As we all know, the door to making chips is extremely high, and its core lithography technology is monopolized by several lithography machine manufacturers, and related semiconductor materials and consumables are almost monopolized by several companies. And in such an environment, a 22-year-old student from Carnegie Mellon University's electrical engineering major recently made a silicon chip in his own underground garage, according to industry reviews, the level of the chip is comparable to the level of chips in the 1960s/70s (Intel 4004 microprocessor), which is not easy, after all, he is just a person, purely manual.
A 22-year-old boy DIY "lithography machine" builds chips in the garage
The young man, Sam Chiluf, a senior in electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, successfully made a second computer chip in his garage in August 2021, which he named Z2, which, according to himself, has 1,200 transistors built into it, more than fifty years behind the industry's most advanced level. However, the optimistic Ziluf joked to himself: "Compared with the Z1 manufactured in 2018, the number of transistors in this Z2 has definitely increased faster than Moore's Law." ”
The young man made his own "lithography machine" system
The young man made his own chips with simple equipment
Sam Chiluf in the school's lab
Since 2016, he has taught himself all aspects of chip manufacturing through instructional videos. According to the video released by Qiluf on the YouTube, the total cost of his chip production did not exceed 20,000 US dollars (about 126,500 yuan). He bought a conference room projector on Amazon's website, modified it and mounted it on a microscope to form a simple "lithography machine." The chip consists of a grid of 12 circuits, each with 100 transistors, for a total of 1200. The young man wants to tell everyone that in fact, the manufacturing of chips is far from the million-dollar entry threshold that those companies say, including the semiconductor industry if it wants healthy development, it needs an open and inclusive attitude to meet with everyone.
On the left is the imaging of a Polaroid film camera, and on the right is a photo taken by a modified digital camera
The god had previously transformed a Polaroid film camera into a digital camera that could take pictures in 2020. At present, Sam Chiluff has begun the "research and development" work of the Z3 chip, which further explores the design and manufacture of microprocessors, which may complement the products of major processor manufacturers, which will be a new industry and worth looking forward to. Of course, the products of chip manufacturers like Intel are still worth starting, after all, years of technology precipitation and market accumulation have made their products have excellent performance and good compatibility.
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