Integrated Circuits & Moore's Law: Crash Course Computer Science #17
633,938
Published 2017-06-21
So you may have heard of Moore's Law and while it isn't truly a law it has pretty closely estimated a trend we've seen in the advancement of computing technologies. Moore's Law states that we'll see approximately a 2x increase in transistors in the same space every two years, and while this may not be true for much longer, it has dictated the advancements we've seen since the introduction of transistors in the mid 1950s. So today we're going to talk about those improvements in hardware that made this possible - starting with the third generation of computing and integrated circuits (or ICs) and printed circuit boards (or PCBs). But as these technologies advanced a newer manufacturing process would bring us to the nanoscale manufacturing we have today - photolithography.
Check out Veritasium's video: How Does a Transistor Work?
• How Does a Transistor Work?
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All Comments (21)
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Actually, humans DO still manually lay out millions of transistors on modern IC's! VLSI and place-and-route logic synthesis has it's place but human-driven physical design for the most critical components is still a huge part of the chip design process. Photomask design has been my career for over 15 years :)
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It's so crazy: photoresist and washing is how old school blue prints were made. Crazy how such a lo-tech method formed the basis of our hi-tech chips.
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I never knew anything about computers and assumed it was all just nerdmagic but learning about Computers has been totally amazing! This is a fantastic series!!! You guys rock!
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So I started taking seriously this series and my life has changed since then. However, I have to watch almost every video twice and then I completely get it. I should be done in about a month with the entire series. Thanks a lot for making it!
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I am proud of humanity seeing they invented such a complicated something
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So, I've spent dozens of hours learning the details of this procress, and truely grocking why each step was needed. But watching this animation, I realize that I've never seen a good video that demonstrates the process. The modern assembly process is so self-contained and masked off that it makes for really boring video. But someone needs to do this, as you describe it, using the old slow methods that pioneered this field. I don't think that exists on YouTube right now.
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I can't get enough of this series, the presenter is great and the content very easy to follow. Congratulations for the good work CC!
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Carrie Anne, you are such expert in the topic, and eloquent explaining it, that you make this complex topic really straight forward and easy to coprenhed. Plus you fill every video with your charismatic jokes and good mood it really makes learning CS a super enjoyable experience! Thank you very much for making this! Has helped and motivated me and thousands of others a lot!
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This is awesome! I unfortunately found this video quite late, as I see it’s 5 years old. I have been working with integrated circuits for 9 years now and I’ll just say those 7 nanometer transistors are tricky!
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Your enthusiasm is what makes these videos tolerable, with all the information in a short video would be mind boggling but managed to make fun to watch You rock girl!!!!
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Its worth noting that the actual processing speed hasn't sped up in the last 2 decades, as in the early 00"s the clock speed hit its cap because of temperature. The efforts of more transistors are used to increase parallel processing, and the speedup for that is subject to Amdahl's law.
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I have done work in photolithographic development, and this is a good quick summary.
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Great video as usual, but I just have one question: Who is USB's father?
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These is the most complicated instructions for making a sandwich I've ever heard.
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Masked... resolve.... dyeing to know..... IC what you did there.
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I absolutely ❤️ this series !
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This video answered a question I asked in an earlier video's comment feed. THANK YOU SO MUCH I LEARNED SOMETHING INCREDIBLE TODAY. Multiple incredible things, actually. Love this series! Keep it going!
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That triple pun at the end....I don't know whether I'm proud or exasperated by it :P
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This course is nothing short of amazing... look forward to it every week.
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I love these videos! When I was deciding between majors it was between computer science and two others. I never regretted not choosing computer science (not because I think it's uninteresting but because I'm equally satisfied with my current major) but I still want to learn about it, even if it is a a more hobbyish level, so these videos are a godsend