I Can Die Now. - Intel Fab Tour

[James]

Linus travels to Israel to get a tour an Intel Manufacturing Center known as Fab 28. This level of access is absolutely unprecedented.

 

 

 

[goodm_n]

i dont know why i expected the fab in Israel to look different than the one i worked in but man does it look almost identical

[Lightwreather]

Hmmm. I hope Intel doesn't get linused…… would be a real shame

[Zodiark1593]

Excellent work there. Bit of a shame that so much had to be blurred out, I imagine that had added a ton of work, and a lot of back and forth between Intel and LMG (I can imagine some irritation on Linus’s part). But considering they allowed this tour to happen at all, I’ll take what I can get. 

[heickelrrx]

I sense disturbance in the force

 

it was million of wafer dropped in terror, and went cracked

[Nystemy]

Making a chip is a process that a lot of people underestimate how excessively repetitive and somewhat boring it actually is.

 

Though, I hate to say that the size of modern transistors is still not down even close to the single nm size yet. And lithography processes are still in the 20-25 nm area on the XY plane for a single feature. However, atomic layer deposition throws a wrench into this argument, but generally this sort of process isn't considered as defining the node size. _{(the whole industry decided to ditch labeling nodes after the lithography resolution and instead label it based on other factors like performance, power efficiency, or just transistor density. Non of them are really dependent on feature size itself. I am though oversimplifying quite a bit here.)}

 

But otherwise it is a rather good video. And does actually show off quite a bit of the process. I am somewhat surprised more wasn't blurred to be fair.

 

Though, I can understand why Intel wants to keep a lot a secret, it is the simple "I can neither confirm nor deny" type of business, since their competitors as well have a great deal of knowledge in the field, so even seemingly minor stuff can give away fairly major things.

[OriAr]

So Linus was about maybe 5 minutes of driving from my house.

That's pretty amazing. I've been waiting for this video a long time since he was seen in Israel (My LinkedIn was full of posts about his trip)

[ToboRobot]

I'm giggling imagining a team of very smart people working at TSMC watching this having to write a report on their competition. 

[williamcll]

1 hour ago, goodm_n said:

i dont know why i expected the fab in Israel to look different than the one i worked in but man does it look almost identical

Israel looks VERY different to the rest of the middle east.

[samcool55]

Who's idea was it to take DENNIS to a fab?!

I'm not surprised Linus was allowed to go in, but I am surprised they let Dennis in.

 

Still an amazing video tho.

[dogwitch]

28 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Who's idea was it to take DENNIS to a fab?!

I'm not surprised Linus was allowed to go in, but I am surprised they let Dennis in.

 

Still an amazing video tho.

called a decoy.

[StephanTW]

honestly more interested as to why going to isreal was on linus his bucketlist. other  than that nice shoots of cleanrooms

[Nathanpete]

Jesus just how much hentai was on the machines? /J

[GodAtum]

Why is the wafer a circle when the cpu is square? that creates a lot of waste?

 

Why did a lot of the workers get a day off because Linus was filming? Intel didnt want them shown?

 

Not sure why Intel wanted some of those texts to be blurred out. They are mostly safety signs. I'll say that the blurred text on the blue machines are called Centura with the sign on it saying "FEOL METAL FREE Tool".

[StephanTW]

36 minutes ago, GodAtum said:

Why is the wafer a circle when the cpu is square? that creates a lot of waste?

as a chemist i can only say that the way they produce such pure silicon wavers if through a way that requires rotation and as such making a square wafer would add another step and possible contamination

[AnonymousGuy]

Fun fact: the whole cleanroom aspect of the fab has been dialed back now that all the tools are hermetically sealed and purged and shit.  Humans are really only there for tool maintenance.  The biggest paranoia is copper contamination.  They separate absolutely EVERYTHING based on whether it touched copper at any point or not.

