No matter how hard I try to understand it, how much research I've done so far, how many articles I've read and how many videos I've watched, my brain still can't comprehend with the fact that we, human beings, are able to create something like this just from, basically, a sand. And how in a span of 50 years we went from physical contactor switches, punch cards and tubes to quantum tunnelling and 5nm process. Just shows that the best ever cpu created was indeed a human brain.

So nice to see the cat being so relaxed😘

Everyone looking on cat with thoughts in my head: “I wanna pet you”.

The aluminium interconnects is something that is actually still very common in the industry. One reason is that it took until the mid 90's before the industry found a way to cleanly etch copper bellow about 50 µm trace widths, and it is a more involved process, though not without its own advantages, but CMP can also be used on aluminium. Another much more prevalent reason for why aluminium is still used is that aluminium isn't toxic to semiconductors. Copper turns a transistor into a resistor as the copper diffuses into the silicon. Aluminium is a weak P dopant and forms a depletion region when in contact with another dopant. This extra depletion region can be accounted for, but beyond that the transistors still works like they should. (most good electrical conductors are actually fairly toxic to semiconductors in the same way as copper. Even tungsten is fairly bad, but at least tungsten don't do much diffusing.) Even in chips that do use copper it is seldom used beyond the top most layer and mainly there for bulk power distribution. Layers further down are often aluminium unless the chip is very power dense, since then copper can extend down to further layers. A diffusion barrier will also be required if the chip contains copper, as to stop it from diffusing into te semiconductors over time (unless one wants the chip to fail somewhat quickly (weeks/months depending on operating temperature)). But even a diffusion barrier won't stop copper from spreading, only slow it down sufficiently for a server CPU to last about 4-10 years of 24/7 operation at rated max temp before they meaningfully start failing. (depending on diffusion barrier thickness.) But a lot of modern fabs don't do copper layers at all, since copper is a risk of production contamination, so if the fab doesn't do power dense chips, then why risk it. (To my knowledge fabs that do handle copper have a division of "before copper" and "copper" sides and any wafer crossing the line won't ever return back. Same for machinery used on the copper side will never be used for anything on the before copper side (with an exception of wafer transport machinery, but perhaps even these have a strict side they stay on). Metal contamination is a serious issue in this industry. Similar to how silicone grease/oil is a serious issue for a metal paint shop) I myself is though curious to if typical DRAM chips contains copper layers or not. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't, since yield is so paramount to profit in this market where margins are honestly rather slim. Nor are RAM chips all that power dense, so not much reason for going for copper. (I will though make an exception to copper landing pads for wire bonds or flip chip, since this is somewhat typical and not uncommon to do outside of the main fab itself so that contamination is even less of an issue.)

ion cannon activated

Beautiful work. 50 years ago this the Intel 4004 was like magic. These days we have more advanced chips in cheap disposable items. If someone was able to take a 12900k back to the 70's it would seem so advanced they would probably think you possessed alien technology.

If I recall, the mask for the 4004 was publicly released. Edit: After a brief search, the masks for the entire MCS-4 chipset were released under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0.

An Italian Masterpiece, like always. Thx Federico Faggin.

Federico Faggin famously laid out the 4004 by himself, transistor-by-transistor. He did the same thing for the next generation processor, and did his last layout for the original Zilog Z-80, where Faggin was the CEO. While the 4004 used enhancement mode PFET silicon gate technology, the Z-80 used depletion mode Si-gate NFET technology. Faggin developed Fairchid's silicon gate process which is why Intel recruited him for the 4004 project!

Amazing work! Really interesting to see how advanced these chips already were 50 years ago, and how far we have come since then.

This is great material, there is such a disconnect for most of us about how computers actually work. Thanks for helping turn some of the mysterious magic into solid physics and chemistry in a visual format that is easy to understand.

I was totally blind to the inside of the 4004 the first times we used and programmed it. That IC looked like a wizardry in the early '70s. Thanks for the video...

The best way I've ever heard CPUs described in a nutshell is that they're like miniaturized cities with each street and building having a specific purpose. Thinking of them on a larger scale seems to make it easier to understand.

4:46 It is so cute to see the cat's belly move as the cat breathes! Adorable!

Thank you for providing the images. Much appreciated. And thanks also to the viewer who sacrificed his very fine clock to the public documentation of science and engineering history.

Love this series, thank you. It wasn't too technical

6:35 you can contact Federico Faggin, he worked in this CPU and he might be happy to explain what you have in all the images :)

The effort that went into making this this video is incredible!

This was amazing to watch. Thanks!

