Posted on 01/25/2022 8:12:39 AM PST by DUMBGRUNT
The biggest hurdle is an electron microscope for examining the features of his transistors. A good friend found a broken one and with $1000, a fair amount of know how and a lot of time they were able to repair it to working condition. As for the photolithography device? The light from a conference room projector is beamed through a microscope to trigger the light sensitive coating on his wafers
Zeloof’s chip was his second. He made the first, much smaller one as a high school senior in 2018; he started making individual transistors a year before that. His chips lag Intel’s by technological eons, but Zeloof argues only half-jokingly that he’s making faster progress than the semiconductor industry did in its early days. -------------------- Zeloof started at Carnegie Mellon University, hacking on pieces of garage fab equipment in his dorm room while studying electrical engineering. Although he says he followed safety protocols, the university took exception to the x-ray machine in his dorm room
While Intel has a lot more money, it also has a long history of difficulties living up to the promises they make to the American government, meanwhile Sam Zeloof has already built his fab and his process technology is shrinking at a much higher pace than Intel’s.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcper.com ...
A long interview with the inventor; A GOOD READ, FOR PROPELLER HEADS:
https://archive.vn/5CmuJ#selection-633.0-633.329
Very cool. Too late for me, I’m already 23...
“his process technology is shrinking at a much higher pace than Intel’s.”
Yeah but of course it is...Intel is at the single digit nanometer range.
Good for him, his equipment still uses CRTs.
Some of the Teks from 40 years ago run very nicely, with minimal love and care.
From youth such as these will come our future.
The future belongs to the innovators................
We’ll see years how he’s doing with Moore’s Law in a few years.
Garage-built chips aren’t about to power your PlayStation, but Zeloof says his unusual hobby has convinced him that society would benefit from chipmaking being more accessible to inventors without multimillion-dollar budgets. “That really high barrier to entry will make you super risk-averse, and that’s bad for innovation,” Zeloof says.
A very good point.
—”I’m already 23...”
I’m a young septuagenarian and my wife is still a spring chicken...
My kids are almost twice that, and the grandkids closing in fast!
Oh well.
—From youth such as these will come our future.”
YES!!!
Now THAT’s impressive!
You are quibbling over a few orders of magnitude?
That was the premise behind ‘Blade Runner’...................
” A good friend found a broken one and with $1000, a fair amount of know how and a lot of time they were able to repair it to working condition”
Right!
“society would benefit from chipmaking being more accessible to inventors without multimillion-dollar budgets”
The logic of that completely escapes me.
His process is improving faster than Intels did...
For the same reason it is much easier to travel an already built road than to build the road out of wilderness.
Good for him though... He seems driven to success.
‘Good for him, his equipment still uses CRTs.”
New:
https://www.semtechsolutions.com/product/jeol-jsm-6300-sem/
“The logic of that completely escapes me.”
Why spend a hundred grand to make an obsolete product!
—”The part that puzzles me is what does he do for a clean room?”
At the state of the art he is using, Fairchild was also working on a bench; no cleanroom.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.