 

Other fun fact: a fab's cost makes everything else look cheap in the world.  Oh the Burj Khalifa?  Tallest building in the world?  Yeah that thing is pocket change.  It cost 1/6th what it costs just to build the SHELL of a fab.  You can probably rebuild the entire Las Vegas strip for less than the cost of one fab.  In just one shot of this video you can see beyond a billion dollars in equipment.  Individual tools can be on the order of several hundred million dollars.  And you'd think it's some huge exotic process to buy one but it ends up being similar to buying a $300m car with some guy on the phone.

 

Also: missed opportunity to apply a giant screen protector in there.  No dust, perfect application.

[Zodiark1593]

3 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Fun fact: the whole cleanroom aspect of the fab has been dialed back now that all the tools are hermetically sealed and purged and shit.  Humans are really only there for tool maintenance.  The biggest paranoia is copper contamination.  They separate absolutely EVERYTHING based on whether it touched copper at any point or not.

 

Other fun fact: a fab's cost makes everything else look cheap in the world.  Oh the Burj Khalifa?  Tallest building in the world?  Yeah that thing is pocket change.  It cost 1/6th what it costs just to build the SHELL of a fab.  You can probably rebuild the entire Las Vegas strip for less than the cost of one fab.  In just one shot of this video you can see beyond a billion dollars in equipment.  Individual tools can be on the order of several hundred million dollars.  And you'd think it's some huge exotic process to buy one but it ends up being similar to buying a $300m car with some guy on the phone.

I mean, if I want to plunk down $300 million on a EUV machine that has a long year+ waiting list, least that can be done is making the ordering process smooth and seamless.

[Middcore]

I appreciate the pun in the video title. 

[Nystemy]

51 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Fun fact: the whole cleanroom aspect of the fab has been dialed back now that all the tools are hermetically sealed and purged and shit.  Humans are really only there for tool maintenance.  The biggest paranoia is copper contamination.  They separate absolutely EVERYTHING based on whether it touched copper at any point or not.

A lot of people gets surprised when one tells them that copper is literally poison to semiconductors.

 

Same story goes for silver, and most other good conductors. Even tungsten is technically bad as well, but tungsten at least doesn't care much about diffusing into other areas and mostly just stays where one left it. _{(just ask a welder who touched the work piece with the tip of their TIG, one has to grind that back out....)} Tungsten is more or less the most suitable contact material between the transistors and the rest of the interconnects, over time it will exceptionally slowly diffuse into the semiconductor, but that is a very slow process.

Aluminium on the other hand is a weak P dopant and will form a depletion region, so it just creates a slight diode in contact with N doped silicone. And that isn't all that major if accounted for. This is why practically all chips uses aluminium as an interconnect material. _{(Copper isn't that much more conductive to be fair, so the added hassle of it is rarely worth while unless one absolutely needs the slightly lower resistance.)}

 

Though, some chips do use copper interconnects, but usually only on the largest interconnect layers for power distribution. Some can go deeper towards the transistors, but rarely do they get close. There is also a diffusion barrier between the transistors and the copper, to ensure it doesn't migrate down and turn the transistors into resistors. However, a diffusion barrier rarely stops copper, it only slows it down a noticeable bit. This is one reason some more power dense chips tends to fail after anywhere from a couple of years to a decade or so, be it a CPU, GPU or just a chipset, WiFi chip, or anything else that takes unreasonably large gulps of current for aluminium interconnects to not have sufficiently low resistance. _{(though, even power transistors used for VRMs and other high current applications rarely use copper, since they would otherwise struggle to operate for long at 120-140 C.)}

 

I can also add a note that most material contamination in the semiconductor industry is just metal being where it shouldn't. Since metals aren't welcomed around semiconductors. But the thing with metal is that it is everywhere. One buys a bottle of isopropanol and it has trace amounts of chromium and iron in it from the stainless steel tanks it were once stored in, probably a bit of copper as well from water pipes, same for a lot of other chemicals. It is only parts per billion here, but semiconductors are sensitive.

