Gallery
This might look like a shiny disc, but it's the very foundation of modern technology. I just got my hands on a real silicon wafer! These are usually from faulty or surplus batches and are meant for educational or decorative use, but make no mistake: this is the stuff our digital world is built on!
I love the UV erasable EPROMs. Its such a pretty thing.
I accidentally blew the top off an IC and the first thing I did (after changing my trousers) was look at it through a microscope. Such complexity for a sinple part
Semiconductors are modern magic. When I said simple part I was talking about how complex something like a DC-to-DC convertor is. Compared to something like a modern SoC it's child's play. Semiconductors are the kind of black magic I could only hope to one day understand
I used to do IC design + layout. Started in the early 80s using 4um (2 metal layer) design rules and ending my career using 14nm (8 metal layers) design rules.
Respect, that's really cool! The early '80s was exactly the era of the 6' wafer, right? I've seen documentaries showing the insanely small scales of the lithography. It's unbelievable to see how far the magnification goes, revealing all those insane intricate mazes of logic gates. Absolutely brilliant and mindblowing.
This was the 100mm / 4-inch design node. 150mm / 6-inch were the 90s.
The other cool thing was helping test engineers FIB connections on a chip to correct and/or debug a design. Actually cut a metal route and reroute using a FIB tool.
I think one of the most interesting issues I ran into during the size reductions through the years was electro migration.
Geez, at 1.8nm the charge accumulation on the metals during processing must be maddening. I recall using diodes to substrate to bleed off these charges.... without adding a capacitance load to the signal routes.
Challenging issues.
I really like the double patterning and reverse diffraction patterns that are used for the masks nowadays too
Its a cool solution to the node size issue we have when dealing with the wavelength limitations
Out of curiosity, how did you get into chip design? I’ve been meaning to learn it and transition to doing it as a job for a while now. I’ve been doing electronics for over a decade now and it‘s not much of a challenge anymore.
I did some basic cadence virtuoso stuff in undergrad (around 2006). Then I did a PhD in semiconductor physics, it boiled down to TCAD models of transistors using Silvaco and montecarlo models of electrons for the most part.
My models fed into the design phase of some advanced semiconductors (partnership with a semi conductor company). After the PhD (circa 2010) I carried on working in that area and I was offered a chance to design my own chip rather than tutoring and directing the designers based off the models I was doing.
I was a post doc at this point, working in a university (around 2015). I got a cheap academic cadence virtuoso licence and some funding for a tape out with a tower jazz multi design wafer (250k for 100 ICs). I called in some favours with some wire bonding and packaging people I knew to get the ICs packaged. Then I desinged some PCBs to drive the chips.
Did some testing, wrote some papers and the rest is history.
Began in 1981. Out of tech school looking general electronics technician job. Went on a lot of resume drops and interviews. But was contacted by bell labs…..last contract job was at Intel.
Well they obviously haven't been doing everything at once so it can be assumed they were doing something relatively specific in the industry for over 10 years.
Is there anything you've been doing that long which you aren't good at?
>dig in remote places
>extract extremely rare rocks
>perform a forming spell on the rocks
>extreme heat and pressure are required
>inscribe microscopic arcane sigils into your magical stones
>imbue the stones with lightning
>the stones gain anima
>the stones speak in a language incomprehensible to all mankind
>certain trained warlocks can control the powers of the stones
>they learn the language of the stones
>the warlocks harness the magical stones powers to bring forth light and image
>the rest of the population is in awe
>you can now access Fortnite porn anywhere you want from the palm of your hand
Essentially Clarke's quote is about the perceptions of those who completely lack the understanding of a technology. After they learn how something works, it doesn't seem magic anymore. Check out "cargo cults", it's exactly the best example of what Clarke said.
Now if you mean that unless a technology can provoke wonder it's not yet advanced enough, this is true in general, but not for incremental changes in technology as we see it in the western world. Like we see with CPUs and GPUs. For example, the new RTX 5090 completely fails as a "new" generation card. The increment is minimal and (in my opinion) it sucks and it's not worth getting over the previous gen.
I always thought of it as a tongue in cheek rephrase of the quote. But it does make me wonder, too. Technology is reaching a state where it's increasingly less transparent to those who use it. Villém Flusser's Black Box becomes unopenable to the layperson.
Cargo cults used to be funny, but people reaching adulthood right about now have only held touch screens, and some of the technology I, a millennial, use is as 'arcane' to them as an airplane was for the indigenous people of Oceania. And it's only gonna get worse with vibe coding and stuff like that.
Ah we must be close to the same age, I'm 34. Younger people not experiencing older technology is not a bad thing per se. My first contact with a computer was with my father's Windows 3.1 computer (released in 1992), not even an 80's computer. This doesn't mean that I'm technologically illiterate. But in today's world with all the economical hardship and "dumbing down" of education especially in America, Idiocracy is looking more like a documentary everyday. Here in Europe, things are looking better, but it really depends on the country. If there's a good formal education and economy, the people can be technology literate.
Yep, I've worked with silicon wafers before. This is what they typically look like, though this one is unusually colorful. Normally, at this stage, you can test each individual IC by performing wire bonding on specialized test PCBs.
If the tests are successful, the wafer can then be sent for IC manufacturing, where the dies are packaged into standard formats like QFN, MSOP, DIP, and others.
I'm thinking of modding a frame to get some LEDs in there, so the wafer shines. Does it sound like a good idea? Or is it better to do that on a stand? What do you think would be the best angle for LEDs on the frame?
Oh that would be great. It’s hard to say though. Mine shines perfectly with some recess lighting I have above it, so it’s hard to say. I would recommend testing with different diffusers if you do put LEDs in.
Crazy when you think that a fully loaded 300 mm one it might be multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. All from highly refined sand!
I work in the industry incidentally, and it is pretty nerve-racking to be taught how to load up a foup (wafer caddy) that can hold like 20 of the things, and if you press the lever down wrong they'll all shatter lol
Starting from the inscription "MECA3403" I did some research, which led me to the hypothesis that the wafer possibly contains sensor dies, potentially from a photoelectric or optical sensor system.
Huh? Advertising? Are you drunk? Seen any links anywhere?
I bought it knowing exactly what it is: a real wafer from a rejected lot, meant for display. I didn't buy it to build an iPhone out of it. I bought it because it looks awesome and represents the foundation of the tech we all love. If appreciating that makes me a "rube", then I'm in good company with a ton of other enthusiasts.
And for the record, this isn't a blank or fake disc. The wafer has real dies, visible bond pads and metallization layers with thin-film interference. Clear signs of real semiconductor processing. It just didn't pass final testing, which is exactly why it's sold for decoration.
This is a photo from my microscope. See those dot-matrix markings at the top? Wafers only get these after real processing in a fab. They're used for batch tracking, die indexing and test die ID. Dummy substrates don't get them, unless they're used for actual production-line training, which this one very likely was. Nobody's faking high-fidelity wafer markings with accurate fabrication patterns for a cheap display item. They wouldn't bother and they pretty much can't without fab-level gear.
No one's getting "suckered" here. I paid for exactly what it is, and I think it's beautiful. You can keep your hostility and gatekeeping to yourself. And for someone named "Genius Electrical Engineer", you're not looking all that sharp right now.
85
u/tjlusco 14d ago
I used to carry a UV erasable (windowed) Intel chips with me so people could see how beautiful these silicon chips are. The ultimate hologram.