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How do they take those CPU pictures? Are those "delidded"? False color xrays?

• exmadscientist 3y ago
  Very carefully delidded and then with a nice metallurgical microscope. And then usually with focus stacking.
  • formerly_proven 3y ago
    Fritzchen's Fritz uses a normal mirrorless camera and macro lens most of the time for the pictures you see everywhere (he posts them under Creative Commons to Flickr, there's an automated pipeline from there to Wikimedia Commons, which is why virtually every Wikipedia article on a CPU or GPU features at least one of his works). Only the clean head-on die-shots (he also does these) need a metallurgical microscope - those are hard to find and very expensive, they're also highly proprietary optical systems, so accessories and objectives are rare and expensive, too.
• namibj 3y ago
  AFAIK it's the other side of the die from a "delidded" view. So, they desoldered the die, then etched/ground at it until the surface coating was gone, and just the semiconductor structure remains. Due to the sub-micrometer regular structures, you get interference patterns like these. I.e., the color is "structural".