Always interesting and unique videos from you Roman 😎

Found your channel by way of your 13900K power testing vid. Loving the vids so far!

Fascinating! It's amazing that even at that early time so much could be fit into such a small space, and astounding how much can be fit now. It would be cool to see images and cross-sections of the results of cosmic particle strikes on microchips. No doubt this would be a much more difficult task...

Focused ion beam is quite expensive, like 5 figures I think. I develop ICs and we sent our SerDes testchip to one of them, to cut Tx from Rx so as to see how much that reduces I/O pin capacitance. Oh, and apparently you can even create new traces with FIB.

This is beyond amazing!! Thank you for this!

8:20 PCBs do have multiple layers. usually between 4 and 8, but you can make PCBs with 100 layers too.

5:56 it has been a while your arm became an art installation

This is an amazing work! I wished we could get some of these images for other classic processors such as the Motorola MC68000, Zilog z80 and MOS 6502

This was amazing. Thanks for taking the (very long) time to get the results. I actually have one of those clocks and now I want to bust it open. :) Don't worry I won't.

Thanks for the semiconductor lecture.

Awsome Video! Great insight and Hats off for your hard work.

Wow, this video is awesome. Thank you for sharing.

it's still amazing that they could make this in 1971

Ooooo, I've been really excited for this one!

We need more of this series.

It always amazes me how little we know of the technology we are using daily.

Fascinating! Thanks for showing how a 50 years old CPU was assembled.

Really is insane how far we have come.

As I recall, PMOS was used first because it was the easiest to fabricate. Later they switched to NMOS. RCA built the first CMOS microprocessor, the COSMAC 1802.

I just want to say that I appreciate you putting the ad tag in the corner. Most ads are nothing that I’m looking for.

Wow… just impressive journey from where it’s come to now

It just amazes me that this is from 1971. Even then its incredible how small the circuitry is even though there are only 2300 transistors.

When I used to do die failure analysis, it is possible to etch away the plastic (epoxy) packaging to reveal the die attached to the lead frame. You can do the exact same with ceramic packaging, to release the cover and the top part of the "sandwich". To release the die from the lead frame is more difficult, depending on if it was glued on or ultrasonically bonded. Acid may be needed... But for this experiment, you could have cut through the lead frame as well. Great video. Lots of memories...

Come for the tech,, stay for the cat. :)

3:25 ❤️ that scale where it was so easy to see (and the fact that it was never in a package also helped a lot)

Wow, and this one is from over 50 years ago...That's really mind blowing.

thanks for this fun video :)

What you do is awesome. Maybe not as awesome as the people who pioneered these devices, but still...awesome. thank you. 😁

I’m halfway through Federico Faggin’s autobiography “Silicon” right now, so this video is pretty coincidental! I actually recognize the various parts!

great stuff

My dude, you are the mvp

Absolutely amazing! Thank you so much! More of these kinds of videos, please? 🙏

Got a whole sleeve in 9 months. Damn tha musta been a big piece

nice cut ✂

Excellent as always. Thanks for this. I posted a link where Stan Mazor will likely see it. Perhaps he'll have a useful comment or two. :) (Stan was one of the designers / implementors.)

Can you please dissect a recently made cpu, i9 or i7, thank you

Yeah interesting vid. The original discrete MOSFETs (circa 1960) used aluminum as the transistor's electrode (rather than polysilicon). It was Fairchild that first experimented with SGTs (Silicon gate technology transistors) as a variant of the metal oxide layer (they were still MOSFETs though) but used polysilicon instead of metal in the trannie's electrode for the gate-oxide layers. That was Federico Faggin that created that process for Fairchild as self-aligned gates. Interestingly, and this may provide some of that missing details you mentioned, Faggin then moved on from Fairchild and joined Intel and took the SGT concept into Intel where he immediately used it when tasked to design the 4004 chip. So the 4004 uses SGT gate technology as you correctly identified there, which relies on polysilicon/polycrystaline-silicon gates (with underlying dielectric oxide layer to produce the field-effect).

informative and intresting

This deserves a million likes.

Forget to mention: a salute to Federico Faggin; this was his baby...

The "first" of anything always fascinates me, and the 4004 is no exception. Some NOS samples or even pulls are fetching $300-400 or more on ebay. BTW it's no surprise that MOS/CMOS devices are so static sensitive - the ultra thin SiO2 layer between the polysilicon and substrate (gate) can easily be punched through with just several hundred volts ESD and you won't even feel it. I would imagine todays nm feature sized chips are even more sensitive.

i actually enjoyed seeing your cat

Respect for the cat 😊😊😊

That sweet ginger cat is adorable

What breaks my mind the most: That we could achieve such small constructions at that time, and yet, other tech was bad. Not bad in a sense that we were moving forward but, still, the level of differences.

