB except at micro-chip scale. If you don't have semi-conductor technology you can still lay down layers of metal using photolithography, and thus making tiny circuits. I'm not sure what the limits are of such technology but it seems interesting.
- workthrowaway27 9y ago
  I don't think there was much incentive to make things smaller before the transistor was invented. Also, transistors are used in most analog electronics. You can't do much without them since they let you amplify signals and apply negative feedback. But to answer your second question. I don't think we could have skipped the vacuum-tube era. It's because we already had applications for those sorts of electronics (and unreliable mechanical relays that were replaced with transistor switches) that researchers realized the potential for transistors in the first place. Even after the transistor was invented there was still a lot of research necessary to make them feasible in practice. The first one was germanium if I recall correctly and it took a while before silicon transistors were viable. Edit: Also, sort of unrelated, non silicon semiconductors are still used a lot because they can switch faster, and different color LEDs use different semiconductors because they emit different colors of light, which is also related to why different color LEDs have different voltage drops.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
snake_plissken 9y ago
Awesome presentation. To me the most magical part is not the manufacturing process, although that is very special, but how a team of engineers designed something which is made up of hundreds of millions of transistors, each in a specific location for a specific reason. How is all of that done? How do they keep track of things? Is there special software?
- FPGAhacker 9y ago
  There are a number of disciplines involved. Engineers at the foundry will range from those focused keeping the equipment aligned to produce functional structures on/in silicon over time, to engineers that design standard libraries of components to work at a given 'process' (the steps in going from wafer to chip for a given set of parameters/attributes). The structures in silicon (or other semiconductor material) are the transistors mainly. These are created by embedding impurities in geographic locations and patterns in the silicon that change it's conductive properties. Embedding these impurities is called doping. The structures on top of the silicon are conductors and insulators used for interconnecting all the transistors. There will be engineers at the foundry (or a company that works with that foundry) that take a "netlist" from the customer and convert that into files that can be used by mask company to make masks for the layers of conductors and insulators the lay on top of the transistors, and also the patterns for doping the silicon. Engineers at "tool vendors" will build software that takes a high level description of the desired functionality of the chip and turn it into the netlist that foundry engineers can use. The netlist is a decomposition of the high level description (such as x <= a * b) into the components in the "standard library" for that foundry. This library will contain basic components like AND gates and OR gates, but also more complicated things like IO pads and RAMs, and things like multipliers. Then you have design and verification engineers at a given company that wants to build a chip. These tend to stay at the higher level, working in VHDL, Verilog, and SystemVerilog. Which are all pretty archaic by software language standards. And what is considered high level in this arena is about the C language level or below. So not so high from a software point of view. I just spat this out off the top of my head, so apologies if I made mistakes.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Love this video and highly recommend. Love the idea also of the slides via a barcode.
- avs733 9y ago
  thanks! Its something I'm a big fan of. A talk like this is inherently a ton of information in a short time and I try to be inclusive and accessible by being conscious of how others process information.
kowdermeister 9y ago
I can't find a long video animation depicting the process. It was a bit old, but it was so great at displaying the process of coating a layer with masks and etching them with acid. If I remember correctly it was repeated 5 or 7 times. After watching it, I concluded we are gods for manipulating matter at this level :)

183 points by taspeotis 9y ago

I've watched this video several times (probably 5+ or maybe more) and it does not cease to amaze me. Both the presentation style and the content itself is really engaging.

news_to_me 9y ago

"We're making things smaller than the wavelength of light [that] we're using to make the features" Incredible.

danbruc 9y ago
Without wanting to diminish the technological achievement behind that in any way, but it is really not that uncommon to create features that are smaller than the tools we use to make them. An obvious example are the details on a sculpture which can be much smaller than the chisel used to create them. Maybe not a perfect analogy because you only really use the edge and don't just throw the chisel in the rough direction of your marble block. Anyway.
- kevhito 9y ago
  A better analogy might be reading regular-sized braille writing by poking it with a broom handle. Or writing an essay with the pencil tool in mspaint while using a 50-radius sized brush.

avs733 9y ago

Hi...presenter here. This has been posted a couple times and it's always flattering and a bit nerve wracking. Happy to answer questions, there are a couple of errors and misspeaks. Note I'm not in that field anymore (and,thankfully, I'm in much better physical shape).

madeuptempacct 9y ago
Did you make bank? How did you get into it?
barsonme 9y ago
Jeez, it really is like magic. Awesome presentation–thanks! (Also, congrats on getting in better shape.)
- avs733 9y ago
  Thanks :) bot working 14hrs a day 6 days a week helps.
aphextron 9y ago
What's the single best way to get involved in the industry? Should I bother getting a degree or just go straight for hands on manufacturing experience? Are there any universities known for good programs?
- ambrood 9y ago
  Back when i was majoring in ECE at UIUC, we got to play around with Fab labs :). Yeah you'd pretty much need a advanced degree in EE or Physics to be a semi-conductor engineer I'd reckon.
  - aphextron 9y ago
    Surely there are entry level technician jobs though?
    - avs733 9y ago
      For those you are typically looking at an as or even a bs. They look for strong reliability, precision and attention to detail, and hands on skills. Strong evidence of an ability to learn is also gold. Plus most of those guys work 3/4 12hr shifts a week...great schedule. No work goes home with you.

