chip manufacturing

Branch Education walks through a semiconductor fab and the dozens of steps used to turn silicon wafers into microchips, with 3D animation. It covers lithography, deposition and etching at a high level.

A HOPE09 talk on how modern computer chips are manufactured, from 22nm transistors to ultra-clean fabs and the tricks used to pattern tiny features with light. It frames chipmaking as hacking electrical engineering and physics.

A 38C3 talk on how advanced chips are made, centered on EUV lithography and the global supply chain behind it. It covers technical challenges from raw materials to finished chips and the geopolitical weight of semiconductors.

Branch Education's animated deep dive into ASML's EUV photolithography machine and how it prints nanometer-scale transistors onto chips. It covers the system's components and the process of chip manufacturing.

Asianometry's short analysis of SMIC's N+2 node, China's 7nm leap forward. It considers how far behind the competition SMIC still is.

Sam Zeloof shows the upgraded second iteration of his homemade silicon integrated circuit fabrication process, producing chips with around a thousand transistors in his garage. It is a short overview of what the home fab can now do.

A DEF CON 21 talk by Adam Laurie and Zac Franken on decapping chips, covering how to remove chip packaging and image the die to read out contents such as ROM.

Veritasium explains how ASML's EUV lithography machines make the most advanced computer chips, covering the engineering of the light source, mirrors and the supply chain around them. It is a long-form explainer on the world's most complex commercial machine.

Asianometry explains why Russia cannot replace TSMC after sanctions halted chip shipments. It looks at Russian chip designers such as Baikal, MCST and Yadro, and at Russia's lagging domestic manufacturing capacity.

Asianometry explains that the worst of the 2021-22 chip shortage sits in trailing-edge semiconductors, not the leading-edge chips usually covered. It covers why those older-node fabs are so hard to expand and fix.

Jeri Ellsworth shows early steps of making microchips at home: cleaving wafers, removing native oxide, testing dopant type with a hot probe, and loading the furnace.

Seeker's Focal Point short documentary on ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which make the most advanced chips. It shows how plasma-generated 13.5 nm light is used to push Moore's Law forward.

CNBC gets a tour of ASML's cleanrooms in the Netherlands to see how its roughly $200 million EUV lithography machines are built. It covers exploding molten tin, ultra-flat optics and why only one company can make these systems.

A Plogue developer shows the custom electronic test rigs built to measure the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis sound chip (YM2612) for the chipsynth MD emulation. It covers the years of testing and reverse engineering needed to reproduce the chip's quirks accurately.

Computerphile interview with Prof. Ross Anderson on how Chip and PIN payment systems are being compromised, and the attacks researchers have seen.

Asianometry explains the EUV light source inside ASML's lithography machines, where lasers hit falling tin droplets twice to produce 13.5 nm light. It walks through the engineering of the droplet generator, the pre-pulse and main laser, and the plasma that results.

Michael Steil's 27c3 talk on reverse engineering the MOS 6502 from die shots into a transistor-level simulation, as in the Visual6502 project. It covers going from chip package to a digital model.

Ken Shirriff walks through how to reverse engineer integrated circuits from die photos, using famous chips as examples, in a Hackaday SuperConference talk.

ASML's short promotional fly-through of its High NA EUV lithography platform, the TWINSCAN EXE, which supports 8-nanometer resolution. It shows the machine's internals including advanced anamorphic optics.

Tim Ansell presents the SkyWater PDK, a fully open source manufacturable process development kit for a 130nm process, as the first FOSSi Dial-Up talk. He covers its role in a fully open chip design flow.

A clip from Lex Fridman's podcast in which chip architect Jim Keller argues that Moore's Law is not dead and that transistor scaling still has lots of room. He also discusses how to break down hard problems.

A brief toast by lithography expert Chris Mack at SPIE Advanced Lithography 2014, humorously declaring the end of Moore's Law. His argument centers on the cost per transistor no longer falling.

Ian Cutress interviews chip architect Jim Keller about his time at AMD, Intel and elsewhere, management advice, design approach, Moore's Law and x86 versus Arm.

A nine-minute excerpt from the 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent in which Noam Chomsky summarizes how corporate media shapes public discourse.

Jeri Ellsworth demonstrates a PMOS transistor she fabricated herself in a home chip lab. She shows some of its electrical characteristics.

Sophie Wilson, designer of the ARM instruction set, discusses the future of microprocessors, including the economics of scaling below 28nm and why much of a chip must stay powered off.

Lex Fridman interviews legendary chip architect Jim Keller about Moore's Law, microprocessor design, and first-principles thinking. Keller draws on his work at AMD, Apple, Tesla and Intel, discussing instruction sets, transistor budgets, and self-driving.

Jim Keller gives a UC Berkeley EECS colloquium arguing that Moore's Law is not dead. He surveys upcoming technologies and the multiple innovation curves that can keep transistor density and performance scaling.

Chuck Moore, inventor of Forth, presents GreenArrays' 144-core asynchronous chip at Strange Loop 2013. He explains how idle cores draw almost no power and how tight code minimizes energy use.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tries to manufacture a grill scrubber entirely in the United States. Along the way he runs into missing supply chains, tooling and institutional manufacturing knowledge.

Strange Parts tours JLCPCB's large PCB factory in Huizhou, China, walking through the printed circuit board manufacturing process step by step. It shows the machinery, quality checks and scale behind cheap prototype boards.

A 1936 Chevrolet promotional drama, 'Master Hands', showing car manufacturing from foundry to finished vehicle in Flint, Michigan. It is a National Film Registry selection and a record of early mass production.

Jim Keller's talk at the 2020 Scaled Machine Learning conference on Moore's Law in the age of AI chips. He compares scalar, vector and GPU-style parallel approaches to computation.

Jim Keller, CTO of Tenstorrent, talks at Samsung Foundry's SAFE 2021 about building AI silicon through modular, provable design. The talk also touches on Tenstorrent's RISC-V Ascalon core.

Breaking Taps tries to build semiconductor fabrication capability at home, working through decades of lithography history while chasing one-micrometer features. It documents the equipment, process steps and many setbacks along the way.

Destin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tours a Kodak factory to show how photographic film is manufactured. This is part one of a three-part series covering the large-scale coating and production process.

First part of a four-part video history of Japan's electronics industry, covering the birth of the transistor and the rise of Japanese semiconductors. It appears to draw on NHK documentary material.

Destin Sandlin tours a progressive metal stamping factory, showing machines that stamp millions of metal parts and the tooling behind them.

Wendover Productions explains the wave of supply shortages in 2021, arguing the causes go beyond COVID. It covers how just-in-time manufacturing was applied, container imbalances and the chip shortage.