I'm always fascinated by how brilliant us humans can be. So much so that we can put billions of transistors in very small spaces and in complex structures while also mass producing it.
I highly recommend watching this video about lithography and the machine that makes it all possible [1].
Which one of the CPUs do you think looks the cleanest, aesthetically? The first Alpha looks rather chaotic, while the Samsung Alpha looks very uniform. That TI PA-7000 FPC looks like chaos. I think the two PowerPCs look the best, which is what I'd expect too. Well, actually I'd expect some of the other RISC to look simpler too...
A few early CPUs (famously including the 6502) were fully reverse engineered through "ordinary" die photos, and they even have gate-level simulators now where you can basically see the individual transistors switching: http://www.visual6502.org
I don't know if that's still near feasible for an 8088 or 8086. Anything past that, almost certainly not. Anything modern, absolutely not.
I have on my desk the book "State of the Art" by Stan Augarten. It shows the progression of transistors and integrated circuits from conception through 1983.
The book was one of the inspirations for me to become an electrical engineer. My older brother loaned me a copy of it when it was published in 1983.
I love these. The https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz channel does some wonderful explorations of chips with high powered microscopes, finding easter eggs and graphics left by designers. So much fun.
How can someone explain this to a kid? Is there somewhere an even more simplified version than Arduino or similar to show how all these things actually work? I know arduino is not a cpu, but overall, how these things work together, would be great to see/show.
I don't expect to show how electrons move :) I mean, some model, a toy or so, that shows how these things work. I remember it only from books/specs, but even there, at a certain point there are "limits" :)
I‘m teaching a course on computer architecture at my university and there are these model processors called MUx (MU0-7) that explain how a CPU works from the ground up. I‘m not aware of any toys (my students keep asking me about that as well), but I wrote an interactive visualizer that illustrates the simplest processor and how data moves through it: https://pascalbormann.de/mu-vis/
Not mobile friendly unfortunately and maybe a bit too advanced for kids, but it could be a starting point. The code is here if you want to build on it: https://github.com/Mortano/mu0-visualization
Some of the later steps may be beyond them, depending on the child's age, but Charles Petzold's wonderful book Code explains how you could set up a processor from logic gates with only a little handwaving.
If they are a little older and interested, NAND 2 Tetris is a good self-paced course.
When my kids were less than 10 I took them to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA and showed them how all the mechanical computers work. They have some exploded and simplified exhibits that are very visual so kids can get it pretty easy. Especially if they’re the kind of kid that builds with blocks. Games like Turing Tumble are good too. Then you just wave your hands and say chips work like this on the inside, but with electricity instead of gears because it’s faster, smaller, cheaper and uses less energy. But at the end of the day, it’s basically all clockwork. Then they smile and say, “makes sense”. And I leave it at that.
When the kids were teenagers I gave them a more thorough explanation.
If you’re not in the Bay Area then the Computer Museum does have YouTube videos. There are many others as well.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 65.9 ms ] threadhttps://gallery.ramonaoptics.com/gallery/viewer/42009871001#...
I highly recommend watching this video about lithography and the machine that makes it all possible [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg
They generally looks for the doodles on older chips, but also looks at MEMs devices as well: https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz
They would definitely be able to add to the list (they have a video of 100 chips for their 100k subscriber mark).
I think it looks very well structured compared to the Soviet KM1801VM2
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Birdman86#/media/Fil...
I don't know if that's still near feasible for an 8088 or 8086. Anything past that, almost certainly not. Anything modern, absolutely not.
I have on my desk the book "State of the Art" by Stan Augarten. It shows the progression of transistors and integrated circuits from conception through 1983.
The book was one of the inspirations for me to become an electrical engineer. My older brother loaned me a copy of it when it was published in 1983.
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/albums/721576504...
I don't expect to show how electrons move :) I mean, some model, a toy or so, that shows how these things work. I remember it only from books/specs, but even there, at a certain point there are "limits" :)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PanqoHa_B6c
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html
Also this person has some simple tutorial on how a toy CPUs work. He even made a simulator so you can make your own using gate logic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZwneRb-zqA&list=PLFt_AvWsXl...
If they are a little older and interested, NAND 2 Tetris is a good self-paced course.
When my kids were less than 10 I took them to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA and showed them how all the mechanical computers work. They have some exploded and simplified exhibits that are very visual so kids can get it pretty easy. Especially if they’re the kind of kid that builds with blocks. Games like Turing Tumble are good too. Then you just wave your hands and say chips work like this on the inside, but with electricity instead of gears because it’s faster, smaller, cheaper and uses less energy. But at the end of the day, it’s basically all clockwork. Then they smile and say, “makes sense”. And I leave it at that.
When the kids were teenagers I gave them a more thorough explanation.
If you’re not in the Bay Area then the Computer Museum does have YouTube videos. There are many others as well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XSkGY6LchJs&pp=ygUbbWVjaGFuaWN...