How Microchips Work
exclusivearchitecture.com
How Microchips Work
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: How Microchips Work
#2I am not an expert but it seems like a great source to understand chips without getting top deep. It reminds me the classic « Nand 2 Tetris » course [1] with less involvement indeed. Thanks for the developer and thanks for sharing.
Curious to know industry expert comments !
Re: How Microchips Work
#3Interesting, Turing Complete is also from NAND to microcomputer.
[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/
Re: How Microchips Work
#4I loved the article! Spot on and just the right depth for the article size (I am a CPU architect).
Re: How Microchips Work
#5Silicon is the perfect material for semiconductor. It has a low band gap energy between the valence band and conduction band. A small amount of energy, electricity applied to it, can knock its outermost valence electrons off and it becomes conductive. Withholding the energy, its valence electrons fall back in place and it becomes non-conductive. As if by luck, silicon is plentiful and cheap.
Re: How Microchips Work
#6I am not an expert but it seems like a great source to understand chips without getting top deep. It reminds me the classic « Nand 2 Tetris » course [1] with less involvement indeed. Thanks for the developer and thanks for sharing. Curious to know industry expert comments ! [1]: https://www.nand2tetris.org/
There is also the NandGame: https://nandgame.com/
Re: How Microchips Work
#7Silicon is the perfect material for semiconductor. It has a low band gap energy between the valence band and conduction band. A small amount of energy, electricity applied to it, can knock its outermost valence electrons off and it becomes conductive. Withholding the energy, its valence electrons fall back in place and it becomes non-conductive. As if by luck, silicon is plentiful and cheap.
This is missing one of the most important reasons though: Silicon Oxide.
Silicon Oxide is almost perfectly lattice matched to silicon, but completely insulating. Which means it's incredibly easy to grow features onto polished silicon wafers because the oxidation product of the material is exactly what you need in order to build up insulating features - i.e. MOSFET junctions, capacitors and conductive paths.
Re: How Microchips Work
#8Silicon is the perfect material for semiconductor. It has a low band gap energy between the valence band and conduction band. A small amount of energy, electricity applied to it, can knock its outermost valence electrons off and it becomes conductive. Withholding the energy, its valence electrons fall back in place and it becomes non-conductive. As if by luck, silicon is plentiful and cheap.
This is missing one of the most important reasons though: Silicon Oxide. Silicon Oxide is almost perfectly lattice matched to silicon, but completely insulating. Which means it's incredibly easy to grow features onto polished silicon wafers because the oxidation product of the material is exactly what you need in order to build up insulating features - i.e. MOSFET junctions, capacitors and conductive paths.
Silicon oxide grown on Si is actually amorphous, so it is not lattice matched.
But you are complety right, the oxidation properties of Si are really fortunate and ICs would have taken decades longer if it were not for that. SiO2 is really the unsung hero of the silicon age.
- SiO2 has a high bandgap and a very good insulator.
- It is quite inert to many chemical and gasses. (e.g. germanium oxide is soluble in water, which is a headache)
- It can easily be grown on stoiciometric form by oxidizing silicon and will form an abrupt interface to Si.
- The formation proceeds by diffusion of oxygen to the Si interface. This is in contrast to other metal oxides, where the metal will diffuse to the surface and create a nonstoiciometric mixture.
There is no other semiconductor that forms as good an oxide. Very few metals form insulating oxides on their surface, one notable exception is Aluminum.
Edit: The famous paper that describes the SiO2 formation kinetics was actually co-authored by Andy Grove, from intel CEO fame.
Re: How Microchips Work
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is missing one of the most important reasons though: Silicon Oxide. Silicon Oxide is almost perfectly lattice matched to silicon, but completely insulating. Which means it's incredibly easy to grow features onto polished silicon wafers because the oxidation product of the material is exactly what you need in order to build up insulating features - i.e. MOSFET junctions, capacitors and conductive paths.
Silicon oxide grown on Si is actually amorphous, so it is not lattice matched. But you are complety right, the oxidation properties of Si are really fortunate and ICs would have taken decades longer if it were not for that. SiO2 is really the unsung hero of the silicon age. - SiO2 has a high bandgap and a very good insulator. - It is quite inert to many chemical and gasses. (e.g. germanium oxide is soluble in water,…
Huh, it's as if the universe was built to make computers out of.
Re: How Microchips Work
#10I am really impressed by the clarity of the illustrations in the article.