From Silicon To Microprocessors

prostoalex writes "Jim Turley from Embedded Systems Programming magazine answers the question of where microprocessors come from. While the public generally knows about the silicon and microprocessor vendors, few can describe the process of turning the beach sand into the latest and greatest several-hundred-dollars-worth CPU."

The birds and bees, flowers and trees

[ObviousGuy]

The microprocessor stork brings them.

Right, mommy?

...giant silver bolognas...

[burgburgburg]

Raw silicon is grown into crystal ingots, which look like giant silver bolognas.

That, my friends, is a really unpleasant image.

Then it's sliced into exceptionally thin wafers about 6 to 8 inches (200 to 300mm) across, depending on the diameter of the ingot.

Owwww!!!!

It's all about what catches the eye

[Anonymous Coward]

or at least so I gather from the frequency with which the Silicone/Silicon mistake is made. Maybe if computer chips were warm instead of hot, and squeezably soft instead of hard, and bouncy always bouncy people would know more about them.

Oh, everyone knows...

[Faust7]

Hellacious spawning vats in the dark dungeons of Intel, AMD, IBM, and Apple.

*sqlorch*
*SQLORCH* ...
*Ding!*

I can, and in only 4 letters

[Triumph The Insult C]

V I S A

the truth

[jjeffries]

a couple of macroprocessors get drunk, start messing around... they wake up the next morning full of regret... next thing you know, there's a new microprocessor for someone to install, dress up in a nice case, feed it RAM, and reboot it when it makes a mess, which will be all the damn time for the first few months...

tinker-toys

[chunkwhite86]

the latest and greatest several-hundred-dollars-worth CPU.

Only if you're buying intel can you get the latest and greatest for only several-hundred-dollars-worth. We call the intel servers at work "tinker-toys" because they are wimpy and cannot get much real work done.

The Alphaserver GS160, the IBM RS/6000, and the Sunfire 12k. Those are the manly servers that do the real work around here. I don't think you can replace fans in these things for "several-hundred-dollars-worth". ;-) The CPU's in these are a couple thousand dollars each.

The Silicon Fairy

[Anonymous Coward]

You leave some silicon under your pillow and the next morning you will find the processor she leaves you. She is a little behind the times, still making Slot 1 types. Stupid bitch.

Re:Clean Rooms

[ackthpt]

For those of you that have never been in a clean room, there is a tremendous amount of ambient sound due to the very important air cleaning/circulation system.

Well, shoot! That sure blows my image, I thought it was the disco music that people in Intel 'bunny suits' [tow.com] danced to.

Re:The birds and bees, flowers and trees

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Sometimes, when a boy processor and a girl processor love each other very much...

Re:Why just square chips?

[Timbotronic]

I guess the obvious question, since using squares on a round wafer wastes a certain amount of silicon, is why squares? Why not build a hex grid?

They tried this once, but all the geeks in the clean room started putting little orcs on the chips and played Dungeons and Dragons

Don't you mean...

[platipusrc]

Sometimes, when a CPU and a CPU socket meet in the middle of a back alley...

Wafer Diameter?

[Betelgeuse on Ice]

Hmmm, and all this time I thought 200mm wafers were 8 inches and 300mm wafers were 12 inches. Maybe the author is a former NASA engineer...

And I agree, clean rooms are no fun. Ever trying typing on a plastic-coated miniature keyboard with two pairs of gloves?

I have always wondered...

[CrackedButter]

the process of turning the beach sand into the latest and greatest
I always wondered why people bragged about their new computer and made the comment about leaving mine in the dust!