4 ms·
It’s easier to understand if you look at an analysis of a much older, less dense, die. Ken Shiriff is a superb source of these There are some visual clues. Fir
by curiousObject 3y ago
It’s easier to understand if you look at an analysis of a much older, less dense, die. Ken Shiriff is a superb source of these
There are some visual clues. First, the chip pins are labeled in the spec so you can guess they’ll be close to relevant units, and also try to trace their connections throughout the die.
Second, units like memory have an obvious regular structure because they are made from many identical micro-units
Third, if you see, for example, 16 identical adjacent units you could guess this is something that could be dealing with data 16 bits at a time. That narrows it down
There are numerous clues like those.
You could also use tricks like using a thermal camera. What part gets hot when you do certain operations?
- samstave 3y agoOne of my professional regrets was when I worked at Intel in 1997, I had 30x42 plots of chip dies hanging on the wall in our lab... I wish I had taken some of them and framed them, they were beautiful.
- cebert 3y agoThat would be a nice to frame in an office.
- hotpotamus 3y agoThis reminds me that I meant to pick up some of the wafers sometime. I've seen failures/surplus/whatever for sale on eBay and other places and meant to get one to frame or display as they are impressive in their way.
- samstave 3y agoI had a keychain of a CPU in resin for a long time, Intel would sell them in the gift shop because they were failed prints. Also, in SC5? there was a hallway that had a bunch of plaques from partner companies... and what was awesome was the amount of "Engrish" Some of the comments were along the same line as "for great justice" (if you are aware of that old meme)
- hoc 3y agoGot on of these keychain chips in the late eighties from a friend whose dad worked at IBM. I remember that it came with a comparably cheap key ring clip and that the edges wore off nicely over time. Funny to be reminded of that. Thanks for mentioning.
- nativeit 3y ago+1 on Ken Shiriff’s blog, and his work with @curiousmarc on YouTube. Those gentlemen are national treasures whose work on restoring, documenting, and appreciating vintage computing and Apollo-era technology have been second to none in their breadth and depth. I also personally really value their work—for anyone with intermediate to advanced knowledge of electronics engineering and computers, they are an invaluable source of educational entertainment as traditional mainstream media simply doesn’t cater to such niche audiences.