[flagged]
What’s wrong with Substack?
Apple A19 SoC die shot
41–50 of 80 posts
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's definitely an "on the shoulders of giants standing on the shoulders of giants" thing. Insane breakthrough technologies on top of other insane breakthroughs. Firing lasers at microscopic molten drops of metal in a controlled enough manner to get massively consistent results like what??
It’s a mind blowing achievement, nothing below sorcery if you think about it. ASML machines are hitting tin droplets with 25kW laser 50,000 times a second to turn them into plasma to create the necessary extreme ultraviolet light, and despite generating 500W of EUV, only a small fraction can reach the wafer, due to loses along the way. I believe it was like 10%. Here’s an incredible, very detailed video about it: htt…
I've been trying to find that video!! Our professor showed it in class but I was half-asleep and I wanted to rewatch it so badly.
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#43Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#44Fascinating, what surprises me is that it looks more "fractal" like than other chip dies I've looked at. Perhaps all the newest ones do, however it makes me wonder if part of Apples secret sauce is more sophisticated design tooling.
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#45Ken Shirriff it's your time
I'm afraid that chip is too complicated for me. I'm still trying to figure out the 386 :-) But I did colorize the A19 die photo with Apple's M1 rainbow gradient, just for fun: https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/115256179526128051
If the Apple A19 could be made in the 386's process (1000-1500nm), it would be about 300-500x bigger than its current size in each dimension.
"too complicated", what an understatement! Even the 386 wasn't exactly simple. The complexity of these modern chips is mind-bendingly immense.
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#46It’s still my strongly held belief that things like this are one of humanity’s grandest achievements.
Nah, NVIDIA GPU has way more raw computational power & smarts.
GPUs are far more regular in structure, lots of "copy-pasted" blocks, because they are a collection of many relatively simple processors.
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#47Fascinating, what surprises me is that it looks more "fractal" like than other chip dies I've looked at. Perhaps all the newest ones do, however it makes me wonder if part of Apples secret sauce is more sophisticated design tooling.
Very organic looking, like they passed it through an optimization algorithm.
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#48[flagged]
What’s wrong with Substack?
Might be the allegations such as those made by David Farrier this August[1]
> Then, last month, Substack sent out a push notification to some users of the Substack app encouraging them to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter. Like, full-Nazi stuff. Not subtle:
followed by a screenshot of a Substack profile full of swastikas describing itself as news for the "National Socialist and White Nationalist Community"
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#49Fascinating, what surprises me is that it looks more "fractal" like than other chip dies I've looked at. Perhaps all the newest ones do, however it makes me wonder if part of Apples secret sauce is more sophisticated design tooling.
Very organic looking, like they passed it through an optimization algorithm.
Looks like an aerial shot of farmland to me
Re: Apple A19 SoC die shot
#50Missing Anandtech.com right about now
Just in case you didn’t know, dude works at Apple now!
(For about ten years now..)