A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

mikewof

mikewof

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Virgulino Ferreira said:
Every time a new chip process is created (greater miniaturisation), you have to build a new factory. You simply don't upgrade chip factories.

Anyway, if you're a pervert like me who likes to drool over engineering porn, this explanation of ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machine is some mind-boggling sci-fi level stuff!



Also this video. Cheers!
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I didn't know that about needing to build a new factory ... do they then just use the old factory for other chips?

I read that the Taiwanese want to move to a 5 nanometer feature length, which blows me away and confuses me too ... how do they image that small? Extreme UV and soft X-rays only go down to about 10 nanometers, are they imaging with half-wavelengths? And even more difficult, the aggregation Kelvin barrier for silicon is down near 15 nanometers, how do they form structures below the aggregation barrier? Wouldn't they just de-aggregate?
 
hobie1616

hobie1616

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1664334159159.jpeg
 
βhyde

βhyde

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Virgulino Ferreira said:
P_Wop, I had no idea, you've blown my mind multiple times! And a "little company that makes processors" is something I didn't know existed! Awesome!

I'm a software guy, but I suffer terribly from hardware envy. :)

Small IoT processors, that sounds really cool. And probably a lot more capable than my first whole Z80 computer. :)
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This should bring some tears to your eyes...
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G

gptyk

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βhyde said:
This should bring some tears to your eyes...
View attachment 543476
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Ah, the venerable Z80..
The sega genesis had a 68000 as the main processor, and a spare z80 for master system compatibility. Some of us started thinking we could do much more with audio utilizing the z80.
Unfortunately, there was no interrupt or HW queue to feed samples to the DAC. So we'd count clock cycles in assembly code and throw in an write to the DAC every 12 or so instructions.

Months of finicky painstaking assembly coding later.... JM sports talk football existed.
 
SloopJonB

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P_Wop said:
Thanks, chum. Very old school. We started by designing an optimum TCP/IP-centric O/S for edge devices, then designed a tiny 8/16 bit processor to run it. It's a really simple state machine. We did our own opcode instruction set, assembler, firmware, emulator, linker, debugger, C compiler and all the rest of the toolchain. Much of the execute-in-place O/S code and most of the 256-bit security was embedded in silicon, not in software. Very secure and lots of fun.

Sadly investment in this sort of thing was a real bitch, and we simply ran out of money. So it's all dormant now. Good IP though.

EDIT: Now back to your regular programming
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I knew all that.


o_O
 
Virgulino Ferreira

Virgulino Ferreira

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Virgulino Ferreira

Virgulino Ferreira

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P_Wop said:
Zilog Z80! Federico Faggin who founded Zilog is a good friend. He previously and famously designed the Intel 4004, the very first microprocessor, then the 8008 and 8080 before leaving Intel and founding Zilog. 50 years ago!
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Brazil was once a dictatorship, isolated from the world on many levels. Foreign computers and software were banned, and we didn't respect foreign intellectual property.

I was a kid living in a beautiful but small and backward town. One day my physicist father bought a Sinclair ZX81 clone (unauthorized clone). And later an MSX. Both Z80 computers. (I even learned the Z80 assembler.)

That changed my whole life. I found my passion and my path, very early in life. And that was crucial, because soon after, my father died. I don't know what would have become of me if I, as a child, had not had that passion, and soon afterwards the small community of enthusiasts.

To learn that through you, P_Wop, I am only two degrees of separation away from the creator of the Z80 was very unexpected, and emotional. I shed a few tears.

Thank you.
 
Virgulino Ferreira

Virgulino Ferreira

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mikewof said:
I didn't know that about needing to build a new factory ... do they then just use the old factory for other chips?
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I imagine the vast majority of chips out there don't need the more advanced process. Things like controllers, ADC/DAC, all sorts of other chips for embedding / internet of things applications. Just speculation. That's why I enjoyed so much learning the little crumbs of information that P_Wop and Raz'r dropped. :)
mikewof said:
I read that the Taiwanese want to move to a 5 nanometer feature length, which blows me away and confuses me too ... how do they image that small? Extreme UV and soft X-rays only go down to about 10 nanometers, are they imaging with half-wavelengths? And even more difficult, the aggregation Kelvin barrier for silicon is down near 15 nanometers, how do they form structures below the aggregation barrier? Wouldn't they just de-aggregate?
Click to expand...
I have no idea! I'm just a humble programmer. :)
 
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