analogZONE & Chipworks, Inc. present...
Tagging Chips: A Monthly Art Mural From The Nanometer World
The urge to make one's mark in the world is as old as humanity
itself. Whether it's the maker's mark on an artisan's pewter mug, or the
elaborate tagging
that gave rise to the street murals of Los Angeles, people have found ways
to put a piece of themselves into their work or their surroundings. It's
not surprising then to learn that the ICs that inhabit our computers, PDAs,
and toasters have become the canvases for a modern and microscopic kind
of graffiti.
In a tradition that dates back to the early days of ICs, designers have used the small, unused areas of the chips they create to sign their work by placing their initials, a logo, or even a cartoon in the upper metal layers. And while more rigid design tools, tighter design schedules, and stricter corporate discipline have made this chip art less commonplace, it is estimated that 30% - 40% of the world's IC designs still emerge with some sort of embellishment.
While most chip art remains buried deep within the potting material that surrounds the average IC, some of it is brought to light by Chipworks, a Canadian company that analyzes semiconductor design and manufacturing techniques by demanufacturing the devices under carefully-controlled conditions. Aside from the technical artistry that is inherent in chip design, Chipworks occasionally finds art on the chips, buried deep in the silicon.
Although semiconductor corporations may discourage these works of art as a frivolous waste of resources, Chipworks thinks they're great! Their engineering staff discovers the images under their microscopes (typically at 500x magnification but sometimes as high as 5000x) during the analysis process, and captures them with their proprietary state-of-the-art software. Features of these images can be 10 to 100 times smaller than the width of a typical human hair.
In celebration of what must be the world's smallest art form, analogZONE and Chipworks are proud to join forces to produce this monthly feature highlighting selections from Chipworks' vast archive of chip art. In these images we hope you'll discover the creativity, humor, and humanity that remain essential elements of the electronics industry.
January 2006 Offerings: Palm Trees & Poopsters
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The palm tree and Malibu art is from an LCD Controller which arrived in Chipworks labs in November 2004. | |
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The artwork of the child (known as the Poopster), with the names of the chip designers, is from the same chip. This is not the first appearance of Poopster, but it is our first glimpse of his whole body. His head and the words Poopster the biggest little chip in the world first appeared in Chipworks labs in 2002 on another LCD Controller. | |
Editor's Note: analogZONE believes that this embedded art is in the public domain in that the part was purchased legally and reverse-engineered by Chipworks in the course of their legal examination for their client(s). There is no intention by analogZONE to breach any copyrights asserted by the manufacturer of this part, the originator of the artwork, or the Chipworks client; the image is offered in strict anonymity, in the spirit of examining this unique element within a technical arena on its artistic, rather than engineering, merits.
