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Fabricating chips is the most sophisticated manufacturing that humans have ever built. Key dimensions in a single transistor are about the length of 100 hydroge
by BeetleB 4y ago
Fabricating chips is the most sophisticated manufacturing that humans have ever built. Key dimensions in a single transistor are about the length of 100 hydrogen atoms. It takes a lot of technology to control things at that scale, and build billions of them in one chip.
- tails4e 4y agoWhat's always blown me away is that chips are built up in layers. These layers are built up by lithography, which involves depositing an extremely thin sheet of material and then etching out the pattern for wires, etc. The etching requires accurately exposing a mask pattern on the layer. Each subsequent layer must perfectly align with the layer below, or the chip is dead. We're talking 1 to 2nm alignment (millionths of a mm) . So a 'printing head' must move accross the wafer stepping accross for each chip and land exactly over the previous layer. The stepping is extremely quick. So move 20cm and stop within 1nm, that's orders of mangintude in speed and accuracy. consistently. Jesus, how do they build these things!