Is there anybody here who is familiar with the process of making computer chips?

[Jonty30]

I'm just curious about the process from the point of CAD to where they have computer chips ready to sell.

Thanks in advance if somebody can explain it for us non-techies.

[dennisw]

Good explanation .... I never knew it took months to make a computer CPU chip. Intel current i5 perhaps? Lesser chips, such as a phone are full of, must take days or a week. That short time.

As much as Biden is useless, at least the DC parasites voted in subsidies to build more chip plants/fabs here. TSMC, Intel

[Gideon7]

The Intel 8086, the foundation of the IBM PC, whose instruction set is still contained in all Intel x64 processors, had 29,000 transistors.

The current generation Intel 12900K has about 3,000,000,000 transistors.

[rellic]

We have the Democrat EPA.
They don’t.

[snoringbear]

For sure. It’s the most complex manufacturing process on the planet. Referred to in the biz as “sand to socket”.

[zeestephen]

Re: "the US is way ahead of all these other countries on your list."

Within the last month I read that USA companies manufacture just 21% of the chips used in USA products.

79% of our chips are imported or manufactured by foreign companies based in the USA.

Our tech may be better, but are domestic market share is pitiful.

[joma89]

Thanks. Amazing in the age of the internet where the answers to these types of questions are easily obtainable that someone would still post such a question.

[Candor7]

You keep adding layers this way until it’s almost like a miniature city.>>>>>>>>>>>>

[FarCenter]

Some of the major steps would be:

Instruction set design where you decide what operations the computer will execute, how addressing of memory will work, security features, input/output, and how the instructions will be encoded and represented in memory.

Chip architecture where you decide on how the memory and processor are interconnected, how registers are laid our, how the registers work with arithmetic logic units for integer and floating point operations, how instructions are decoded, etc.

Circuit design which is usually at the building block level, rather than individual transistor and component level.

Floor planning, which lays out the circuitry in 2 dimensions and determines the routing of the wiring.

Simulations which “test” what you’ve done to better your chances that the chip will work.

Mask generation that creates the masks that will be used for the multiple steps of photolithography.

Purifying silicon and creating a pure crystal 12 inches in diameter and then sawing it into thin wafers that are then polished and etched to create a very flat crystal with few defects.

Wafer fabing, which involves many steps of vapor deposition , ion implanting, ultraviolet light exposure, washing and etching, etc.

Testing of the wafer to see if it is worth proceeding.

Dicing of the wafer with saws to make individual chips.

Bonding of the wafer into a ceramic package so that it can be connected to a circuit board by the customer.

Final testing of the finished processor.

I’ve probably left a lot out.

[FreedomPoster]

Intel and TSMC are both building huge fab facilities in the Phoenix area.

[FreedomPoster]

Technically, the IBM PC and PC XT used the Intel 8088. I had one.

IIRC the Compaq desktop PC compatible used the 8086. That was the first machine I ran AutoCAD on back in the 80s for the engineering firm I worked for.

[Lazamataz]

Sure, I can explain making computer chips to you.

First, preheat the oil to 400 degrees. Then, slice the computers into thin layers. Place the slice computers into baskets, and immerse the slices into the oil for 7-10 minutes. Remove the baskets, shake the oil off, and let cool over the oil for about 3 minutes. Lightly salt your computer chips. Place into a bag and serve your customer.

[WeaslesRippedMyFlesh]

Chips are compiled into hardware from a software language known as VHDL.

LVHDL stands for very high-speed integrated circuit hardware description language. It is a programming language used to model a digital system by dataflow, behavioral and structural style of modeling.

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/vlsi_design/vlsi_design_vhdl_introduction.htm

Followed by simulation:

\https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home/tools/custom-ic-analog-rf-design/circuit-simulation.html

[SpokeshaveReturns]

Already tried....electron beam deposition...it’s too slow.
Today’s technique does it a single die at a time...repeated over the surface of the wafer...each die has multiple layers...various insulating, conductive and semiconductors layers....and sub micron geometry...that is less than the wavelength of light.
See Applied Materials Co who invented cluster tools.
And ASM LITHOGRAPHY who make the optical tools.
Ion implant tools are used to change semiconductor characteristics by implanting phosphene atoms...regards.

[trebb]

Ask Hillary - I hear she had someone use a hammer to make chips of her computer.

Probably a pretty complicated process with micro-miniaturization and multi-layers.

[CA_soon_gone]

Interesting. It’s been 22 years for me. Have Verilog and Synopsys been outdated?

[dennisw]

“The current generation Intel 12900K has about 3,000,000,000 transistors.”

The computer that I use the most is an i5-8400/ 16GB/ 512 NVME//// running Windows 11. So how many transistors for this i5?

[Beowulf9]

Boy, I haven’t heard of Arnold Stang in a while and I don’t know about chip chip chip but I do remember Top Cat :)

[Nifster]

What precisely is it you wish to understand?

It is a multi step process

[Campion]

If you sent a photograph of a silicon crystal growing furnace to the Department of Software Engineering at your local university, I would wager that 80% of the students would have NO idea what it is!

Silicon crystal growing has about the same relationship to software engineering as modern lithographic high-speed printing has to the study of literature.

It is incomprehensible to me that Europe and the USA have basically surrendered the mass production of microchips to Taiwan, South Korea, China, and Japan.

We've seemingly surrendered the mass production of almost everything. That bag of clothespins you buy at Walmart says "made in China" on it. (I understand that it's probably not profitable to make clothespins in the US. But why China?)

Chips are made in the Far East because the overwhelming majority of them are immediately incorporated into consumer electronics products, and the overwhelming majority of them are made in the Far East. (Not saying that's a good thing, it's just a fact.)

[Nifster]

Wouldn’t work