How do you make a graphics card/cpu?

[TheSuspect]

Weird question, but it's one that's stuck with me for quite a while. I'm not interested in the backplate/fans of graphics cards, but the literal chip. How does one go about creating a cpu/gpu chip?

[Space Reptile]

its very complicated , id recommend you study early chips like the 8088 or 6502 to get an idea 

 

i have some understanding on how they work , but i dont have the slightest idea on how to make one , or even where to start to be honest 

[elpiGee]

I learned how they work through minecraft and the element redstone. People build actual CPUs inside the game. Granted they're horribly slow compared to their real life counterparts, but the components all work due to the same logic.

[MilkJugg24]

The top video is an awesome tour of the labs showing all their hella expensive stuff they use.

 

And the bottom video is obvious.

[othertomperson]

With duct tape, superglue, a microscope, some silicon and a very steady hand.

[SLAYR]

21 minutes ago, TheSuspect said:

Weird question, but it's one that's stuck with me for quite a while. I'm not interested in the backplate/fans of graphics cards, but the literal chip. How does one go about creating a cpu/gpu chip?

Buy a billion dollar fabrication facility.

[Space Reptile]

1 minute ago, SLAYR said:

Buy a billion dollar fabrication facility.

real men have fabs m8 

[Bananasplit_00]

2 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

Buy a billion dollar fabrication facility.

or just NVIDIA or the Radeon part of AMD basically, probably the best way tbh

[alpenwasser]

Leaving the manufacturing aside: If you want to understand how a CPU functions, I recommend trying to understand the following concepts:

 

- Transistors

- Field-Effect Transistors

- Metal-Oxide Field-Effect Transistors (those would be those famed MOSFETs we keep hearing about, although the ones in your CPU are obviously not the same as the ones in the power delivery system)

- CMOS technology

 

Once you have a rough grasp of how CMOS works, you can start trying to understand some basic CMOS circuits (inverters, AND gates, NAND gates, see here for a bunch of examples). A CPU is basically that, just very much more complicated (billions of transistors instead of just a few).

 

If you want to really understand the details behind the manufacturing process, Analog Integrated Circuit Design by Tony Chan Carusone et al. is a pretty good book (very expensive though, but I'm sure you can find a pdf  somewhere around the web  ). It has pretty detailed information about the physics behind it all, though it's obviously pretty complicated (I'm currently trying to get through a course on the subject and getting my ass kicked, might have to take it again  ).

[Sauron]

Incredibly precise machines "print" billions of transistors in the right order on silicon wafers. These transistors form logic gates and define the functionality of the cpu.

[dr_sepheroth]

Well first you need to know various forms off complex mathematics, such as, integral, differential and vector calculus, topological Algebra, Boolean Algebra, (getting scared yet ?), trigonometry and geometry. Next you need to be a wizard at using CAD software. 

 

First step is to design your CPU/Graphics card, this is done on the nano scale (thats nano not nanoo nanoo), you should expect to fit 100000 transistors in 1 micrometer. How they are laid out is up to you, and this takes a Phd in Computer Science and one in Digital Electronic Engineering, if you can do this without these qualifications, then you are gifted and have just become the worlds next rain man and are probably a savant.

The first thing you need to do to start designing the cpu is to map out the area, then you need to find the average of W, X, Y and Z and divide that by the size of an atom  (1 × 10^-10 m to 5 × 10^-10 m) this will give you the size of each "cell" find the perimeter of one cell and divide the average of W, X, Y and Z by the perimeter of one cell this will give you the number of "cells" you can fit on the work area.

Now you need to find the difference in the limit of W, X, Y and Z to find the limit of one of these constants you need to apply the chain rule and differentiate. Find the difference for all four constants and  then find the average, this will tell you what your offset is at any given point on the edge.

Each "cell" should hold 100000 transistors and there should be a space between each transistor of about  17 to 181 µm (millionths of a meter) this is about the same as the width of human hair. The gap is for the signal bus, address bus, voltage bus and control bus. 

An average pentium processor has around 50000 "cells" a Modern processor such as the I7 has around 500000 "cells" in it, a high end processor such as the 16 core Intel Xeon E7-4850 V4 might have as many as 10000000 "cells" per core

 

High end processors are often layered to distribute heat effectively.

 

The next step is deciding what you want the cpu to do, until you know what the function of your chip is you can not build it.

Once you know this you can begin to design your transistor layout. 

 

For example 

 

Base = B

Emitter = E

Collector = C

Black background

Green Forground

 

if you are designing a cpu for graphics processing then you can not have 

this as a receiving gate for the data stream.

 

Instead you would need this.

 

Key c above

 

The first type of Gate is a AND gate, this would result in the monitor receiving the equivalent of an Inverse Q output (the image would be inside out) 

 

The first function that a Processor processing Graphics performs is to split the data stream in to co ordinate values with each value being equivalent to a single color in a single pixel.

 

Once you have completed your CAD design you then need to get yourself a Molecular Printer and a few other bits and pieces. The CAM stage costs about as much as (if not more) than all the money you spent on getting your qualifications combined with what you spent on CAD software.

You pretty much have no hope of doing this unless you have a foot ball field free to lay your circuit out on, or have won the lottery.

[TheSuspect]

4 minutes ago, dr_sepheroth said:

-snip-

I see...

[Curious Pineapple]

It's easy. You design a chi[p, then make it

[Fire Yoshi]

@TheSuspect

If you want to get into circuit design, you could get a cheap FPGA to fiddle with. These are programmable boards that you can use to test circuit designs made on HDL software such as Vivado 

http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/arty.html#overview

(this board even comes with a Vivado license!)

[Lord Nicoll]

7 hours ago, TheSuspect said:

Weird question, but it's one that's stuck with me for quite a while. I'm not interested in the backplate/fans of graphics cards, but the literal chip. How does one go about creating a cpu/gpu chip?

They're made in chip foundries on silicon wafers. The foundries are also called fabs. 

 

[dr_sepheroth]

This is all well and good for drafting up a circuit design for the transistor layout, but only a CAD system is suitable for transferring that schematic to a CAM System, as CAD and CAM are designed to work together.

[2FA]

I've actually visited an R/D fab before, pretty cool place. They were in the process of upgrading the machines in one of the clean rooms for 300mm wafers as well as 14nm (I visited in 2014 iirc).