kiddico 9y ago

I know that there is very high tech development going on around the world by huge organizations, and it would blow my mind with how advanced it is. But watching this made me feel like the computer I'm typing this on is some space age alien tech. It's a little mind blowing how inexpensive it is to purchase stupidly complex hardware.

derefr 9y ago

Even old computer chips were magic. Really, photolithography is magic—it jumped us way ahead in our ability to miniaturize. It really seems like the kind of thing that, in fiction, would be introduced to a culture by aliens. I've always wondered: could we have discovered/invented photolithography earlier, and thereby started the integrated-circuit revolution earlier? As far as I can tell, there was nothing holding someone back from inventing it in the 1800s, even: they had access to all the relevant chemicals, and (in some countries) lenses were already precision-ground enough to serve the purpose down to some pretty tiny process-nodes. We wouldn't have had digital logic (no transistors), but we could have been making "electronic" watches, tiny AC-to-DC power converters, and other analogue ICs even back then. But heck: suppose we had known the principles behind semiconductive materials back then, too. We could have passed right by the vacuum-tube era and started in on inventing digital ICs (and boolean algebra.) What could the 1800s have looked like then? (Is there any well-known science-fiction story exploring this premise? I might give a shot to writing it, if not...)

amelius 9y ago
Don't know what you mean by analogue ICs without semiconductors. Anyway, perhaps the problem was more that (almost) nobody back then saw the potential of this technology.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  Think about a PCB except at micro-chip scale. If you don't have semi-conductor technology you can still lay down layers of metal using photolithography, and thus making tiny circuits. I'm not sure what the limits are of such technology but it seems interesting.
workthrowaway27 9y ago
I don't think there was much incentive to make things smaller before the transistor was invented. Also, transistors are used in most analog electronics. You can't do much without them since they let you amplify signals and apply negative feedback. But to answer your second question. I don't think we could have skipped the vacuum-tube era. It's because we already had applications for those sorts of electronics (and unreliable mechanical relays that were replaced with transistor switches) that researchers realized the potential for transistors in the first place. Even after the transistor was invented there was still a lot of research necessary to make them feasible in practice. The first one was germanium if I recall correctly and it took a while before silicon transistors were viable. Edit: Also, sort of unrelated, non silicon semiconductors are still used a lot because they can switch faster, and different color LEDs use different semiconductors because they emit different colors of light, which is also related to why different color LEDs have different voltage drops.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

snake_plissken 9y ago

Awesome presentation. To me the most magical part is not the manufacturing process, although that is very special, but how a team of engineers designed something which is made up of hundreds of millions of transistors, each in a specific location for a specific reason. How is all of that done? How do they keep track of things? Is there special software?

FPGAhacker 9y ago
There are a number of disciplines involved. Engineers at the foundry will range from those focused keeping the equipment aligned to produce functional structures on/in silicon over time, to engineers that design standard libraries of components to work at a given 'process' (the steps in going from wafer to chip for a given set of parameters/attributes). The structures in silicon (or other semiconductor material) are the transistors mainly. These are created by embedding impurities in geographic locations and patterns in the silicon that change it's conductive properties. Embedding these impurities is called doping. The structures on top of the silicon are conductors and insulators used for interconnecting all the transistors. There will be engineers at the foundry (or a company that works with that foundry) that take a "netlist" from the customer and convert that into files that can be used by mask company to make masks for the layers of conductors and insulators the lay on top of the transistors, and also the patterns for doping the silicon. Engineers at "tool vendors" will build software that takes a high level description of the desired functionality of the chip and turn it into the netlist that foundry engineers can use. The netlist is a decomposition of the high level description (such as x <= a * b) into the components in the "standard library" for that foundry. This library will contain basic components like AND gates and OR gates, but also more complicated things like IO pads and RAMs, and things like multipliers. Then you have design and verification engineers at a given company that wants to build a chip. These tend to stay at the higher level, working in VHDL, Verilog, and SystemVerilog. Which are all pretty archaic by software language standards. And what is considered high level in this arena is about the C language level or below. So not so high from a software point of view. I just spat this out off the top of my head, so apologies if I made mistakes.

jacksmith21006 9y ago

Love this video and highly recommend. Love the idea also of the slides via a barcode.

avs733 9y ago
thanks! Its something I'm a big fan of. A talk like this is inherently a ton of information in a short time and I try to be inclusive and accessible by being conscious of how others process information.

kowdermeister 9y ago

I can't find a long video animation depicting the process. It was a bit old, but it was so great at displaying the process of coating a layer with masks and etching them with acid. If I remember correctly it was repeated 5 or 7 times. After watching it, I concluded we are gods for manipulating matter at this level :)