Optical microscopy and The Silicon Zoo

Entertaining nerd stuff.

Chip engineers of decades past added micron-sized doodles to their creations, likely not knowing their artwork would ever be discovered to spawn interest in the future of today.  Sadly no motorcycles, but a variety of semi-serious and outright comical images are being uncovered by optical lab hobbyists.

The NPR article below serves as a good intro.  Thew vid toward the end of the article shows a few of the images discovered:
www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1242941475/new-ge...-engineers-microchip

For a deeper dive into the ongoing exploration, curation and presentation of silicon doodles on old chips, visit The Silicon Zoo:
micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/index.html

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

Very Cool!  

This is yet another sign that we humans like having fun and making fun of ourselves.

slmjim+Z1BEBE wrote:

Entertaining nerd stuff.


 

Well, that's right up my street.

In the 1990s I recall disassembling various devices and seeing odd words, pics, diagrams (?), etc. on printed circuit boards but never pulled apart any chips to look inside them.