Microprocessor

[ewx]

We were originally trying to get a photograph of the sensor in fivemack's camera; as you can see above, it could use some cleaning. In practice getting the lens close enough to reveal anything interesting precluded getting any light into the cavity, so we gave up on that and took some pictures of a broken 486 instead.

This was the only writing we could find; it's clearly visible to the naked eye (see below).

I remembered to clean the first half of the chip but not the second. The large bright lump at the bottom centre is about 150µm from top to bottom. The dark horizontal stripes towards the left of the picture are shadows of wires just outside the frame, similar to the ones at the bottom of the picture. With the exception of the sensor photo at the top, all the closeups are at the same magnification or fractionally higher due to cropping following from alignment correction.

The rest.

Comments

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

What on earth happened to that poor processor?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Having failed to remove the metal lid by cutting round the edge with a Chinese knock-off Dremel tool whose cutting wheels were apparently made out of cheese, I used a chisel and a lump-hammer.

It turns out that a chisel and a lump-hammer are not ideal tools for subtle surgery on microelectronics.

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

Ooooo.... shiny

[gerald_duck]

I know someone who claims to have bonded out a £60,000 prototype chip by hand without a microscope. I believe him, but I'm very, very scared. Your photos indicate just how scared I ought to be. (-8

[ewx.livejournal.com]

What does “bonding out” a chip involve?

[gerald_duck]

Eeep, sorry — jargon. Connecting (soldering, in that case) the pads on the silicon to the pins on the encapsulating package, as shown in the third and fourth photos above. Normally, it's done by a robot, of course.

Wikipedia calls it wire bonding.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Your friend must have a remarkably steady hand.