Hacker News Reader

Comment by vzidex | Hacker News Reader

I'll take a crack at it, though I'm only in undergrad (took a course on VLSI this semester).

Making a device at a specific technology node (e.g. 14nm, 10nm, 7nm) isn't just about the lithography, although litho is crucial too. In effect, lithography is what allows you to "draw" patterns onto a wafer, but then you still need to do various things to that patterned wafer (deposition, etching, polishing, cleaning, etc.). Going from "we have litho machines capable of X nm spacing" to "we can manufacture a CPU on this node at scale with good yield" requires a huge amount of low-level design to figure out transistor sizings, spacings, and then how to actually manufacture the designed transistors and gates using the steps listed above.

View on HN

Thanks, that clarifies it as far as possible for me who don't really know how the full manufacturing process works.

Could we simplify this roughly into "ASML makes the machines to shine light at the right nm, foundries makes the Silicon and packages it into an useful device, architecture designers give you the layout to etch" if my mom were to ask?

A few possible corrections, but one interesting one: the output of a foundry is generally known-good dice -- sliced up and tested bits of a silicon wafer. Packaging is done by IC packaging companies, and is really quite an interesting field in its own right. (Many of the foundries do some packaging in house, especially for more exotic approaches like Intel's Foveros, but this is the exception.)

I would've guessed that they packaged everything inhouse. I'm fascinated by this industry, it's so incredibly omnipresent products, yet "we" know "nothing" about the process of going from "sand" to gigaflops in your machine.

We talk to the piece of sand with lightning (USB Keyboard 5V interface), and then we hear its response back with lightning (HDMI Port interface). And somewhere in the middle, there's a source of lightning that's making it think on its own (Power supply and VRMs).

EDIT: More seriously though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

Video saved to watch later, thanks mate. Though I must say I like your first unedited answer too, so I'll put it back here.

> Its pretty simple. We zap sand with lightning until it starts thinking for us.

Lol, thanks.

I think I kept working the joke in my brain, and it was too brutally simple at first. And then I worked it over, and now it reads too complicated. Ah well.

I think I was overthinking the joke.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com