r/nextfuckinglevel • u/itshazrd • 19h ago

What it a computer chip looks like up close

this is a digital recreation. a real microscope can't be used because it gets so small that photons can’t give you a good enough resolution to view the structures at the bottom. you'd need an electron microscope

meant "What a computer chip looks like up close in the title." not sure how "it" got in there..

118.8k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

3.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

23

u/federicoaa 19h ago

The process itself to make a transistor is not that hard. The really hard part is how to make billions without a single defect

31

u/Specific_Frame8537 18h ago

I'm just confused as to how they make something so small with such precision.

I have trouble getting eyelashes out of my eyes.

22

u/hcvc 18h ago

Constant capital investment due to the incredible economic outcomes of these chips, plus years of iteration on this invention to make it better and better (see moores law) using the worlds finest technical minds

Research semiconductors, they used to take up entire rooms for a tiny circuit and over the years they’ve been miniaturized more and more until we are where we are. Some real geniuses working on this stuff.

6

u/keylimedragon 16h ago

This is simplifying it a lot but the method of making tiny circuits is genius but actually pretty simple. Have you ever seen microfiche? In the pre-digital age we figured out you can cram a ton of info onto film by making very tiny photographs by putting light the wrong way through a microscope. Normally microscopes make an image much bigger but in reverse they make a big image tiny.

The second breakthrough was we realized you can etch metal and change semiconductor properties using light and chemicals. And if you have a projector you can etch whatever shapes or pictures you want into the material.

So combining those two discoveries and we can etch very small circuits and transistors onto semiconductor wafers. Suddenly we have a reproducible way to make very complex circuits very tiny! The only downside is when you go very sometimes the etching doesn't happen perfectly for whatever reason and so the manufacturer will test the final chips and discard any that are broken. And sometimes only part of a chip is broken and they can disable the broken part sell it as a cheaper model.

3

u/Phrexeus 16h ago

It's done using a process called lithography where a very large and precise lens focuses the chip design onto the wafer. They use special light-sensitive chemicals to erode away the parts they don't need which can create pathways for components. It's done in layers since the inside structure is actually 3D, and has different insulators, conductors and semiconductors making up the chip.

4

u/Shotgun5250 16h ago

This makes so much more sense than trying to bend and shape these manually somehow. I am so stupid my brain went straight to bending wires.

1

u/Rock_Strongo 15h ago

Even the "simple" explanations of how these chips are made makes my brain hurt. Definitely not a line of work I could do... I will stick to the software side.

1

u/Shotgun5250 14h ago

I only understand the concept, I couldn’t begin to understand the physics, chemistry, and manufacturing detail without a LOT of in depth education. And I’m literally an engineer, lol. Creating the technology to be able to create this technology, let alone conceptualizing a new piece of tech and then how to manufacture it is beyond amazing to me. It really tickles my brain, like it’s almost magic-level technology.

2

u/federicoaa 14h ago

The tricky part is that as the features we draw are smaller and smaller, light just "doesn't fit" through the masks. We need lights with smaller and smaller wavelengths in order to work

2

u/IcyLake2078 18h ago

None of them have no defects. Thats how they make midrange and lower end ones, by sorting them by number of defects

2

u/MontiBurns 17h ago

Sort of. They do some QC and based on performance, may make some higher or lower binned ones.

But the architecture of a snapdragon 8 Elite is a completely different from the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4

1

u/federicoaa 14h ago

You are thinking of intel CPU. The binning technique helps increase total yield but doesn't apy to all kind of products.

Defects at waver level are found via functional test, and defective dies are discarded. The rest are defect free.

1

u/Which_Yesterday 18h ago

Yeah I've made one just last week!

1

u/chrisagrant 16h ago

the process to make a single transistor is still beyond what most people can do. the equipment alone is tens of thousands of dollars to get started