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From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

newsroom.intel.com

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Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#11

Post by pooriaazimi »

Jach wrote: post #10
tristanperry wrote: post #4

As an FYI, parts of this article have been taken without any attribution from: http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/chipmaking/Making_o... http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/chipmaking/pdfs/Sand... An example being the sentence "Sand, especially quartz, has high percentages of silicon in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2) and is the base ingredient for semiconductor manufacturing." which seems to have been c…

Those links appear at the bottom of the page. So unless the author added them just now after seeing your comment... I'm glad plagiarism by itself is not a crime, there are some real witch hunters out there. (You can find a lot of them by looking up Einstein's history.) If I were Google I'd probably favor an HTML page over a PDF too when the content is more or less the same.

He/She (there's no author name) has added them after seeing this comment - I had the tab open for an hour now and there's no attribution there: http://d.pr/6mlz (in case you're wondering about the bizarre colorful thing, it's YouTube! It's blocked in Iran and instead of the video, they display garbage links to government websites)

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#12

Post by brudgers »

chrisacky wrote: post #7
svrcks wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can someone down vote this comment? Too many trolls in HN lately...

I knew it would happen anyway :) Probably the only comment I've made on HN where I knew beforehand that mentioning WOW would instantly attract the down-vote hammer. (I don't even play it any more, but knew if I mentioned that tidbit of information as well, I would get downvoted by people who don't play WOW, and people who play WOW now. ha).

Short of snark and obvious trolling, worrying about downvotes is counter-productive. Some people may downvote posts such as your jewel comment due to the potential for sidetracking the discussion into something generally outside the interests of HN. On the other hand, such a post may trigger an "I never thought of it that way before" reaction.

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#13

Post by tankenmate »

mrleinad wrote: post #6

I'd love to know where that sand comes from. A professor in college once told us that not just any sand works for this process, and many wars have been fueled by the need to secure sources of that particular sand in Africa. Couldn't find any references, though...

I know of one place in Australia they tried to mine, but it was blocked on grounds that it was a part of a UNESCO site, the Great Barrier Reef; Whitehaven beach. Can't remember where I read this, it was 10+ years ago. The beach is 98% silica.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehaven_beach

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#14

Post by tristanperry »

Jach wrote: post #10
tristanperry wrote: post #4

As an FYI, parts of this article have been taken without any attribution from: http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/chipmaking/Making_o... http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/chipmaking/pdfs/Sand... An example being the sentence "Sand, especially quartz, has high percentages of silicon in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2) and is the base ingredient for semiconductor manufacturing." which seems to have been c…

Those links appear at the bottom of the page. So unless the author added them just now after seeing your comment... I'm glad plagiarism by itself is not a crime, there are some real witch hunters out there. (You can find a lot of them by looking up Einstein's history.) If I were Google I'd probably favor an HTML page over a PDF too when the content is more or less the same.

The links were added recently :)

And it's not really witch hunting - I'm merely pointing out that it's bad form for someone to plagiarise and not attribute the source.

Still not a fan of word-for-word copying, but at least links have been added :)

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#15

Post by lambda »

lloeki wrote: post #9
tristanperry wrote: post #4

As an FYI, parts of this article have been taken without any attribution from: http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/chipmaking/Making_o... http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/chipmaking/pdfs/Sand... An example being the sentence "Sand, especially quartz, has high percentages of silicon in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2) and is the base ingredient for semiconductor manufacturing." which seems to have been c…

Just after the video, the two links you provided are mentioned. Maybe other sources are more reputable/original, but this article sums them up nicely and in an enjoyable read, which those PDFs are not (from image quality to layout). Form indeed matters.

Form matters, but so does plagiarism. It's one thing to paraphrase and present information from another source in an easier to read manner; it's another to lift entire phrases word for word without attribution. As others have pointed out, the attribution was only added after the complaint here on HN, and only addressed those particular phrases, it did not list any other sources that may have been used.

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#16

Post by nknight »

mrleinad wrote: post #6

I'd love to know where that sand comes from. A professor in college once told us that not just any sand works for this process, and many wars have been fueled by the need to secure sources of that particular sand in Africa. Couldn't find any references, though...

Er, are you sure you're not thinking of Coltan? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#17

Post by jonknee »

antr wrote: post #3

very educational. i knew where Si came from but never really knew how circuitry was created. i'd love to see the machinery behind the actual design/production of chips. superb submit

AMD has a video on the topic. It's beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GQmtITMdas

How Its Made touched on it too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg-mvrG-K-E&feature=relat...

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#18

Post by antr »

jonknee wrote: post #17
antr wrote: post #3

very educational. i knew where Si came from but never really knew how circuitry was created. i'd love to see the machinery behind the actual design/production of chips. superb submit

AMD has a video on the topic. It's beautiful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GQmtITMdas How Its Made touched on it too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg-mvrG-K-E&feature=relat...

these AMD videos are even better, thanks for pointing these out.

Re: From sand to processor, or how a CPU is made

#19

Post by zafka »

antr wrote: post #3

very educational. i knew where Si came from but never really knew how circuitry was created. i'd love to see the machinery behind the actual design/production of chips. superb submit

Microchip runs a Masters Conference every year at the end of August. During the week long event they do daily tours of their Phoenix FAB. I think with a bit of determined pleading, one could get a tour other times of the year too.
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