5 ms·

I am blown away by the wafer of Xbox 360 CPUs hanging on this guy's wall. That was a kingly gift!

by discreditable 5y ago

bostonsre 5y ago
Anyone know how much that would cost roughly? Wondering if they had a big reject bin that needed to be disposed of.
- andreareina 5y ago
  Guessing that the cost for a wafer at a state-of-the-art process has gone up over the years but not that much, in the vicinity of ~$10,000? https://twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1306437988801486848 https://twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1306437988801486848 sourced from https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/AI-Chips%E2%80%94What-They-Are-and-Why-They-Matter.pdf https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/AI-Chips%E2%8... p45
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Pretty pricey for a plaque.. either they really liked him or they had some rejects I would guess.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      They always have rejects. Actually, that's almost certainly an unfinished wafer. Modern flip chips don't look like that finished - you have an array of pads and power distribution covering all the cool features. I think there's a good chance that wafer doesn't have any metal layers, or only M1 at most. It looks the same as the chips I've delayered and removed all or almost all of the metal layers from. For example, here's a shot of the Wii's GPU with the metal layers scraped off: https://marcan.st/transf/hollywood_die.jpg https://marcan.st/transf/hollywood_die.jpg
  - bowmessage 5y ago
    It was always rumored around the FAB that dropping a case of wafers was akin to totaling a Ferrari. Maybe ~20 wafers in a case, so this math checks out!
  - qsmi 5y ago
    It depends, is the wafer passing or failing the manufacturing tests? This is an important consideration.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      The manufacturing pipeline is generally pretty long too, and you can stop wafers midflight if you're just going to throw them out anyway. So for instance, if you have some B0 wafers that have enough metal layers that you couldn't easily change them into B1 wafers half way through the process, you might end up with it being cheaper to end up with unusable wafers for plaques and what have you. The fab is generally happy to have the extra capacity even for tail end of the design. There's generally some cheap customers that'll slot in wherever there's gaps.
phkahler 5y ago
>> I am blown away by the wafer of Xbox 360 CPUs hanging on this guy's wall. That was a kingly gift! Yeah, the only place I've seen a full wafer on display is a display case in the lobby of a chip company office building. I wonder how often some process goes out of whack and they get an entire known-bad wafer that still looks great?
- londons_explore 5y ago
  You can buy complete wafers on ebay for a few bucks, so I'd guess it's pretty common. I think many of the alignment steps during manufacturing involve making a wafer, seeing how misaligned it is using an electron microscope, adjusting all the machines, then making another wafer. Repeat until the wafers start working.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Yeah I'm seeing them for like $80 for 20-30 year old wafers, it'd make a pretty neat decorative piece: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cpu+wafer https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cpu+wafer reminds me of when I had some 'trash' leftover CPU's, chips, or memory units; drill a hole in it and you have a keychain gadget.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tomcam 5y ago
      Wow. Those are beautiful. If I had wall space left I’d start a collection.
rasz 5y ago
https://twitter.com/Siliconinsid/status/1480216470374207500 https://twitter.com/Siliconinsid/status/1480216470374207500 "Wafer of the Sony PlayStation 1 CPU. While decaping a Sony CXD8606Q, I was very lucky to be able to match the die to an unidentified wafer I had in my collection. The 6“ wafer could accommodate a total of 200 individual dies."

I am blown away by the wafer of Xbox 360 CPUs hanging on this guy's wall. That was a kingly gift!

bostonsre 5y ago

Anyone know how much that would cost roughly? Wondering if they had a big reject bin that needed to be disposed of.

andreareina 5y ago
Guessing that the cost for a wafer at a state-of-the-art process has gone up over the years but not that much, in the vicinity of ~$10,000? https://twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1306437988801486848 https://twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1306437988801486848 sourced from https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/AI-Chips%E2%80%94What-They-Are-and-Why-They-Matter.pdf https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/AI-Chips%E2%8... p45
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Pretty pricey for a plaque.. either they really liked him or they had some rejects I would guess.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    They always have rejects. Actually, that's almost certainly an unfinished wafer. Modern flip chips don't look like that finished - you have an array of pads and power distribution covering all the cool features. I think there's a good chance that wafer doesn't have any metal layers, or only M1 at most. It looks the same as the chips I've delayered and removed all or almost all of the metal layers from. For example, here's a shot of the Wii's GPU with the metal layers scraped off: https://marcan.st/transf/hollywood_die.jpg https://marcan.st/transf/hollywood_die.jpg
- bowmessage 5y ago
  It was always rumored around the FAB that dropping a case of wafers was akin to totaling a Ferrari. Maybe ~20 wafers in a case, so this math checks out!
- qsmi 5y ago
  It depends, is the wafer passing or failing the manufacturing tests? This is an important consideration.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    The manufacturing pipeline is generally pretty long too, and you can stop wafers midflight if you're just going to throw them out anyway. So for instance, if you have some B0 wafers that have enough metal layers that you couldn't easily change them into B1 wafers half way through the process, you might end up with it being cheaper to end up with unusable wafers for plaques and what have you. The fab is generally happy to have the extra capacity even for tail end of the design. There's generally some cheap customers that'll slot in wherever there's gaps.

phkahler 5y ago

>> I am blown away by the wafer of Xbox 360 CPUs hanging on this guy's wall. That was a kingly gift! Yeah, the only place I've seen a full wafer on display is a display case in the lobby of a chip company office building. I wonder how often some process goes out of whack and they get an entire known-bad wafer that still looks great?

londons_explore 5y ago
You can buy complete wafers on ebay for a few bucks, so I'd guess it's pretty common. I think many of the alignment steps during manufacturing involve making a wafer, seeing how misaligned it is using an electron microscope, adjusting all the machines, then making another wafer. Repeat until the wafers start working.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Yeah I'm seeing them for like $80 for 20-30 year old wafers, it'd make a pretty neat decorative piece: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cpu+wafer https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cpu+wafer reminds me of when I had some 'trash' leftover CPU's, chips, or memory units; drill a hole in it and you have a keychain gadget.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomcam 5y ago
    Wow. Those are beautiful. If I had wall space left I’d start a collection.

rasz 5y ago

https://twitter.com/Siliconinsid/status/1480216470374207500 https://twitter.com/Siliconinsid/status/1480216470374207500 "Wafer of the Sony PlayStation 1 CPU. While decaping a Sony CXD8606Q, I was very lucky to be able to match the die to an unidentified wafer I had in my collection. The 6“ wafer could accommodate a total of 200 individual dies."