5.10 The KGB, the Compute, and Me  a video5 Class notes5.8 Processors5.9 Sand to Circuit (Video)

5.9 Sand to Circuit (Video)

TI (Texas Instruments) produced this video to show what is involved in manufacturing semiconductors. I expect that this was done mostly for there own employees. With cleanliness requirments of clean rooms tours are out of the question. This video is avaliable in the West Campus Library.

One of the obvious "points" of the video is the real and aparent complexity of making ICs. Several other aspects of the electronics industry are less obvious.

First, manufacturing of most electronics today is a photographic process. The had assembly that was required for vaccume tubes and there associated connections is all but gone. Today the individual devices are "fabracated" on the IC by a many step process, but for the most part, hundreds or thousands at a time. Some steps of the fabrication will batch process hundreds of wafers at a time. A single 8 inch wafers will have between hundreds and thousands of inddividual dies. The manufacturing of Printed Circuit boards is also photograpic. So, for the most part, the interconnection of individual integrated ICs in a final product is also photograpic, NOT hand assembly. This helps keeps the costs down.

Second, there are limits to integrated circuits.

I also passed around in class some electronic assemblies. Two of these included ICs with glass tops. This allows you to see the actual chip.

One of the other assemblies included surface mount assembly. This is where the part is held to the board by the soldier. Not by its physical placement through holes in the board, then being soldered to the PC board.


Instructor: ltaber@pima.edu ** My new Home at GeoApps in Tucson ** The Pima College Site ** The Mad Dr. G.'s home page on phred.

5.10 The KGB, the Compute, and Me  a video5 Class notes5.8 Processors5.9 Sand to Circuit (Video)