Gallery: Microscopic Art Hides Inside Computer Chips
From the UTMC 5962R9657101VXC.
Chipworks doesn't have any information on the source of this lovely windmill.
From the AMD Athlon Processor K7650CURBBA.
From the IBM 0165165PT-5B 64M DRAM Rev. B.
From the AMD MACH445-12YC programmable logic device.
There's no information on where this image was found. It's an homage to a classic Saturday Night Live skit from the 1980s, so we're guessing it was in an Atari chip or something.
Even chip engineers understood that setting the time on a VCR could be difficult. (Kids: A "VCR" is an antiquated technology for storing video on long spools of magnetic tape. We know; it sounds ridiculous.)
This message from a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan appears in the Qualcomm Q5312I-3S2 ASIC.
We like the way Daffy is poking his head out in the middle of a bunch of circuits. Chipworks has no information on where this image came from.
This classic dolphin image and Nintendo logo come from somewhere deep inside the Nintendo Game Cube.
We like this pastoral scene showing an owl family on a branch. It comes from the Philips 1702 (wafer).
From the Lucent M-16410BA DSP.
This image of The Simpsons' nerdiest cartoon character comes from the Silicon Image Sil154CT64 digital transmitter.
Who is Moose Boy? From the Motorola RF IC Nokia 5190 handset.
This baby duck is a cartoon character from the 1970s called "Calimero." It appears on the Infineon PMB5703, a chip that includes three other pieces of cartoon art plus a humorously hidden warning.
We don't know where this guy is hiding, so if you find it, can you let us know where he is?
Considering the expense, precision and difficulty of manufacturing computer chips, you would think the engineers designing them are pretty serious people.
But it’s not all business inside a chip fab, as these microscope photos reveal. In fact, the designers of microchips frequently hide tiny cartoons, drawings and even messages alongside the super-tiny circuits and semiconductors they create.
Chipworks, a company that analyzes microchips by peeling them apart and looking at them under microscopes, has discovered many examples of silicon art. We’ve selected a few highlights here from the firm’s extensive galleries of silicon art, but check the Chipworks website for more.
The images in this gallery are magnified 200 to 500 times.
As Chipworks explains, these drawings are made with the same processes used to assemble the rest of a computer chip. Designs are etched onto photolithography plates which are then used to “print” the chips’ circuitry, layer by layer, in thin films of silicon, silicon dioxide, aluminum and other materials. It’s a complicated process that takes hundreds of steps and millions of dollars worth of machinery, and it requires incredible degrees of precision and repeatability.
But if there’s a little unused space in a chip, why not fill that with an entertaining design? It’s not as if most of the chip companies’ customers will ever notice. The only people likely to see these designs are the chip engineers’ supervisors and analysts at companies like Chipworks.
“The mass production of these works of art as parasites on the body of a commercial IC goes unnoticed by most observers,” writes Chipworks. “Their existence is a tribute to human resourcefulness and creativity, surfacing from deep within a complex process.”