 

Back in the 70's and 80's life were easier, a few tens of atoms of metal contamination in a transistor doesn't matter much when the smallest feature on said transistor is a few µm across. But now when lithographs makes line widths in the 18-25 nm area things are a fair bit smaller, and dopants in silicone isn't measured in whole %, but rather tenths or hundredths of a percent. So an atom or two of contamination is suddenly a lot more noticeable. Worst case contamination can lead to the transistor not turning off sufficiently for the output of a gate to behave properly.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, GodAtum said:

Why is the wafer a circle when the cpu is square? that creates a lot of waste?

Because when you make silicon ingots you get cylinders. 

 

1 hour ago, GodAtum said:

Why did a lot of the workers get a day off because Linus was filming? Intel didnt want them shown?

They didn't? Was in the middle of COVID restrictions, that's what the "normal times" were referring to...

 

Had to laugh a bit at the end at the "CPU's the last thing you're gonna check" bit given we do get a thread about a faulty CPU every few weeks... and it's always an AMD one

[AnonymousGuy]

57 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Had to laugh a bit at the end at the "CPU's the last thing you're gonna check" bit given we do get a thread about a faulty CPU every few weeks... and it's always an AMD one

Test can very quickly become a bottleneck in your manufacturing process.  Spend 2 minutes testing each die to get 100% coverage (it takes some absurd amount of time to hit full depth of scan chains and shit) and you  need a LOT of tester capacity.  And testers aren't cheap either.  There's been an industry push to put more of the test logic on the die so the die can effectively test itself for this reason.  I think with mobile ARM parts they do some basic go/no go test and then if the phone doesn't boot or whatever they just yeet the chip away instead of bothering with in depth testing.

 

So it is very notable that Intel has very high quality standards because it means they're taking the time and resource hit doing it at multiple stages.

[Zodiark1593]

9 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Test can very quickly become a bottleneck in your manufacturing process.  Spend 2 minutes testing each die to get 100% coverage (it takes some absurd amount of time to hit full depth of scan chains and shit) and you  need a LOT of tester capacity.  And testers aren't cheap either.  There's been an industry push to put more of the test logic on the die so the die can effectively test itself for this reason.  I think with mobile ARM parts they do some basic go/no go test and then if the phone doesn't boot or whatever they just yeet the chip away instead of bothering with in depth testing.

 

So it is very notable that Intel has very high quality standards because it means they're taking the time and resource hit doing it at multiple stages.

Because ARM products encompass such a wide range if products and demands, I’d imagine depending on the application, test time varies from meticulous (for example, M1s, and high end mobile SoCs) to like you said, basic go/no go (microcontrollers, and low end mobile SoCs). 

[goodm_n]

5 hours ago, williamcll said:

Israel looks VERY different to the rest of the middle east.

i dont understand what you're trying to say, im saying the inside of the fab looks identical to an intel fab i worked in inside of the USA

[Zodiark1593]

My summary though. Fantasy novels, and whatever they call “magic” have absolutely nothing on what we actually have in real life. 

[jaypro]

5 hours ago, GodAtum said:

Why is the wafer a circle when the cpu is square? that creates a lot of waste?

 

Why did a lot of the workers get a day off because Linus was filming? Intel didnt want them shown?

 

Not sure why Intel wanted some of those texts to be blurred out. They are mostly safety signs. I'll say that the blurred text on the blue machines are called Centura with the sign on it saying "FEOL METAL FREE Tool".

Besides the forming of the ingot being a cylinder, many of the process steps involve quickly spinning the wafer, and you can't really evenly spin a square or rectangle versus a circle.

 

Anyone in the semiconductor industry would recognize the platform of the tool, but the configuration of the platform can vary. Something that they would like to keep secret is how many of each configuration they have.  This has many reasons. 

 

FEOL means front end of line, metal free is important because mixing metals can be corrosive, so it is important to make sure unwanted. metals don't enter the tools