Very interesting

Would be interesting to see a set of videos working with a fab to make a simple large transistor chip, and have chips at each layer made. That would allow a good way to look at through a basic microscope at different layers. Being a more simple chip design you could easily point out how it's working based on what pins are active at any time. Maybe even some 3D printed models to give a larger representation of different types of transistors at a scale you can easily point to and describe, or have parts you can swap to better show a change. Really going all out could have a program to show the circuit design and can show the circuit based on inputs to give a visual active view of the chip. I've always had a hard time fully grasping how these chips work at a basic level, since the basic and overly simplified graphics of some videos and articles just don't have enough there to fully follow (at least for me), and the crazy scanning electron microscope stuff is neat but goes a bit over my head. But on the other hand when I found a game on steam for making circuits and had decided to try and build the 4004 in it, I was finally able to start grasping how it worked since it was at a scale where you can more easily follow along with what's going on, as long as you could find the right info delivered in the right way (which takes a painful amount of digging even for the 4004 in my experience and for the level of info that worked best for me). Well that was a lot more than I expected to write, all just to say you do awesome videos and in the crazy chance you could, it would be neat to see something like that in collaboration with a fab that can help make that happen.

"I sawed this cpu in half!"

He knows he's the star of the video, and he's asserting his dominance over his human attendant. So cute.

was very distracted by the kitty that found the warm cozy spot made by the dark fabic and bight lights. lol

wenn dass der englische kanal ist, warum steht oben in der ecke immernoch "werbevideo" und nicht "ad"??

After all this time, people still have their ion Intel. Speaking of huge, that cat is pretty huge.

0:48 "Turns out that its not that easy to de-CAT one of these chips"

I want to know how lithography work. I could not find any video to show exactly how they build and put millions of transistors in a 2-inch square.

Thank you for doing it in english

As a nanotechnology student. Thia is my favorite type of videos

Is that a gate address on your right arm?

It's insane how we are at 2 million times density from this

13:33 that would make a very nice tartan. The der8auer Tartan?

10:34, is not quite correct. In a PMOS the charge carriers are holes (not electrons). But in the NMOS the charge carriers are electrons (not holes). So what this means is for the PMOS situation, holes flow from source to drain. In the NMOS electrons flow from source to drain. So in effect, the PMOS sees electrons flowing from drain to source (not from source to drain since those are the holes). Hope that makes sense. Even a lot of electronic engineers get confused on that point though!

good one 😉

There is truly spectacular insight to be gathered from understanding what this technology represents for its time period if you think about your regular everyday common person in the 70s and how many of them had absolutely no clue what their government and companies were creating the Gap in understanding is astronomical not to mention the very intelligent that had no understanding of this so apply that to today and yes we have the internet we have more access to information now and I'm quite sure a lot of very intelligent people can tell me a lot of very interesting things about our technology today but let us for a second entertain the notion that same Gap still exists today what in the hell do we possess I shudder at the thought alone

I only clicked this video for the cat. It's amazing.

Intel has been an innovator I hope they get back on track and launch upcoming products on time

That stuff ur talking about is Classified. Manufacturers keep it to them self. All the layers n details is top secret.

Hmm so 125x on a modern CPU .. This 4004 CPU is ~ 2300 transistors, so ~ 48 x 48 transistors at 12mm2 square and we can see them all with a 125x magnification. A Zen 3 on TSMC N7 has 4.15B transistors in an 80.7mm2 space, or about 617M transistors in the same 12mm2, or 24839 x 24839 transistors in that same space. You'd need 500x additional magnification.. to see 1 transistor.

omg that cat ha just chillin

If I recall correctly, that electron radiation is a similar concept to electron ionization mass spectroscopy

These old chips show much more of the process - you see dips in the silicone - layers above of deposites... That shows more clearly how they were build... Looking at the other video, its stunning how sharp and small those traces and gates are made today... Got to love this tech :D

How did they make that in 1971??

nice!!!!!

I liked the days where I stood some sort of chance of understanding what's going on

I love your cat ❤

3:24 ... Wow!

so WHY is Hetzner now rebranded as XNEELO in South Africa???

We definitely got that technology from aliens.

This is what I do for work!

Very cool...can it be overclocked and water cooled..lol.

I was hoping you'd cut through the Cat with an Ion Beam! 🤣

0:50 For a second there I thought david was the cat

5:44 Amazing that just 9 months ago you had no sleeve and now you do