PFE005: Silicon Art

Science is an art and art is... I don't really know what art is.

Computer chips are god-only-knows what kind of tangled mess.

So many colors, so many lines. How did somebody figure out how to put all the right lines in the right place? There are, of course, millions, maybe even zillions of different ways to design an integrated circuit to get the job done, so designers seem to tend to feel a sense of pride about their creation. And this leads naturally to, art.

The top layer of a chip is going to be insulating, so it doesn't really do anything. So manufacturers typically etch a serial number on it, and perhaps a company logo. But since nearly no one was ever going to look that closely at it except for maybe their competitors, they got creative.

In my research into silicon, I came across a private company called chipworks started photographing these pictures. I have attached a few of my favorites. All of the galleries can be found here.

That's art.