processor transistor layout
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Does anyone know a place on the Internet with actual processor zoomed in pictures showing the layout of various transistor areas on the chip. The Internet is full of diagrams, what I`m looking for is a visual representation of the components the diagrams are speaking of.
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Does anyone know a place on the Internet with actual processor zoomed in pictures showing the layout of various transistor areas on the chip. The Internet is full of diagrams, what I`m looking for is a visual representation of the components the diagrams are speaking of.
No. There may be some images for older stuff (like the '80's and '90's), but todays processors transistor are so small and occupy so many layers of the chip that it's not possible to see detail like that anymore.
Asking questions is a skill CodeProject Forum Guidelines Google: C# How to debug code Seriously, go read these articles.
Dave Kreskowiak -
No. There may be some images for older stuff (like the '80's and '90's), but todays processors transistor are so small and occupy so many layers of the chip that it's not possible to see detail like that anymore.
Asking questions is a skill CodeProject Forum Guidelines Google: C# How to debug code Seriously, go read these articles.
Dave KreskowiakAre you saying it looks like the surface of a CD with no way to differentiate between different areas?
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Are you saying it looks like the surface of a CD with no way to differentiate between different areas?
CD pits are FAR larger than current transistors. An nVidia 3090 has a die of about 25mm on a side. It contains over 28 billion transistors. There's over 45 million transistors per square MILLIMETER.
Asking questions is a skill CodeProject Forum Guidelines Google: C# How to debug code Seriously, go read these articles.
Dave Kreskowiak -
Are you saying it looks like the surface of a CD with no way to differentiate between different areas?
At my former workplace, some of the pictures on the wall were microphotographs of the company's former chip generations, based on the 8051 architecture developed in 1980. You could easily identify rectangular areas with a regular, quite fine-grained structure: the memory banks. Other areas were more irregular; those were the CPU. Some areas with almost no identifiable structure, more like 'spotty'; that was the various I/O devices (this was an embedded type chip, with lots of I/O beyond the CPU capabilities); you could even identify a couple coils - the chip I/O included a radio. So you could identify various areas, but it just looked like different kinds of structures, more or less regular or irregular. Seeing the shape of individual components was not possible, at least not on these wall posters. I am talking about 40+ years old 8-bit technology (or rather: architecture), approx. 50,000 transistors for the CPU. Even with that simple chips, you wouldn't get what you are asking for. Today's 64 bit processors are extremely more dense, and complex, approaching 50 billon transistors. You will probably see "gray" areas that are likely to be the cache memory. If pointed out to you, you can probably distinguish a few other functional areas from the rest, but all you can see is that they are different from, and less regular than, the cache areas. For the simple question of "what does a so-and-so type transistor really look like?", you can probably find 3D engineering drawings, similar to that of a MOSFET in the Wikipedia article "Transistor". But those are drawings, not the chip photographs you are asking for.