Visual 6502

It amazes me that not only was the layout simple, but the size and fabrication were (relatively) simple too. The masks were drawn by hand (literally) on transparencies, and checked by hand too.

I layout chip designs that have on the order of 8-10 million transistors with a gate size of 0.3-0.5 microns. And that is nothing compared to a modern Intel chip, with something like 800 million transistors and a gate width of 0.035 microns. Crazy small stuff.
 
I layout chip designs that have on the order of 8-10 million transistors with a gate size of 0.3-0.5 microns.

Amateur :)

Can't show anything recent, but this is a chip I did long ago in 180nm:

die.jpg
 
It amazes me that not only was the layout simple, but the size and fabrication were (relatively) simple too. The masks were drawn by hand (literally) on transparencies, and checked by hand too.

I layout chip designs that have on the order of 8-10 million transistors with a gate size of 0.3-0.5 microns. And that is nothing compared to a modern Intel chip, with something like 800 million transistors and a gate width of 0.035 microns. Crazy small stuff.

I work at a company that does analysis of semiconductor devices, and this reminds me of the 'good old days' - huge feature sizes, only a few metal layers, and only a few thousand transistors. The fact that these guys were able to reconstruct the 6502 layout using images from an optical microscope shows how old the device is. Some of the parts we're seeing now are at the 25nm node, with 12 metal layers and hundreds of millions of transistors.

When I look at some of the games which use the 6502, I'm still impressed by what this simple little chip can do though.

HudsonArcade, did your Pac-Man maze layout actually make it into a commercial IC? Or was that for fun / academic? We have a bunch of pictures up around the office of funny die markings we've found on devices over the years, but nothing quite that elaborate. :)
 
HudsonArcade, did your Pac-Man maze layout actually make it into a commercial IC? Or was that for fun / academic? We have a bunch of pictures up around the office of funny die markings we've found on devices over the years, but nothing quite that elaborate. :)

Academic.. the Ohio State logo was actually more elaborate than the pacman maze... pacman was all 1 metal, Ohio State is multiple.

OSU.jpg


I put this on my last chip, but never got a micrograph of it... I should take some dice back to campus and see if I can find someone to take some pics:

atari.jpg


I'm really curious to see how the zoom of metal layers looks under the scope.
 
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