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#semiconductorfabrication#integratedcircuits#silicon

"Z2" - Upgraded Homemade Silicon Chips

Sam Zeloof

148K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 5 people: 4 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • Presented by Sam Zeloof

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

2.5M views5 years ago5 recommendations

HardwareElectronicsCPUs and computer architectureEmbedded systems

Sam Zeloof demonstrates his upgraded homemade silicon integrated circuit fabrication process, producing chips with around a thousand transistors in his garage.

patreon.com/szeloof sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/ Check our Jeri Ellsworth's amazing work making the first transistors and logic gates at home youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM&t=1s Dipping a rock into chemicals until it becomes a computer chip Upgraded Homemade Silicon IC Fab Process

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as an amazing demonstration of DIY semiconductor fabrication and creating functional integrated circuits at home.

tnorthcutton Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to make a CPU – a simple picture-based explanation”

Mentioned a couple other times in this thread but I don't think anyone has linked Sam Zeloof's video of essentially doing this: link to this video It's fantastic and I highly recommend watching it.

riveron Lobsters • Recommends

Upgraded Homemade Silicon Chips

tanseydavidon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The Semiconductor Ecosystem Explained”

A guy named Sam Zeloof is fabbing functional chips in his garage. I think you might gain a lot from watching his videos about the process. link to this video

reedlawon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to Make a CPU – A Simple Picture Based Explanation”

This was mostly about making a silicon wafer. This video shows more detail on the rest of the process in a home lab: link to this video (blog here: link )

ghghgfdfghon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to build a $20B semiconductor fab”

Somewhat related: a high school student creating his own semiconductor fav in his parent’s garage on a "budget". link to this video It’s a thoroughly interesting video, but I’m a bit disappointed he never took his idea any further than he did. I’d really love to see something like a 6502 being made at home.

nosianuon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022”

That was actually a post here on HN just a few weeks ago. Here's one "point of entry" (to find the homepage and similar videos and pages): link to this video "Upgraded Homemade Silicon Chips"

peter_d_shermanon Hacker News • Mentions

On “An all-optical general-purpose CPU and optical computer architecture”

…be implemented optically, it could also be implemented digitally, say, on the smallest of small gate count FPGA's... While such a FPGA Soft CPU would not be fast -- it would definitely be interesting, and probably very simple (comparatively!) to implement! (Also, it might be implementable on a tiny IC, for example, Sam Zeloof's "Z2" 1,000 gate IC: link to this video ) Anyway, 5+ Stars for this excellent paper! Upvoted and favorited!…

7373737373on Hacker News • Mentions

On “TSMC's debacle in the desert: Missed deadlines and tension among coworkers”

I'm surprised I'm not hearing of more homemade/small-scale attempts like Sam Zeloof's ( link to this video ). Not that this is the same class of problem, but still.

thegrimmeston Hacker News • Mentions

On “2023 was the hottest summer in two thousand years”

…ents will be disruptive to supply chains, create shortages, stall innovation, or force us to reconstruct lost cutting-edge expertise or infrastructure. All of these seem like relatively small hiccoughs, not civilization-ending catastrophes. Recall that the Black Death, which killed nearly half of Europe, was shortly followed by the Renaissance. 1. link to this video…

vablingson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business”

link to this video Here is a video of Sam Aloof who now runs Atomic Semi with Jim Keller. It likely took thousands of dollars to make his own custom Z2 chip that only has 1200 transistors and its nowhere near the likes of the 68k or Intel 386. They might have more advanced stuff now at Atomic Semi but they haven't announced anything

kibwenon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged”

…omewhat doubt that anyone would accept computing on the sort of chips that one could produce in their garage for less than $10,000 capital investment. You can, probably, with some effort and research, produce something analogous to the original Intel chips from the 70s in your garage using off-the-shelf tools. Sam Zeloof has blazed the trail here: link to this video . And for a less than a million it's not inconceivable that a municipality could produce chips that would be at home in the 90s. Maybe that would be enough for a lot of tasks, especially if you're willing to resort to hardware coprocessors for common tasks like media decoding and encryption, but it would take a huge sea change to get people…

u/NichtBelain r/compsci • Mentions

On “How are computers manufactured?”

At this point I doubt there is a single comprehensive analysis of the whole supply chain for all components anywhere. A lot of it is probably very generic. One of the more interesting bits is how logic chips are made with billions of electrical components in the nano scale range. [This Video is a great rough overview, how the lithography process worked (in the 70s)]. We are basically doing the same things today, but today the printers cost roughly 300 Million a pop and are the size of a shipping container. Asianometry also has a lot of excellent Videos about former and current used techniques and methodes and a lot of interesting videos about the computer manufacturing industry.