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Billions of transistors in a smart phone, and those took many^many machines to build
by w-ll 2y ago
Billions of transistors in a smart phone, and those took many^many machines to build
- fsckboy 2y agothe genius of photolithography (and its descendents) is that each chip is printed all at once, all the transistors at once over several steps for the several layers. This is what makes chips inexpensive.
- vasco 2y agoThe genius of photolithography is many things, I wouldn't say the wafer process is any more special than the statistical models that can predict where a nozzle needs to point to lay substract with more precision than the nozzle itself can provide or a number of other important inventions there.
- fsckboy 2y agousing the same process that was used to make a single transistor (and package and attach connecting leads to it)... ...to make an entire circuit (and package and attach connecting leads to it)... is the invention of the integrated circuit and photolithography made that possible. It subsequently had a large number of important follow on innovations, but which were conceptually proper subsets of it. had some other process made integrated circuits possible, that other process would have subsequently had many important innovations. what flowed from photolithographic chip making is still flowing today.
- NL807 2y agoThe factories that build them is like something out of a sci-fi film. Quite mind blowing.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoThere was a great article posted the other day that explained in detail but also followable terms all the processes that go into making a chip. I didn't realise that a single wafer can spend months in the production line.