A once in a lifetime oppurtunity (sort of) and how CPUs are made.

[AraSarkisyan]

Okay boys and girls so my teacher showed our Computer Sciences class today something very few people outside of Intel FAB plants (where processors are made) get to see. Yeah, its that exclusive. 

My teacher has a friend, who is at some very high position @ Intel, (didnt tell us anything more than that) gave him a silicone wafer, with over 600 Pentium 4 cores on it. 

At the time, this Silicon Wafer would be well worth over $60,000 US Dollars. Think about that. 

Anyway, the reason he got one was because a spec of dust fell on it, and that could have ruined maybe 3 or 4 of the cores on the Wafer. Instead of throwing it out, which they normally would have, his friend gave this to him. 

You can't really do anything with these wafers because it would take processes like Photo resisting and etching to get them somewhere near usable. 

So for those who don't know already, a CPU is just billions and billions of transistors and memory turning off and on. (binary, anyone?)

A CPU is made like this. 

Step one. It all starts off with some sand. Yup. Sand. Sand contains silicon (not silicone).The reason we use silicon is because it is a semi-conductor, now i won;t go into why we need a semi conductor as you can just google that and I don't really feel like going through my notes to double check what i'm saying is correct.  The silicon is extracted from the sand. 

Step two. The silicon is melted into giant ingots, about a foot in diameter, and weighing at around 220 pounds. Yup, these things are extremely heavy. The ingots are something like 99.999999% pure silicone. If you want a job that pays good money, and you want to get buff for the ladies, work at a FAB! 

Step three. The Ingots are sliced into wafers, and polished. This is a really vital part of the manufacturing process. 

Step four. A liquid is spread across the the wafer. Then a laser shines onto the liquid. This process is called "Photo Resist". The Laser 
leaves UV lines on the wafer.

 

Step 5.  An etching material is used to dissolve parts of the wafers, the lines. The Photo resist gunk is washed off. 

 

Step 6.   (I forgot to take notes on this part because I went to the bathroom, so I just copied and pasted. plz no hate )In order to create the tiny copper wires which ultimately convey electricity to/from the chip’s various connectors, additional photo resists are added, exposed and washed. Next, a process called ion implantation is used to dope and protect locations where copper ions are deposited from a copper sulfate solution in a process called electroplating.

During various stages during these processes, additional materials are added, exposed, washed / etched and polished. This process is repeated six times for six-layer processes, which is reportedly what Intel uses for their current 45nm high-k, metal gate processes.

The final product looks like a jungle gym, a a host of tiny copper bars which convey electricity. Some of these are connected, some are exactly a specific distance away from other ones. And all of them are used for one purpose: To convey electrons, wielding their electromagnetic effects in a particular way to conduct what we would call “useful work” (such as adding two numbers together at extremely high rates of speed, the very essence of modern day computing).

 

Step 7.  (Listen, it's a big school, the bathrooms are like 712934781092347 miles away and who wants to be in class?) Once all of the metal layers are built up, and the circuits (transistors) are all created, it’s time for testing. A device with lots of prongs sits down on top of the chip, attaching microscopic leads to the chip’s surface. Each lead completes an electrical connection within the chip, simulating how it would operate in final form once packaged into end-consumer products.

A series of test signals are sent to the chip with whatever the results are being read. This level of testing includes not only traditional computational abilities, but also internal diagnostics along with voltage readings, cascade sequences (does data flow through as it should), etc. And however the chip responds as a result of this testing, is what’s stored in a database assigned specifically for that die.

This process is repeated for every die on the entire wafer’s surface while all dies are still on the surface.

Step 8. TIME TO SLICE UP THESE CORES. 

Step 9. THE CPUS ARE ASSEMBLED WITH ROBOTS AND STUFF. 

To be allowed in the FAB, (which is 1000x cleaner than a surgery operating room, oh yeah dude. Even one speck of dust can kill thousands of CPUs.) you gotta wear a suit that filters your breath, and is as clean as a space suit. Not even your molecules will go through that suit. That's how seriously intel takes their CPU manufacturing process. 

 

AND THE GRAND FINALE.

THE PICTURES. 

 

 

 

[M-ursu]

Wow, thats a lots of text

Seems awesome topic, but can i drink silicone water?

[AraSarkisyan]

Wow, thats a lots of text

Seems awesome topic, but can i drink silicone water?

silicon and silicone are differnet things. cant say. but if you drink a cpu core youll have more transistors in you than radio shack has in their warehouse right now. 

[M-ursu]

silicon and silicone are differnet things. cant say. but if you drink a cpu core youll have more transistors in you than radio shack has in their warehouse right now. 

Sweet, then i would be smart

[AraSarkisyan]

Sweet, then i would be smart

you'd just turn on and off really fast. Unless your brain uses binary, then you'd be a cyborg. 

[crunzaty]

Pretty cool, but when you think about it 60k isn't that much for Intel. It's pretty cool to think about how the process works tho

 

And please for the love of god please don't use that Blue color, it hurts my eyes trying to read it (I'm tired and it makes it even harder)

[Vitalius]

That is boss, but I am confused.

A single spec of dust would ruin like 3-4 cores? On a $60,000 wafer? ... That is like 1 Pentium 4. Da fuq?

Melt that crap down and redo the process. Just sayin'

[AraSarkisyan]

That is boss, but I am confused.

A single spec of dust would ruin like 3-4 cores? On a $60,000 wafer? ... That is like 1 Pentium 4. Da fuq?

Melt that crap down and redo the process. Just sayin'

it would have been cheaper to throw it away, according to Mr. Black who has worked everywhere from NASA to ARM.

[Godlygamer23]

Sweet, then i would be smart

Huh? Even if you could eat a CPU core, it would do nothing but harm you. It wouldn't give you any extra computational abilities. 

[AraSarkisyan]

Pretty cool, but when you think about it 60k isn't that much for Intel. It's pretty cool to think about how the process works tho

 

And please for the love of god please don't use that Blue color, it hurts my eyes trying to read it (I'm tired and it makes it even harder)

sorry.....

[AraSarkisyan]

Huh? Even if you could eat a CPU core, it would do nothing but harm you. It wouldn't give you any extra computational abilities.

*insert unless you a zombie .gif here*

[Stav Kats]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm67wbB5GmI I prefer it on video than on text.

[AraSarkisyan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm67wbB5GmI I prefer it on video than on text.

cool. I should seriously just watch these videos instead of reading 700 page textbooks.

[WoodenMarker]

Mother of coasters.

[Levent]

does anyone in your class feels like having octa core keychain? 

[AraSarkisyan]

does anyone in your class feels like having octa core keychain? 

already got one, my cousin killed his 8320. Made it into a keychain =)

[AraSarkisyan]

Mother of coasters.

yeah they're complicated AF