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Ken Shirriff

This closeup photo shows the three layers of wiring on the Pentium and the transistors underneath. The L-shaped hook towards the lower left is a connection to an antenna diode. 4/6

A closeup of the Pentium die showing wiring and circuitry. The top metal lines run vertically with a golden color. Underneath, the middle metal lines run horizontally. At the silicon surface, the bottom metal wiring connects the transistors to form logic gates. The doped silicon regions and polysilicon wires are visible as grayish lines on the gray silicon background. Towards the lower left, an L-shaped metal wire is connected to an antenna diode, a dark gray square.
23 November at 20:44 | Open on oldbytes.space
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Ken Shirriff

Here's a photo of the Pentium die with main functional blocks labeled. In this photo, the three layers of metal wiring almost completely hide the underlying silicon. 5/6

A die photo of the Pentium processor. It consists of a complex pattern of golden and reddish rectangular regions. I've labeled the main functional blocks: the 8K code cache and 8K data cache on the left. The main integer execution unit is in the middle with the floating point unit to the right. Instruction fetching and decoding is at the top.
23 November at 20:53 | Open on oldbytes.space
Ken Shirriff
Tuckers Nuts Resist😈!

@kenshirriff
🥥 Fascinating stuff, Ken.
This has the feel of archeology at a microscopic level. The photos have the feel of pre-Columbian art in Mexico/South America. 🥥

23 November at 22:45 | Open on mstdn.social
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