I'm always fascinated by how brilliant us humans can be. So much so that we can put billions of transistors in very small spaces and in complex structures while also mass producing it.

I highly recommend watching this video about lithography and the machine that makes it all possible [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg

If you're into this, and enjoy more details, many more get published weekly on Mastodon under the #nakeddiefriday tag - https://infosec.exchange/tags/nakeddiefriday

Which one of the CPUs do you think looks the cleanest, aesthetically? The first Alpha looks rather chaotic, while the Samsung Alpha looks very uniform. That TI PA-7000 FPC looks like chaos. I think the two PowerPCs look the best, which is what I'd expect too. Well, actually I'd expect some of the other RISC to look simpler too...

Nice

I have on my desk the book "State of the Art" by Stan Augarten. It shows the progression of transistors and integrated circuits from conception through 1983.

The book was one of the inspirations for me to become an electrical engineer. My older brother loaned me a copy of it when it was published in 1983.

Someone should sponsor that guy a gigapixel microscope such as those

https://gallery.ramonaoptics.com/gallery/viewer/42009871001#...

Would be interesting if all of a sudden, a paradigm shift, all he chips are designed as concentric rings for some reason

How can someone explain this to a kid? Is there somewhere an even more simplified version than Arduino or similar to show how all these things actually work? I know arduino is not a cpu, but overall, how these things work together, would be great to see/show.

I don't expect to show how electrons move :) I mean, some model, a toy or so, that shows how these things work. I remember it only from books/specs, but even there, at a certain point there are "limits" :)

A nice collection of die shots is on Fritzchens Fritz [1] on flickr

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/albums/721576504...

I love these. The https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz channel does some wonderful explorations of chips with high powered microscopes, finding easter eggs and graphics left by designers. So much fun.

Very nice collection, thanks for the share

See also: https://siliconpr0n.org/

I do not know enough to analyse these chips in any meaninful way, but is there a trend or cool feature to be seen across?

Another great resource is this site: https://misdake.github.io/ChipAnnotationViewer/?map=Zeppelin... It has a Google Maps like interface for exploring die shots and even some annotated versions of chips.

Realistically, are these enough to replicate the chips?

Are there any shots of audio amplifiers?

Reminds me of Koooooooyanisqatsi

see also: https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/ (yes, afaik flickr is still their main/only homepage except for Twitter: https://xcancel.com/fritzchensfritz)

see also https://wikichip.org/